Job Title: Wikimedian in Residence
Type of role:
Length of Contract: ASAP-Dec 30, 2022
Location: Accra, Ghana/ Remote
How to Apply: Send an application, accompanied by your CV to the email
below using the Job Title as subject.
wikimedia(a)g-set.org
Summary
Ghana Society for Education Technology (GSET) is looking for a Wikimedian
in Residence to join our team, reporting to the Director of Strategy &
Innovation. As the Wikimedian in Residence, you will be responsible for
working alongside experts to extract structured data from curriculum
documents and include it in Wikidata.
This is an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about linked open
data, education, technology and innovation who has a deep understanding of
Wikidata’s policies and processes and wants to contribute to ensuring that
students have access to free, quality, open educational resources aligned
with the national curriculum.
You are responsible for:
-
Ensuring that Ghana’s secondary school curriculum data is added to
Wikidata by December 2021 using a model that allows for replicability
across countries
-
Working alongside experts and the Wikimedia community to test and define
best practices for extracting structured data from curriculum documents and
including it in Wikidata.
-
Collaboratively producing guidelines and documentation on how to
replicate curriculum digitization with Wikidata beyond Ghana
-
Leading capacity development events that support educators and Wikimedia
community members to learn how to contribute education-aligned content on
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects
-
Producing ongoing updates and summary reports on a quarterly basis
-
Supporting the monitoring and evaluation of project activities
Skills and Experience:
-
Degree in a relevant field (Library and Information Science, Data
Science, etc.)
-
Extensive experience working with wikidata and wikidata’s policies and
processes, and an understanding of the process to request properties and
create items in bulk.
-
Experience and comfort with manipulating sets of data through tools like
Excel, SPARQL, SQL, OpenRefine or similar.
-
Experience communicating and collaborating with Wikimedia movement
actors
-
Experience working with open knowledge and open content, including
understanding how the open-movement uses copyright
Qualities that are important to us
-
Familiarity with digital content management systems used in library or
educational settings.
-
-
Awareness of how Wikidata and other structured or linked data systems
works, and be comfortable explaining it to others
-
Experience creating effective technical communication, such as
documentation of tools or software,
-
The ability to consult and work collaboratively with individuals and
groups across cultures and timezones
-
Comfortable presenting to large groups
More about the Wikidata for education Project
In 2020, the absence of curriculum documentation in digitally usable
formats prevented education systems from being able to quickly and
efficiently respond to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on face-to-face
learning.
The Wikimedia Foundation, within the scope of the concept note developed by
UNESCO under the Global Education Coalition, is seeking to launch a proof
of concept and pilot project as part of broader efforts to align national
curricula to content on Wikimedia projects.
The project proposes to establish a data model within Wikidata and Wikibase
to enable the easy aligning of national curricula to Wikimedia projects;
and make the information more discoverable for learners and educators. This
data model will also:
1.
Make data about curricula readily available and machine-readable so that
developers can create innovative solutions to education challenges.
2.
Create an education portal with curated content from Wikimedia projects
and other open education resources that is aligned with school curricula.
3.
Give education stakeholders the ability to do a comparative analysis of
curricula on a global scale.
4.
Support the Wikimedia volunteer editing community to improve content
related to school curricula.
5.
Support countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to provide quality teaching and
learning materials to all students and comply with UNESCO’s OER
Recommendation.
6.
Improve the capacity of the education system to provide contextualized
learning opportunities.
7.
Close knowledge gaps on Wiki projects through strategic alignment of
content on Wikimedia projects with the localization needs of school
systems.