Students for Free Culture will be having its annual conference at New York
Law School<https://www.google.com/maps?q=new+york+law+school&hl=en&sll=40.6%2097488,-7…>on
April 20-21st!
The Students for Free Culture Conference is an annual gathering of student
and non-student activists, thinkers, and innovators who are dedicated to
advancing discussions on technology, law, and public policy. Through panels
and keynote speakers, FCX 2013 will focus on current issues in intellectual
property law, open access to educational resources, maker culture, and
technology policy. Through workshops, the conference will revisit the core
pillars of the free culture movement, examine the success stories from our
movement, and identify new ways in which Students for Free Culture can
advocate for a more free, open, and participatory digital environment.
For more information about the conference, visit the conference
website<http://fcx2013.org/fcxabout.html>
.
Registration is open <http://fcx2013.eventbrite.com>!
Through the generosity of our sponsors, Students for Free
Culture<http://freeculture.org/>is once again able to offset student
travel costs for this year’s
conference in NYC. Our first priority is to provide funding to at least one
student from every active chapter in the organization – but funding is
available to _all_ student activists and leaders who would like to attend
FCX2013.
If you can’t afford the cost of traveling to NYC next month, please do not
hesitate to fill out this form to request travel
funding<http://bit.ly/fcx2013_travelfunding>.
We have some money and we want to give it to you.
If you have friends at schools that do not currently have an active SFC
chapter but you think they should be at the conference, please pass along this
link <http://bit.ly/fcx2013_travelfunding> to them, too. Sometimes
attending the conference is just the spark that someone needs to get out
there and start a new chapter on their campus!
P.S. This is a great group of activists very closely aligned with the wiki
ethos, and I have been proud to work with them directly on many Wikimedia
NYC projects. There are also planning a Wiki-Workshop on better use of
Wikipedia at universities for one of the days, so please look forward to
that! (I very much regret I won't be able to join due to the overlapping
International Wikimedia/Chapters Conference also that weekend.)
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)
Wikimedia NYC
Hi all,
I would like to suggest a meetup soon in Milan for those interested in
the Education Program following the workshop that is going to happen
there. There will be a workshop already most of the day, then we could
have a meetup later in the night with Wikimedians from all over the
world e, naturalmente, i nostri amici italiani! :) I have made a
proposta on the talk page of the Education Workshop
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia_Education_Program/Educati…
Please, if you have suggestions of places to go (pizza?! :D) to gather
lots of Wikimedians interested in education or know people who might
be interested, comment above and share this link.
Arrivederci!
Tom
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life spent doing nothing."
Really glad to see they focused in on the local work being done in Poland
and Ukraine!
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130313/wikipedia-aca…
Jakub Parusinski
March 19, 2013 06:01
Will Wikipedia replace the academic thesis?
>From Ukraine to Egypt, universities are looking to drop traditional
requirements for scholarly papers in favor of internet entries.
KYIV, Ukraine — Click on a Wikipedia topic about optometry in the Polish
language or Newtonian mechanics in Ukrainian and the article that pops up
may well be a college student thesis.
That’s because universities in Poland and Ukraine are exploring new
requirements. Instead of cribbing research from Wikipedia for papers that
will probably only gather dust, advocates of the idea say students would be
better off writing their own Wikipedia articles.
Although critics warn that Wikipedia articles are no substitute for
rigorous academic papers, supporters say more than simply putting more
information at public disposal, erasing boundaries between the internet and
academia will invigorate scholarship by enabling it to benefit everyone.
"Contributing to Wikipedia considerably increases students' motivation
since their articles can be read by the whole world, not just their
teachers or supervisors," argues Sergei Petrov, one of the Wikipedia
project coordinators in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where the Kharkiv
Polytechnic Institute ran a test program during its last fall that produced
23 new or expanded articles on Wikipedia Ukraine.
Since anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, point out mistakes or improve an
article's structure, the argument goes, thousands of reviewers could
lighten the load for college professors by helping out.
The institute wants to expand the practice, and similar intitiatives are
being considered by universities in Sumy in northern Ukraine and the
capital Kyiv.
Across the border in Poland, the Medical University in Poznan is exploring
an even more ambitious initiative: a requirement to write Wikipedia
articles that could entirely replace bachelors theses as early as this year.
“We want to drop the requirement of writing a bachelor's thesis,” dean
Zbigniew Krasinski told local newspaper Gazeta Poznan. “These works
contribute little, are about re-writing [not original research], and take
up increasing amounts of space in the archives.”
Lawyers are currently working out the kinks. If successfully implemented,
the scheme would institutionalize a practice currently used by individual
professors. Under the new program, which would include the entire
university, each student would work with a supervisor to develop specific
entries.
However, some are warning Wikipedia articles may not be suited to all
disciplines. While medical terms may fit the encyclopedia's structure
nicely, it doesn't work for social sciences, says Piotr Oleksy, a doctoral
student in eastern studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.
“Traditional articles or essays are better for intellectual development,
truer to the spirit of the humanities, which cannot be shelved into such
narrow categories as Wikipedia entries,” he said. “It may make sense for
medicine, but in the case of social sciences, I'm against it.”
Both local and international Wikipedia sites are fully behind the project,
which they see as a chance to boost exposure and quality.
One problem the academics may be able to tackle is lack of “depth,” a rough
indicator of quality based on the ratio of edits and non-articles, such as
discussion and user pages, to the total number of articles.
Despite its maximum possible readership of just 40 million native speakers,
Polish Wikipedia is the world’s eighth largest version (down from fourth,
now occupied by the 23-million-strong Dutch speaking community). But while
English boasts the biggest depth at 748, and French has 157, the Polish
site comes in at a puny depth of 18 (Dutch is even worse at 17).
However, hopes that Polish Wikipedia will see dramatic improvement may be
too optimistic, says Pawel Zienowicz, spokesperson for Wikimedia Poland. A
few well-written academic articles, he says, will do little to change a
statistical average determined by a myriad of trivial ones.
“[Overall depth is determined] by entries about some village in France,
pages that are visited by five people a month, and usually by accident,” he
said.
Nevertheless, the initiative has particular appeal in Eastern Europe, where
academic writing was long tainted by propaganda, Zienowicz says.
Local teams that specialize in weeding out falsifications and ensuring
neutrality have made Wikipedia a more reliable source of information than
standard encyclopedias that are sometimes “filled with lies,” he said.
The idea of having students contribute to the online knowledge repository
is gaining traction far beyond the post-communist region. Launched two
years ago, the Wikipedia Education Program encourages professors around the
world to assign writing entries as class work.
The program has helped produce nearly 6,000 pages of published content in
its first year and almost double that in the second, thanks to a growing
flock of volunteers and more than 3,500 trained new editors.
Another engine is institutional cooperation. Education program spokeswoman
LiAnna Davis says partnerships with Georgetown University and other
academic associations are helping promote the project.
Wikipedia is currently focusing efforts on southern countries such as
Brazil and India as well as in the Middle East, which has been particularly
receptive. A dean at Cairo’s Ain Shams University has encouraged
instructors to replace traditional assignments with the translation of
high-quality Wikipedia articles.
Arabic Wikipedia has seen rapid growth as a result, almost doubling in size
over the past three years, and has one of the best depth levels of any
language version at over 240.
Twitter arguably started the Arab Spring, but it will be up to Wikipedia to
keep it going.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130313/wikipedia-aca…
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 x6649
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
I really enjoyed writing this piece on a student in the U.S. program who
wrote an article as a class assignment in Spring 2012 -- and then had it
assigned to her as required reading in a different class in Fall 2012!
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/13/student-assigned-to-read-a-wikipedia-a…
Enjoy,
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 x6649
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
Hey guys, in case you haven't seen School of Open launched its first set of
courses today, including several on Wikipedia/Wikimedia:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/37179.
Sign up for these facilitated courses
this week (sign-up will remain open through Sunday, March 17). These
courses will start the week of March 18 (next week!). To sign up, simply
click the “Start Course” button under the course’s menu navigation on the
left.
- *Copyright 4 Educators
(US)<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/147/copyright-for-educators-us/>
* – Sign up <https://p2pu.org/en/courses/147/copyright-for-educators-us/>if
you’re an educator who wants to learn about US copyright law in the
education context.
- *Copyright 4 Educators
(AUS)<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/111/copyright-4-educators-aus/>
* – Sign up <https://p2pu.org/en/courses/111/copyright-4-educators-aus/>if
you’re an educator who wants to learn about Australian copyright,
statutory licenses and open educational resources (OER).
- *Creative Commons for K-12
Educators<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/9/creative-commons-for-k-12-educators/>
* – Sign up<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/9/creative-commons-for-k-12-educators/>if
you’re a K-12 educator (anywhere in the world) who wants to learn how
to
find and adapt free, useful resources for your classroom, and incorporate
activities that teach your students digital world skills.
- *Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and
Beyond<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/49/writing-wikipedia-articles-the-basics-and-be…>
* – Sign up<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/49/writing-wikipedia-articles-the-basics-and-be…>if
you want to learn how to edit Wikipedia or improve your editing skills
—
especially if you are interested in and knowledgeable about open
educational resources (OER) (however, no background in this area is
required).
All other courses are now ready for you to take
at any time, with or without your peers. They include:
- *Get a CC license. Put it on your
website<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/3/get-a-cc-license-put-it-on-your-website/>
* – This course is exactly what the title says: it will help you with
the steps of getting a CC license and putting it on your work. It’s
tailored to websites, although the same steps apply to most other works.
- *Open Science: An
Introduction<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/5/open-science-an-introduction/>
* – This course is a collaborative learning environment meant to
introduce the idea of Open Science to young scientists, academics, and
makers of all kinds. Open Science is a tricky thing to define, but we’ve
designed this course to share what we know about it, working as a community
to make this open resource better.
- *Open data for GLAMs
<https://p2pu.org/nl/groups/open-glam/>*(Galleries, Libraries,
Archives, Museums) – This course is for
professionals in cultural institutions who are interested in opening up
their data as open culture data. It will guide you through the different
steps towards open data and provide you with extensive background
information on how to handle copyright and other possible issues.
- *Intro to Openness in
Education<https://p2pu.org/en/courses/140/intro-to-openness-in-education/>
* – This is an introductory course exploring the history and impacts of
openness in education. The main goal of the course is to give you a broad
but shallow grounding in the primary areas of work in the field of open
education.
- *A Look at Open Video<https://p2pu.org/en/groups/a-look-at-open-video/>
* – This course will give you a quick overview of some of the issues,
tools and areas of interest in the area of open video. It is aimed at
students interested in developing software, video journalists, editors and
all users of video who want to take their knowledge further.
- *Contributing to Wikimedia
Commons<https://p2pu.org/en/groups/contributing-to-wikimedia-commons/>
* – A sister project of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons is a repository of
openly licensed images that people all over the world use and contribute
to. This challenge gets you acquainted with uploading your works to the
commons.
- *Open Detective <http://beta.p2pu.org/en/courses/8/open-detective/>* –
This course will help you explore the scale of open to non-open content and
how to tell the difference.
And more… check out all the courses at http://schoolofopen.org/.
--
Jane Park
Project Manager <http://creativecommons.org/staff#janepark>
Creative Commons
the School of Open, a collaboration with P2PU: http://schoolofopen.org/
Like what we do? Donate: https://creativecommons.net/donate/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carolina <carolina.rossini(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2013/3/10
Subject: [okfn-br] Fwd: [OER-advocacy] Open Education Week March 11-15
To: Brazil interest group for Open Knowledge and especially Open Data
<okfn-br lists.okfn.org>, "rea-lista(a)googlegroups.com"
<rea-lista(a)googlegroups.com>
From: Mary Lou Forward <mlforward(a)ocwconsortium.org>
Date: March 8, 2013, 6:05:01 AM PST
To: OER Advocacy Coalition <oer-advocacy-coalition(a)googlegroups.com>
Subject: [OER-advocacy] Open Education Week March 11-15
Reply-To: oer-advocacy-coalition(a)googlegroups.com
Open Education Week is next week, March 11-15.
The second annual Open Education is next week, March 11-15, 2013. Open
Education Week is a five-day celebration of the global Open Education
Movement, featuring over 100 online and local events around the world,
video showcases of open education projects, and lots of information.
Its purpose is to raise awareness of both the movement and its impact
on teaching and learning worldwide. All events and resources are free
and open to everyone.
We appreciate your help in spreading the word about Open Education
Week. I've attached the press release, which you are free to modify
and post to your blogs, etc. We have a very impressive set of
webinars and excellent project overviews that will help introduce
people to the richness of the open education movement:
www.openeducationweek.org, twitter #openeducationwk.
We look forward to your participation next week!
Mary Lou
--
Mary Lou Forward
Executive Director
OpenCourseWare Consortium
www.ocwconsortium.org
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "OER Advocacy Coalition" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
an email to oer-advocacy-coalition+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to oer-advocacy-coalition(a)googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/oer-advocacy-coalition?hl=en.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
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--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKFN Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org
_______________________________________________
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--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life spent doing nothing."
This year the TED conference awarded their top prize to this talk by
Sugata Mitra entitled "Build a School in the Cloud":
http://http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.ht…
The point of the talk is asking for educational technologists to
design and offer peer-oriented learning systems. But such systems
already exist. The most advanced of which at present is called
PeerWise: http://peerwise.cs.auckland.ac.nz/
In short, PeerWise is an automated self-study, low-stakes assessment
system where both questions and answers are edited and reviewed by
anyone (with access; in practice this usually means anyone enrolled in
a course or major at an institution) very similarly to textual content
in a wiki. It is already being used successfully at hundreds of higher
education and other institutions. But sadly it's closed source. I
have since 2009 been trying to encourage the Foundation to build an
open source version of such a system.
Is there anyone else interested in this?
Dear professors, please, let your students know. Thanks, Tom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Students for Free Culture <webleader+rss-bot(a)freeculture.org>
Date: 2013/3/5
Subject: [FC-discuss] Register for FCX2013!
To: discuss(a)freeculture.org
Students for Free Culture will be having its annual conference at [New
York Law School][1] on April 20-21st!
The Students for Free Culture Conference is an annual gathering of
student and non-student activists, thinkers, and innovators who are
dedicated to advancing discussions on technology, law, and public
policy. Through panels and keynote speakers, FCX 2013 will focus on
current issues in intellectual property law, open access to educational
resources, maker culture, and technology policy. Through workshops, the
conference will revisit the core pillars of the free culture movement,
examine the success stories from our movement, and identify new ways in
which Students for Free Culture can advocate for a more free, open, and
participatory digital environment.
For more information about the conference, visit the conference
[website][2].
Registration is [open][3]!
Through the generosity of our sponsors, [Students for Free Culture][4]
is once again able to offset student travel costs for this year’s
conference in NYC. Our first priority is to provide funding to at least
one student from every active chapter in the organization – but funding
is available to _all_ student activists and leaders who would like to
attend FCX2013.
If you can’t afford the cost of traveling to NYC next month, please do
not hesitate to fill out this [form to request travel funding][5]. We
have some money and we want to give it to you.
If you have friends at schools that do not currently have an active SFC
chapter but you think they should be at the conference, please pass
along [this link][5] to them, too. Sometimes attending the conference is
just the spark that someone needs to get out there and start a new
chapter on their campus!
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps?q=new+york+law+school&hl=en&sll=40.6
97488,-73.979681&sspn=0.69759,1.233215&hq=new+york+law+school&t=m&z=15
[2]: http://freeculture.org/feed/fcx2013.org
[3]: http://fcx2013.eventbrite.com
[4]: http://freeculture.org/
[5]: http://bit.ly/fcx2013_travelfunding
URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2013/03/06/register-for-fcx2013/
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
Discuss(a)freeculture.org
http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKFN Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org
_______________________________________________
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WikimediaBR-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediabr-l
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more
useful than a life spent doing nothing."