Dear all,
(and sorry in advance for x-posting -- we are sharing this a bit wider to draw attention to not only the education group, but also the Libraries and GLAM groups, which we believe have a lot in common with ours and hope will be active partners in our work throughout the year)
Below is a report of what we've been up to during 2018, including a few updates looking forward to 2019. We've tried keeping it short and to the point.
Best,
Shani.
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* 2018 Report -
* Revamping our User Group Page -
Check out our (a bit more) updated page on Meta. The work is far from over and the key areas identified are especially a work in progress and will keep evolving as we do more work. That said, you can now easily find who we are, how you can get involved, how governance works, various resources and a way to contact us, which is a good start.
As some of you remember, we've ran a logo challenge, in order to determine what our logo would be. We finally have a winner - a logo that most people voted for, which was designed by krishna chaitanya velaga (who also happens to be one of our board members :)). The new logo will be implemented soon!
* Bylaws -
We are looking for people with experience in governance to join the board as we finalize our bylaws. If you're interested in working on it with us, please contact us privately.
* Annual plan -
* Working groups -
As part of working on our annual plan, the board has recognized key focus areas for our work: Community, Resources & Outreach.
It was decided to open working groups that will be working separately on advancing each of these focus areas. So what do we want from you?
Please check out the different working groups and sign up to the group(s) that interest you. We will soon start working in those groups (also in accordance with the movement strategic process) and interested users will be contacted directly. Each group will have a facilitator from the board, and each group will determine its own annual plan and tendency of meetings throughout the year.
* Monthly Open Online Meetings -
As of January 2019, we will be conducting open online meetings at the last Monday of each month, between 1630-1800 UTC (that is the time-slot most people voted for in a doodle poll we conducted). We will send a reminder a few days before, but this means you can already mark your calendars!
In addition, in every coming meeting we will feature 3 stories of initiatives from around the world. If you'd like to be featured in one of the coming meeting, please contact me privately.
Finally, we realize that while all of this makes perfect sense to us, it might not be so clear to others, so please feel free to ask us anything at all. We are really looking to involve as many people from around the world as possible in order to achieve our goals. In other words, we do not want to rely only on the board to develop these key areas for the global community; rather it is hoped that board members will take more of a facilitator role, especially as our network strengthens and our organization evolves.
Looking forward to working with as many of you in the coming year!
Shani and the Wikipedia & Education User Group Board.
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Shani Evenstein Sigalov
EdTech Innovation Strategist, NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University.
PhD Candidate, School of Education, Tel Aviv University.
Lecturer, Tel Aviv University.
+972-525640648