Dear fellow Wikipedians:
This is to let you know about my most recent article, co-authored with former student Kate Rattray. We’re especially proud of this piece, in which we make a pedagogical and public-service case for writing and editing Wikipedia articles for law school credit. The article has just been published in the Journal of Legal Education, which, appropriately, is an open-access journal. The current volume can be found here: http://jle.aals.org/home/. You can also read an abstract and download the article from my SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network) website, here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2729241.
Yours truly,
John Kleefeld
Associate Professor, College of Law
University of Saskatchewan
15 Campus Drive
Saskatoon SK S7N 5A6
tel: (+1) 306.966.1039
email: john.kleefeld(a)usask.ca
skype: johnkleefeld
twitter: @johnkleefeld
web: http://law.usask.ca/find-people/faculty/kleefeld-john.php
Good evening, Professor Christie. My name is Lixxx235, and I'm a Wikipedia
editor and an Online Ambassador with the Wikipedia Education Program. (
userpage <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lixxx235>)
It's come to my attention (through a student's request for help via
Wikipedia's live chat) that you have given your students assignments
relating to editing Wikipedia. While the Wikipedia Education Program fully
supports such assignments, and endorses a number of courses at various
universities around the world, according to one of your students, an
assignment you've given seems to have students confused and is causing
submissions in violation of some Wikipedia policies and wasting volunteer
and student time. For example, this
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Fuel_controlled_fires_…>
is an entry one of your students tried to get help on from our live help
chat. This submission does not meet Wikipedia guidelines such as notability
policies, policies requiring verifiability of material, and policies
requiring a neutral point of view (NPOV) to be kept. In addition, it was
not in Wikipedia's standard format.
We'd love to get in touch with you. Please reply back to
lixxx235wikipedia(a)gmail.com and education(a)lists.wikimedia.org to see how we
can help you develop good assignments for editing Wikipedia and how we can
resolve some issues with your current assignment.
All the best,
Lixxx235
English Wikipedia
Current and future education program leaders,
One of the key aims we had when founding the Wikipedia & Education User
Group was to create a more formal mentorship structure between established
and emerging program leaders. As education programs start, scale, and
adapt, there are always new things to learn about running programs. And the
best people to learn from are peers in our movement.
We had been planning to launch a mentorship program more formally at the
EduWiki Conference in 2020; the pandemic has delayed the conference, but
we're launching a smaller pilot of the mentorship program today.
Here's how it works:
* You can volunteer to be a mentor for someone, or ask to be mentored by
someone, or both! There may be things you know well that you can help
someone else learn, while also wanting to learn new things yourself.
* Fill out the form below. Note we are collecting personal information to
match you with a mentor or mentee; please don't put any information on the
form you're not comfortable with us sharing with the person we pair you
with.
* For this pilot, we're looking to pair people by June 30, and have the
mentorship happen between July and December 2021 to see how it works. So
please fill the form out by the end of June.
* The more people we have who sign up, the greater likelihood we have
someone we can match!
* We will evaluate the pilot in early 2022 and decide how to adapt it in
the future.
Fill out the form by June 30:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqLpGgBCe4ccdUqKhRBs2JGJl76sUhwrO…
Leave any questions on the talk page of our Mentorship page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_%26_Education_User_Group/Working_…
LiAnna
Chair, Wikipedia & Education User Group
The Wikipedia & Education User Group invites you to attend our next Open
Meeting via Zoom on Thursday, June 24, from 4 pm UTC to 5:30 pm UTC (see
your time zone here: https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1624550450).
As usual for our Open Meetings, we will provide updates from the Wikipedia
& Education board, then leave most of the time for our guest speakers.
Our guest speakers this month will be Maxwell Beganim from Ghana, who will
talk about Kiwix in local secondary schools, and Rocío Aravena, from Chile,
who will talk about a course for school teachers she ran.
Our speakers' biographies:
* Maxwell Beganim is an Educator, Tech enthusiast, and Open Advocate. He
studied Biological Science and Masters in Education with focus on
Educational Technology and Higher Education. He is a Training Associate at
Open Foundation West Africa, Lead Trainer for SNV GrEEn Project in Ghana,
Virtual Tutor at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He
is also the Partnership Director for Green Stewardship International.
Maxwell also with passion in the Open Movement was crowned the ultimate
Winner of Founders Day Writing Contest as the most diverse writer and
contributor to the Open Movement.
* Rocío Aravena, in charge of Education and Digital Literacy of Wikimedia
Chile, History teacher (University of Chile) and Master in Research in
Education and Educational Change from the University of Barcelona, will
speak about the virtual course for school teachers “Wikipedia in the
classroom: tools for critical citizenship” that had place on April 2021.
We hope you can join us!
The meeting will be hosted via this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89174959828?pwd=WWR4VFdoM2p0TUV4MHA1b3Niazh4dz09
Meeting ID: 891 7495 9828
Passcode: 644180
If you would like to be added to the Google Calendar invite, please send me
an email offlist.
Dear Wikimedians,
I hope you are all doing well, and staying safe. As you all know, Wikimania
is happening in a virtual space this year, it is a good opportunity for all
of us to share our work with others and learn from each other.
2020 was a challenging year for many of us, but we identified various ways
to tackle this challenge. We designed our programs from in-person spaces to
virtual spaces, created virtual learning resources, collaborated with other
affiliates, and supported each other in this unprecedented time. These are
the stories needed to be shared in Wikimania. I am sure some of you are
already planning to submit a session. The deadline is on 18th June (in two
days!).
You can visit the page for more information on submission:
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:Submissions
There are various formats, if you have any queries, please reach out here:
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:Submissions/Help_desk
Best!
--
Sailesh Patnaik (He/Him)
Program Officer, Education
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hi all,
As Creative Commons is celebrating its 20th year, I am honored to serve on
the Program Committee for the 2021 CC Summit (with some great WikiFriends)
and happy to share that the call for proposals
<https://creativecommons.org/2021/06/02/the-2021-cc-global-summit-call-for-p…>
is
now open!
The program tracks <https://summit.creativecommons.org/2021-summit-program/>
are:
- *Creators of the Commons* – The faces, work, and stories of those
building the Commons
- *Powering the Commons** – *Exploring the tools, technology, and
communities that power the Commons
-
*Open Education and Open Scholarship* *– *Supporting and empowering
communities that practice open access to education and scholarship
-
*Open Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums* – Improving and
expanding open access to cultural heritage + Hack4OpenGLAM
- *Policy and Advocacy promoting the Commons* – Strategies for legal
action and copyright reform
Would be wonderful to have a strong Wiki presence there and celebrate with
our colleagues from CC. So please share, apply and engage. :)
Cheers,
Shani.
Hello all,
Are you interested in the future of Wikipedia and Wikidata?
Have you heard the buzz around "Abstract Wikipedia" and want to learn more?
Confused about the differences between "Abstract Wikipedia",
"Wikifunctions" and "WikiLambda"?
If the answer to any of these questions is "Yes", then you should read
more. [image: 🙂]
*What?*
My academic course at Tel Aviv University, "From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, from
Wikipedia to Wikidata", is coming to an end soon and next week we will be
closing the Wikidata module of the course in a special celebration,
hosting Denny
Vrandečić (initiator of Wikidata, and more recently the director of
"Abstract Wikipedia", or rather "Wikifunctions").
To properly celebrate, Denny & I have designed a two-parts "party" for my
students, which includes a pre-recorded interview
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GjNkrvT7Yc&ab_channel=ShaniEvenstein>,
and then *a live Q & A session with Denny during the course hour*.
And the good news is -- *you are all invited!*
*Where?*
*1) Pre-recorded interview* (available here - https://youtu.be/0GjNkrvT7Yc
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F0GjNkrvT7Yc%3Ffbcli…>)
-
In the interview we discussed the some of the challenges we have in
Wikipedia and Wikidata, and how they brought about the idea of "Abstract
Wikipedia"; What is the difference between "Abstract Wikipedia",
"Wikifunctions" and "WikiLambda"; What is the current state of the project;
and how it all ties to the current Internet Ecosystem and things like AI
and Machine Learning.
*2) Q & A live session - *
*Next Monday, June 7th, at 15:00 Israel time (12:00 UTC),* I will be
hosting Denny in my course for a 45 mins Q & A session via Zoom.
This part of class will be open and anyone interested in this topic, and
you are welcome to either *join us live*, *send questions* to Denny (after
watching the pre-recorded interview) *or watch later*.
*How?*
If you are interested to join, *please write me an email *(simply reply
privately to this email) *by Sunday June 6th at 20:00 UTC*, and I will send
you the zoom link (this is to avoid Zoombombing).
If you are unable to participate live, but still want to engage, *feel free
to send in questions *(again replying to this email privately).
The session will also be recorded, so if you cannot make it to the live
session, you will be able to watch later on YouTube (I will be sharing the
recording later).
Looking forward to your questions and to seeing you next week,
Shani.