Because of Mina's comment, just adding bellow some of my conclusions on the
education program.
2013/7/15 Mina Theofilatou <theoth(a)otenet.gr>
>
> Balazs, that was exactly what I had in mind: I'm interested in the
"retention" rates. My experience in secondary education has returned
practically zero "keepers": I will run a project or two each school year,
the students will produce material under my - at times discreet, at times
strict - guidance, and that's it: none of them gets hooked on the Wikipedia
ideals - creating and sharing knowledge - to go on and become a regular
editor. So I have to "start from scratch" each semester.
1. *This education program is not about bringing new contributors to
Wikipedia in the short term*: if we regard the profile of who contribute
to Wikipedia, which is a volunteer work, and how school tasks are generally
assigned to students, where they need to proove they learned somethings
from what was taught, according to our results only a few students can
become active Wikipedia contributors. On the other hand...
2. *This education program is about improving the Wikipedia quality and
retaining professors to support the sharing of free knowledge and Wikimedia
projects*: improving the Wikipedia quality may be understood in many
different ways and this should be more clearly define for the program as a
whole. Although we can have high quality content of specific fields of
knowledge when the Wikipedia assignments are successful, this may not be
what will have the biggest educational impact on potential readers for a
*educational* project. To mobilize and empower the next generation of
human-knowledge generators, we should retain professors after participating
of the program that can understand: 1. the importance of freely sharing
online educational resources of high quality; 2. how to set Wikipedia
(Wikimedia?) assignments on their courses - having in mind the benefits for
students and for the readers of the content that is supposed to be created.
It is important to realise that*Wikipedia is not a cause*, open
educational resouces with high quality is and Wikipedia have to be seen as
one possible tool.
>From here<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Program/Reports/wep-general#Learning_…>
.
Comments welcome.
If we want bring editors, most of our focus should be targeted at online
strategies - for instance, the editor engagement
projects<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_engagement>seem
to have some good things. I made some comments about that whislt
discussing the planning for the catalyst program in
Brazil<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Programa_Catalisador_do_Br…>
.
For short, Wikipedia is an online community. And offline activities won't
bring the desired goals that the strategic
planning<http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary>set
a few years ago.
Comments about that also welcome, mainly if you disagree.
Tom
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org
Dear colleagues around the world,
I know not all of you speak Swedish (if any?) but I wanted to share our
short video just released for the Swedish education programme;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP4F7XG7-_A
I hope you enjoy! :)
*Be Bold!
Sophie Österberg
0733-832670
sophie.osterberg(a)wikimedia.se*
*Every single contribution to Wikipedia is a gift of free knowledge to
humanity. *
Hi education folks,
I would like to send the news of the two new contractors of the education
program in Brazil here as well. See the message bellow about Rodrigo and
Célio - both are here at the education mailing list. Congratulations to
both!
Best wishes,
Tom
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Oona Castro <ocastro(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: 2013/7/12
Subject: Welcome Celio Costa and Rodrigo Padula
To: "Staff (All)" <wmfall(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: Everton Zanella Alvarenga <everton.alvarenga(a)okfn.org>
Dear all
[glup]
For his position, we have decided to open two part time positions: one for
the coordination of the education program and partnerships and one for
outreach.
We were lucky for the quality of candidates that applied for the jobs and
even more lucky to have hired Rodrigo Padula and Celio Costa.
Be very welcome, Rodrigo and Celio! And I hope we can do a wonderful job
together.
*Rodrigo Padula*
Rodrigo Padula is a researcher at the Tércio Pacitti Computational Research
and Applications Institute NCE/UFRJ, where he leads initiatives and
implementation of the Open Source Technologies Laboratory - LAPTEL - and
works with research in the field of technology applied to education,
researching better ways of using information technologies in educational
practices He’s been an activist in the Latin American open source movement
for a long time and is an active member in a variety of projects since the
90’s. For almost 8 years he’s been collaborating with Mozilla Foundation,
promoting Web technology and internet freedom. When not in front of
computer practices Brazilian JiuJitsu and enjoy the beauties of nature
practicing trekking, camping, scuba-diving and snowboarding.
I’m very happy to have Rodrigo in our team. Throughout the selection
process, Rodrigo called our attention for his experience with different
online communities (he had also been a Fedora ambassador and community
manager for Latin America), spreads the OLPC - One Laptop per Child project
talking to and training teachers in several Brazilian states. Activist for
free technologies and knowledge, Rodrigo has attended and organized a lot
of events and projects to integrate technology and education. Besides this,
as I hope you’ll have the chance to see through your own eyes, he’s a very
creative professional, with lots of ideas and proposals. At a moment in
which not only the job position is going from one hand to another, but also
we’re changing the structure of the education team in Brazil (bringing a
person to outreach and build capacity among new editors) as well as on the
way we’ll be established in Brazil (with a local partnership and grant),
having someone with so many great ideas for new strategies seems awesome to
us: we’ll have the chance to look back at our work and evaluate what we can
and want to do, and follow up with the very best of what we’ve done so far
and start up new approaches too.
His email at Wikimedia is rodrigopadula AT wikimedia.org
*Celio Costa*
Celio Costa Filho ([[Usuário:Sturm]]) at PT-WP is a wikipedian since 2004
(holding an account since 2005) and one of the most active editors in the
community. He has created thousands of articles and is one of the top 15
most active users in the history of Portuguese Wikipedia (
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm). Celio holds a
bachelor degree on History and Linguistics from University of Campinas
(UNICAMP), was a professor for many years, when he experienced to promote
the use of wiki in educational environments and institutions. He’s
currently a consultant for the University of São Paulo, creating and
developing a wiki for the Medicin School.
Also, Celio has been active in the Wikimedia Brazilian movement for many
years and is on the avant-guard on the use of Wikipedia as an educational
resource with universities and high-schools. He was one of the volunteers
that started up this partnership with Peretz school, which has been growing
and was featured on Brazilian media more than once. He had also been a
campus and online ambassador in the Education Program, and led capacity
building activities for professors, demonstrating an awesome didactics and
commitment with proposed activities.
We are very happy to count on Celio’s work and knowledge. As a volunteer,
he was already involved in the development of a lot of activities aiming at
the growth of Wikimedia projects and is very familiar with both the
academic and the Wikimedia world.
His email at Wikimedia is celiocosta AT wikimedia.org
best
Oona
--
Oona Castro
Consultant for the Brazilian Catalyst Program at Wikimedia Foundation
+ 55 21 81812505
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate>
--
Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
OKF Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
http://br.okfn.org
Hello,
I just received a mail about a avaaz campaign that may interest some of
you on this list.
From [1] :
The young women were heading home from college in Pakistan when
terrorists firebombed their school bus, burning 14 of them alive. The
survivors were rushed to the hospital, where another bomb went off,
injuring their friends and the nurses who came to help.
Sometimes out of the deepest darkness come our brightest lights. In the
face of this horror, 15-year-old Malala has dared to campaign for girls
education in Pakistan. She was shot in the head for it last year, but
she survived, and with almost 1 million of us behind her, she helped win
a new government policy to put all Pakistani girls in school!
But she's not stopping there. On Friday, Malala will speak at the UN to
propose a new global goal: to put every child on the planet in school.
Her request is shockingly doable -- with experts saying it would cost
the same as just two nuclear power plants! We have just hours left --
let's show world leaders that Malala has millions of us behind her as
she appeals to them to act, and turn Taliban horror into powerful new
hope -- education for all.
[1] https://secure.avaaz.org/en/every_child_in_school_global/?fp
--
Association Culture-Libre
http://www.culture-libre.org/
I can only agree: Congratulations! Great news!
A pleasure to read about your mud-hut experiences in Eastern Europe and how
you made it from there to the Wikimedia universe :-) Also a pleasure to
have met you just at the beginning of your Wikimedia adventure at the
Eduwiki last year---I hope there will be many more opportunities to work
together!
All the best,
Conny
------------------------------
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Obentrautstraße 72
10963 Berlin
Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
www.wikimedia.de
Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der
Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales
Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird. Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition!
https://wke.wikimedia.de/wke/Main_Page
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hi all!
I'm truly really excited to welcome Sophie Österberg to the Wikimedia
Foundation's Education Program team. Her role will be to support the work
that all of you are doing worldwide and encourage us all to be better about
sharing our results. I'm sure many of you have met Sophie, and if you
haven't had that privilege, I'm sure you've seen her emails on this list!
Sophie joins us from Wikimedia Sweden, where she helped start their
education program. Rod's official welcome to the staff list is below.
Over the next few months, I will ease back into a more traditional
communications role, and Sophie will take on some of the program
development support I've been doing. Of course, you're still encouraged to
reach out to either or both of us; we'll be working closely together!
LiAnna
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rodney Dunican <rdunican(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 11:32 AM
Subject: [Wmfall] Fwd: Welcome Sophie Österberg
Hello everyone,
Please join me in welcoming Sophie Österberg to the Wikimedia Foundation as
the Global Education Program Manager for the Wikipedia Education Program.
Many of you may know Sophie from her work with Wikimedia Sweden; we're very
excited that she's joined the Foundation to help us grow and support
education efforts globally. She started Monday and she's already been hard
at work, learning about all of the Wikipedia educational programs in 39
countries worldwide who encourage students to contribute to Wikimedia
projects for their coursework.
Sophie is based in Stockholm for now, but we look forward to welcoming her
to San Francisco in hopefully the near future! Sophie has introduced
herself here -- be sure to click through on the link to her video and enjoy!
*After graduating from my masters in leadership in June 2012 here in Sweden
I went to Ukraine to try out 'WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on
OrganicFarms)' <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF>. This led me to a
mud-hut deep in the forest of the mountains of Ukraine, where our lovely
host had not yet built the toilet nor the shower. So, there I was, in the
middle of the forest in a mud-hut, with much time to contemplate. So whilst
realising that I was not at all the laid-back camper and nature person I
thought (or wished) I was, I made a list of my future life and what it
should include, which was not a mud-hut. First thing on my list was
Wikimedia. I have since started school, in a
Montessori<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori>class, loved
knowledge, the free accessability to it and education. So when
finishing my masters and realising that the forest and mountains of Ukraine
was not my future home I did nurture the idea that spending time working
for, as a volunteer or employee, Wikimedia would instead be part of my
future. After six weeks as a volunteer for Wikimedia Sweden I was offered a
job working within education where we, among various other things, created this
video<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hur_tittar_du_p%C3%A5_Wikipedia.webm>.
In June I applied to work for the Wikimedia Foundation within the Education
team as a Global Education Manager. With much suprise, joy and humbleness I
am today doing my very first day as that role for the Foundation and I am
looking forward to many more days to come in this thrilling and challenging
position. I am grateful to be part of this movement, and happy to be
amongst so many others who share a common vision. *
*
*
*Welcome to the team Sophie!*
*Rod Dunican*
*Director, Global Education Program
**Wikimedia Foundation*
Hi Education people!
Based on feedback from last year's Wikimania meet-up, I'm working on
putting together an all-day pre-conference session on Education for
Wikimania in Hong Kong this year.
Different people are in different positions with their education programs,
and people need different information. So our thought is that we'll have
several small-group 30-minute sessions happening simultaneously. That way,
we can all get more individual help based on what stage our programs are
in. Rod, Sophie, and I brainstormed some ideas and included the suggestions
we got from the Milan meeting; now we're looking to see how many people are
interested in each topic.
If you're going to Wikimania and would be interested in attending such a
conference -- and hopefully interested in leading a session as well! -- I
encourage you to fill out this form, so we can better plan the agenda:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1CBUumTB_mXuTWMGw-g0c9omjmtzuK-IO2wjetNS8VH…
Please let me know if anything is unclear,
LiAnna
--
LiAnna Davis
Wikipedia Education Program Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://education.wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885 x6649
ldavis(a)wikimedia.org
Hello all
I'm writing to share some news with you... first the good news: we successfully completed and presented two school projects for the school year 2012-13. The projects were featured in the Wikimedia Global blog post I wrote in February. In the post I had mentioned that we would be holding an outdoor event to engage the locals in our work on Wikimedia Commons: the event was initially planned for mid-March, but the weather was so unpredictable this spring that we had to wait until mid-May to be certain that we would not have to face a storm! Anyway, here is the video I just uploaded : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWffhaJjAcY (in English). In addition, I have submitted the video to the European "generations at school" competition, as it was an intergenerational project both in the making and presentation.
And now for the bad news: this may be the last project I will be running in secondary education in Greece: the "Troika" (IMF-ECB-EU) has demanded that 12.500 people are fired from the public sector, and the government intends to fire around 8000 school teachers. They are looking primarily at ICT teachers (such as myself), as they intend to gradually eliminate ICT from secondary education curriculum (they have already removed a total of 4 hours per week in 1st and 2nd grade of upper secondary since last year). With no evaluation, no forward thinking or planning and no consideration for the quality of work ICT teachers have produced, we may find ourselves jobless in a matter of days.
The crisis in Greece has led many people to despair: with an unemployment rate of nearly 30% (60% for the 18-25 age group), social structures crumbling (schools, hospitals etc. are closing down on a daily basis) and salaries cut by at least 40%, it's not surprising that suicide rates have tripled over the last three years. Anyone interested in an eyewitness account of the situation can read a post I wrote in English on my blog.
Anyway, sorry to convey sadness... hope you all have a nice summer, and keep up the great work:)
Best,
Mina (saintfevrier)