<br>Dear all,<br><br>Four campus ambassadors conducted a 2-hour intro to wikipedia session as part of an all-day workshop I was facilitating on Gender and Technology at the Dept of Women's Studies, University of Pune. We had about 20 participants - more women than men, and an even mix of Marathi and English speakers. <br>
<br>The 4 CAs who conducted the session were: Abhishek Suryawanshi, Devanshi Tripathi, Arnav Sonara and Nikita Agarwal - between them they too represented a good mix of genders and languages. I had earlier invited Ashwin Baindur from the Pune community to conduct the workshop; the timing didn't work for him.<br>
<br>The participants were introduced to both English and Marathi wikipedias, where they tried to locate Sharmila Rege, dalit feminist and sociologist, who heads the department. Since she didn't have a page on English wikipedia, one was created - and this process of creation was used as an opportunity to demonstrate key principles: references, citations, NPOV, verifiability, as well as how to edit. Larger conversations around reliability and authenticity were had, and the CAs cited their own experiences to answer the question: Why edit? <br>
<br>I was particularly impressed by the way the CAs shared the workload among themselves and by the way they pitched wikipedia to a bunch of newcomers: inside out (from a newbie perspective) rather than outside in, anticipating what a newcomer needs to know at each step - to be motivated and to progress to the next step. They also suggested easy ways to edit at the start. Judging by the last question from participants: "How can we contact you'll if we need help?" it worked.<br>
<br>This was the first time undergrads had taught postgrads in this department - a nice role reversal. And this was the first time the CAs had stepped outside the India Education Program to do a non-program workshop. The student-to-student thing really worked.<br>
<br>So many thanks Abhishek, Arnav, Devanshi and Nikita. It was great!<br><br>And thanks a ton, Hisham, for putting so much together at such short notice.<br><br>Cheers<br>Bishakha<br><br> <br><div style="display: inline;">
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