[Wikimediaindia-l] 1st Wiki Academy, Jaya Engineering College, Bangalore

[Subhashish Panigrahi]

Dear All,

Wikimedia India chapter has organized a Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering
College in Chennai on 11 December 2011. The detailed summary below:

Introduction

The first Wiki Academy in Jaya Engineering college was organized by the
Wikimedia chapter and co-hosted by Jaya FOSS Club, a faculty-student wing
of Computer Science department, Jaya Engineering College  which promotes
and organize events related to FOSS (Free and Open Source movement) and is
the only FOSS club in the whole state. Prof. Kumaran, HOD - Computer
Science Dept, Prof. Prabhakaran, student volunteers of Jaya FOSS Club
Naresh Aravindh, Baabu Aravind V S, Sankey Thukral and Saran Raj
volunteered for conducing the event. The academy started at 10.30 AM with a
formal inauguration by Prof. Natarajan, HOD - Textile Engineering who
introduced the agenda of the Wiki Academy to the audience. Prof Prabhakaran
then gave a brief talk about the academy and Jaya FOSS Club and gave a
token of appreciation to Dr. Natarajan for the speech. Subhashish, member,
Wikimedia India Chapter gave a small talk about the main agenda of the
academy and connected the audience with Hisham Mundol, Consultant, India
Programs, Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) via Google Hangout. Hisham interacted
with the audience by giving a talk about the nature of the event, few
details about Wikipedia, WMF and Chapter and foundation are trying to do in
India. He answered questions raised by the audience. Nitika Tandon,
Consultant, Participation at WMF was also present virtually.


Academy
*How to Edit Wikipedia*
Subhashish explained basics of Wikipedia, how it is edited by millions of
volunteers, how Wikipedia is exclusively encyclopedic and kind of articles
and notability of articles in Wikipedia, how Wikipedians communicate and
form community, and organization of Wikimedia foundations and active
projects. Then he took the audience through active editing by signing up,
searching for articles, choosing articles to create. Then he demonstrated
about creating an article by using the Edit toolbar, citing the text by
searching the web and uploading and adding pictures in articles.
Q&A session

After the editing session is over there was a question and answer round
where the speaker answered questions related to editing.

Closing talk

Nitika was formally introduced to the audience by Subhashish. Nitika then
explained about the India Education program (IEP), how it functions and the
student-teacher-foundation collaborations through the education program.
She took the audience though the Pune IEP, how foundation reached to
several colleges in Pune via Campus Ambassadors, engagingt of students by
increasing student-teacher interaction and outcome of the program. Post to
her talk there was a Q&A and interaction round.

With the closing talk from Nitika, a closing talk was delivered to the
audience by the speaker. Feedback and participation forms were distributed
and the audience gathered for a group photograph.

Future plans if any

*Potential areas to work upon*:

   - *More technological live sessions*:

Being an engineering college of more than 60 volunteers in the Jaya FOSS
Club, a club promoting FOSS (Free & opensource software) initiatives this
has a incubation capability to bring up more leaders in Technology. The
HOD, Prof. M. Kumaran, Asst Prof. G. Prabhakaran, student volunteers Naresh
Aravindh and Baabu Aravind V S showed a lot of interest for technological
events in the college. WMF staff contractor Santhosh Thottingal could be
contacted for a webinar with the FOSS Club members and faculty to
understand their interest based on which there could be a possible
technical event like a mini Hackathon in the college. The college has a
decent infrastructure in terms of connectivity and outreach.

   - *Interest group for Tamil Wiki initiatives*:

The entire audience was Tamil speaking, surprisingly none of them were not
aware of the existence of Tamil Wikipedia. So, further communication could
be established with the Tamil Wiki Community as majority of the
participants were interested for a Tamil Wiki initiatives. Sengai Poduvan,
the veteran Tamil Wikipedian who was awarded as a noteworthy Wikipedian
during WCI must be invited for a talk to the next Tamil Wiki Academy which
will inspire the audience to contribute more for Tamil Wiki initiatives.

   - *Foundation of a Wiki-Club*:

Prof. G. Prabhakaran, Computer Science dept brought a proposal for a
Wiki-Club by engaging the Jaya FOSS volunteers which could organize
recurrent Wiki events in the campus. The FOSS club is already interacting
with many Open source academicians, speakers and researchers from major
institutes like IIT, Madras. FOSS Activities in India is taking a
progressive shape and it could be used for more collaborative Wiki
initiatives to bring up more editors.

*Visit the Academy Wiki
Page<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Jaya_Engineering_College>|
Photos<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Jaya_Engineering_College_Wiki_Academy1,_December_2011>
*

Kind regards
User:Psubhashish (Subha)
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