Dear Wikimedians,
Here is the monthly report of Wikimedia Argentina for November 2013.
You can read the full report (in Spanish and English) here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Argentina/Reportes/2013-11
Also, the full reports of past months are available at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Argentina/Reportes
1. «Wiki Mundo» classroom in Aulas Creativas
2. Wiki Hackathon
3. Virtual training for teachers
4. Activity in Salta
=== «Wiki Mundo» classroom in Aulas Creativas ===
Within the framework of our educational outreach program, we started to
collaborate with the educational platform Aulas Creativas (Creative
Classrooms in Spanish). This platform, aimed at teachers, consists of a
space to share innovative resources in education. «Wiki Mundo» (Wiki World)
is the first classroom in Latin America and the only space to talk about
wiki culture and resources in education. This collaboration is, as well,
the first to be taken to an end within the new coordination model
established in the last Iberoconf meeting.
In this way, Carmen Alcázar, from Wikimedia Mexico, current coordinator of
Wikimedia Iberoconf; and María Cruz, communications coordinator at
Wikimedia Argentina, are both content editors of this blog. A schedule for
future posts has been created, that involves all the chapters in Latin
America, as far as their educational initiatives are involved. This will
enable us to generate a colourful patchwork of the experiences in the
region.
Aulas Creativas owns a very vast and active audience. The website has over
6,000 unique visitors per month, and the project has 21,000 followers on
Facebook, especially teachers from different places within Hispanic
America. With this action, we expect to widen the audience of our actions
beyond the movement's limits, and also bet on the local integration with a
very concrete project.
=== Wiki Hackathon ===
On Saturday, November 30 and Sunday, December 1, we held the first Wiki
Hackathon, a space where volunteers of the movement offered presentations
on technical aspects involved in the different wiki projects. The crowd
analyzed Wikipedia tools and also offered trainings on Git, Python, PHP,
Bugzilla and Mediawiki installment.
The event was held in the Government Lab, a space for developers that
belongs to the Ministry of Modernization of the Buenos Aires City
Government. 16 people took part of this activity. During the first day, the
participants discussed users and edit metrics, geolocalization of recent
changes and census data from Argentina. These projects were coordinated by
Jonas Augusto and Ignacio Iglesias. Two presentations focused on
introducing newcomers to Wikipedia, directed by Osmar Valdebenito, and
other about Pywikibot and Mediawiki's API, directed by Jonas.
The second day of the hackathon started with the creation of a map of edits
located within the City of Buenos Aires. This allows the location in a
visual timeline where are the most edited articles by neighbourhood, which
is a first step towards georeference for the data hosted in our projects
and its connection with the local reality. A series of improvements were
applied to the Linha do Tempo, a project for metrics implemented on the
Portuguese Wikipedia. The crowd also discussed the need of a bot that
allows to categorize based on another wiki, according to existing
categories. The presentations of the second day were two: an introduction
to Git, coordinated by Patricio Molina, and another one on error
management, coordinated by Dennis Tobar.
=== Virtual training for teachers ===
During the month of November, the Center for Innovation in Technology and
Pedagogy (CITEP), which belongs to the Secretariat for Innovation and
Academic Quality of the University of Buenos Aires, organized a massive
online course oriented for training of teachers in the area of new
technologies and learning teaching practices associated with them. The
course «Technology scenarios: between the real and the possible» had a
participation of about 2,500 Spanish-speaking teachers from around the
world (including territories as far away as Albania or China), of which
approximately 200 were directly involved in all the proposed practical
activities.
As part of this course, one of the weeks was specifically oriented to the
subject of collaborative learning environments, with a strong emphasis on
Wikipedia. For this, it was created a video called "Wikipedia: open and
collaborative construction of content" featuring Patricio Lorente
explaining the main features of Wikipedia to teachers. A video conference
was held on November 27th, with the participation of Juan Sebastian
Quintero (Colombia), Fernando Da Rosa (Uruguay) and Osmar Valdebenito
(Argentina) to discuss the specific activities on Wikipedia conducted in
educational settings; various teachers joined the Hangout and made their
own questions.
Finally, a virtual learning space was opened for editing in Wikipedia.
Through a forum, teachers presented their topics of interest and were
contacted by Wikipedians who acted as tutors, teaching them about various
aspects of Wikipedia, guiding them through the steps of editing and
encouraging them to join the site. Through this real-editing experience,
many people who had never edited in Wikipedia could do it for the first
time.
=== Activity in Salta ===
On November 22, the long-time Wikipedian and member of the WM-AR Board
Esteban Zárate gave a presentation at the 6th Free Software Conference
organized in the city of Salta, by SaltaLUG group. There, Esteban gave a
talk to the attendees about opportunities for Wikipedia as an educative
tool, besides explaining some basic concepts regarding the Free
Encyclopedia and other Wikimedia collaborative projects. This talk is given
under the Federalization project, which has enabled the conduct of
activities in other cities in northern Argentina, as Jujuy and La Rioja.
---------------------------
Kind regards,
*Osmar Valdebenito G.*
Director Ejecutivo
A. C. Wikimedia Argentina
(This press release is also available online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_an…
Wikimedia Foundation launches tenth-annual online fundraising campaign to
support Wikipedia and increase access to free knowledge
(San Francisco, California) 3 December 2013 -- The Wikimedia Foundation,
the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects, today
announced the launch of its tenth-annual year-end fundraising campaign. The
online fundraising campaign aims to raise $20 million, while the remainder
of the Wikimedia Foundation's funding will come from individual gifts given
outside the year-end campaign, and from foundation grants. The overwhelming
majority of the Wikimedia Foundation's funding comes from individual
readers giving an average of $15.
The Wikimedia Foundation's online fundraising brings in the resources
needed to keep the Wikimedia projects freely available to everyone around
the world in their own language, and guarantees that Wikipedia will never
have to rely on advertising. Donations help the Wikimedia Foundation
maintain server infrastructure, improve and simplify the software that runs
our projects, support initiatives around the globe to increase the number
of project contributors, and make Wikipedia accessible to billions of
people who are just beginning to access the internet.
"People donate to Wikipedia because they find it useful, and they trust it
because even though it's not perfect, they know it's written for them. We
aim to tell the truth, and we can do that because of the millions of people
who donate what they can each year," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director
of the Wikimedia Foundation. "The average donor is paying for his or her
own use of Wikipedia, plus the costs of hundreds of other people. The
support of so many people keeps us independent and able to deliver the
world's knowledge for free. Exactly as it should be."
Every year, as the number of Wikipedia readers and donors grows, the
Wikimedia Foundation is able to shorten the duration of its end-of-year
campaign. We thank all our donors for their support. We also want to thank
the volunteers who help make our campaign a widely localized and
internationalized endeavor. In 2012, for example, more than 1,000 people
translated the fundraising banners into more than 100 languages, which
prompted donations from nearly every country on the planet.
The 2013 year-end fundraising campaign builds on the success of previous
years and will run through the end of this year. To make a donation, click
the banners at the top of Wikipedia, or go directly to donate.wikimedia.org.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
http://wikimediafoundation.orghttp://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix,
Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation
receive more than 530 million unique visitors per month, making them the
fifth-most popular web property worldwide (comScore, October 2013).
Available in 287 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 30 million
articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000
people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an
audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and
grants.
Press Contact
Matthew Roth
Spokesperson, Wikimedia Foundation
+1 415-839-6885 ext 6635 (San Francisco)
mroth(a)wikimedia.org
To be removed from the Wikimedia Foundation press release list, please
reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject.