Education/News/February 2024/More two wiki-education partnerships

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Two wiki-education partnerships in Brazil

Summary: The highlight of the month of Wiki Movimento Brasil is the first two wiki-education partnerships signed with professors from two renowned Brazilian universities. There are already more than 20 education programs in Brazil, allowing educators and students to use Wikimedia platforms as pedagogical tools.
Recent wiki-education programs in Brazil.
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Partnerships in wiki-education programs

The Wiki Movimento Brasil has been playing a central role in forming strategic partnerships in the field of wiki-education, aiming to strengthen a network of educators committed to integrating Wikimedia projects into academic programs. The year 2024 has already begun with the formation of two partnerships with professors from two renowned Brazilian universities.

The program "Teaching the History of Indigenous Peoples", which is part of the course taught by Professor Elisa Garcia at the Universidade Federal Fluminens (UFF), aims to increase the visibility of ethnic and gender history of indigenous peoples in Brazil. Besides, the program "Laboratory of History and Theory of Art", which is part of the course taught by Professor Fernanda Pequeno within undergraduate program in Art History at the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), in a joint activity with the project Art+Feminism, is an effort to reduce the gap in gender, feminism, and art on the internet.

Seth to be carried out in the first semester of 2024, both programs aim to promote digital literacy among undergraduate students and spread Brazilian scientific production in a global environment, improving the quality of online information in Portuguese about the topics covered in the courses.

Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) will provide technical assistance to create and maintain a wiki-education program page within the Wiki environment, as well as a program page in the Outreach Dashboard metrics accounting tool. Additionally, the WMB team will conduct two training workshops for participants to learn about Wikipedia.

By establishing collaborations with educational institutions, Wiki Movimento Brasil aims to expand the range and impact of Wikimedia projects in education. More than 20 education programs already allow educators and students to use these platforms as powerful tools for learning and creating content. These partnerships not only enrich the available educational resources but also help in promoting a culture of collaboration and access to free knowledge throughout Brazil.

Wikipedia at the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad

Once again, Wiki Movimento Brasil is set to support the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad (OBL). This is the second edition of Obelepédia to count on support of WMB. Participants will be mentored by staff and volunteers from WMB throughout the event as part of the schedule.

Obelepédia is one of the four OBL activities. It is carried out by students participating in the Autumn Linguistics School, considered the last phase of the Olympiad. In this activity, each student writes an encyclopedic article about a language and then publishes it on Wikipedia in Portuguese. With the help of an OBL tutor, students produce high-quality work in just two weeks with a list of mandatory topics and a bibliography selected by the Olympiad organizers. This process results in participants gaining great linguistic and writing skills, and it benefits the community by sharing quality information about different languages around the world.

Screenshot of the event where the winners of Obelepédia 2023 were announced

WMB will provide tutorials for Olympiad participants and assist in creating and managing the Outreach Dashboard. The first workshop will be on March 2nd.

With the final versions of the chapters the organizers will continue the conversations with several university publishers in order to publish the content in a book format. The book is written in Portuguese, but we freely translated the chapter titles to give an idea of what's to come.

Return of the Wikimedia & Education Workshops

Starting in March, the Wikimedia & Education Workshops organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil will be back. Our goal with these workshops is to create a network of support and exchange of experiences between educators. The event includes a presentation by an educator or researcher who already uses Wikimedia platforms for educational purposes and a practical tutorial led by a Wikimedian.

The first workshop of 2024 is scheduled for March 20th at 5 pm, with participation of Professor Eliene Araujo from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), who will share her experience on wiki-education projects.

New management of Education and Scientific Dissemination

Alexander Hilsenbeck Filho é o novo gestor de Educação e Difusão Científica do WMB
Alexander Hilsenbeck Filho é o novo gestor de Educação e Difusão Científica do WMB

Wiki Movimento Brasil is pleased to announce Alexander Hilsenbeck Filho as the new Education and Scientific Dissemination Manager. Alexander is a professor of Political Science, Sociology of Communication, and Brazilian Culture at the traditional Faculdade Cásper Líbero (SP) and has a PhD in Political Science at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp). Furthermore, he has an MA and BA in Social Sciences at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), and he also works as a Researcher at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).

With his experience and knowledge, Alexander will contribute to our efforts in the field of education and scientific dissemination, promoting the integration of Wikimedia projects into academic programs and encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing throughout the community.

Monthly Resource: Wikidata Lab and Digital Humanities: computational thinking and laboratory practice on collaborative platform

This month's resource tip is an article titled "Wikidata Lab and Digital Humanities: Computational Thinking and Laboratory Practice on Collaborative Platforms". It was published in the scientific journal "Em Questão" and written by Brazilian professors and Wikimedians João Alexandre Peschanski (Wiki Movimento Brasil – CEPID Neuromat) and Liráucio Girardi Júnior (Faculdade Cásper Líbero).

The article focuses on Wikidata Lab, which is a series of interdisciplinary meetings organized by Wiki Movimento Brasil. The meetings aim to study the potential of the Wikidata platform. Wikidata is part of the ecosystem of collaborative platforms of the Wikimedia Foundation, along with Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikiversity. The article seeks to understand how the Wikidata Lab meetings would be a possible path for research in the field of Communication and Information. It explores how they would be able to articulate the so-called computational turn in the human sciences, work on platform collaborations, and projects in Digital Humanities.

Whitin the activities, the article identifies the use of the "laboratory" format, interdisciplinary work, the development of open and collaborative resources, and the constitution of a community of practices that involve researchers interested in exploring the consequences of this computational turn in the humanities.

WikiConecta: tutorial on how to insert a wiki-education program

Page for inserting a wiki education program into WikiConecta

We recently added a tutorial on how to include a wiki-education program to WikiConecta – a free and open WMB course developed on Wikiversity for teachers who want to start using Wikimedia Projects with their students. Apart from providing support to educators in the Wikimedia universe, the Wiki Movement Brazil also aims to establish a network of educators to foster sharing of experiences among those interested in using Wikimedia platforms with their students.

In this unit, we demonstrate how to include education partnership activities by providing additional information and expanding the Wikimedia and Education map in Brazil. The wiki-education programs conducted throughout the country and listed on WikiConecta are displayed on a map showing the location of the programs. The markers are positioned based on the geolocation of the zip code of the educational institution affiliated with the program. By clicking on the markers on the map, you can access more information about the specific wiki-education program.