Good to know, Sohan. Thank you for volunteering for this academy.
Was there any interest to know about Tamil Wiki projects too?
- Sundar
"That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the
expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted."
- George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture
________________________________
From: Sohan Maheshwar <sohan.maheshwar(a)tarams.com>
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com;
wikimedia-in-blr(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Thursday, February 2, 2012 2:16 PM
Subject: [WMIN-Members] Wiki Academy at PSR Rengaswamy Engg College - a report
Hello!
The first Wiki Academy in PSR Rengaswamy College of engineering for Women, Sivakasi was
conducted on Jan 20th. An impressive total of 68 students, primarily consisting of 2nd and
3rd year engg students attended this workshop. The Principal of the college, Dr K
Ramaswamy gave a short talk and welcomed the participants and the speaker.
The session started off with a small introduction on what Wikipedia is and the core values
and philosophies behind Wikipedia, how it is edited by millions of people across the world
and how all the content on the site is completely free. The 5 pillars of Wikipedia i.e the
fundamental principles by which Wiki operates on were also explained. The students
were initially a little hesitant to interact but soon were asking pertinent and valid
questions about the topic.
Once the basics were covered, a short presentation on approaching Wikipedia as a reader
was held. Editing of wikipedia was explained next followed by a hands-on session where the
students were taught the basics of editing Wikipedia. The students were very responsive to
this session. Small prizes like Wiki stickers were given out for mini-contests that were
held during this session. A vast majority of the students seemed to quickly understand the
intuitive UI especially considering that they were all familiar with formatting in MS
Word. The students made minor edits to articles as the session drew to a close.
A google group has been setup for future correspondance. The students along with the help
of the faculty coordinators who were present said they will work on improving the Sivakasi
wiki page.
The feedback forms (i will collate the data from here and post it shortly) were collected
and few photos from the event were taken. I'll post the pics on the wiki page for the
academy soon as i don't have the camera with me currently. Brochures were handed out
to all the participants.
Judging by the feedback received and the response from the students, i'd say the event
was a success. It is important to carry forward this initiative and bring out an interest
in participating in contributing to Wikipedia and i will make sure that this happens.
I'd like to thank Ms Nitika Tandon, Mr Naveen PF and Mr Arjuna Rao Chavala for their
help. This was my first Wiki Academy and i really profited from their help. Conducting the
academy solo was quite a challenging but rewarding experience.
Also as a footnote i'd like to point that the session was delayed because the Wiki
editor kept crashing IE 6. Sadly, the computers in the lab had no other browsers apart
from IE 6. This wasn't a roadblock i expected and i think should be added to the list
of preparations in this page. We managed to get an admin password for the computers and
hastily installed Firefox so that the session could complete without any further
hitches...and it did!
Looking forward to conducting more such academies in the future.
Thank you!
-Sohan Maheshwar
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