Education/News/January 2024/Extending Updates on Wikipedia in Education - Elbasan, Albania

Extending Updates on Wikipedia in Education – Elbasan, Albania

Summary: Our User Group is extending the latest developments in an effort to promote the Wikimedia Movement and Education in Wikipedia within education partnerships in Elbasan, Albania. The engagement from students and teachers has been truly inspiring.

Wikiclubs flourishing with several schools

Starting from 2023, our User Group is collaborating with three 9-year elementary local schools as wikiclubs. These Wikiclubs serve as creative places for students to explore Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons. In the meantime, they are increasing their digital literacy skills and learning what the free source platforms are. Teachers are guiding students on how and where to focus in order to improve the free content. The participating schools have adopted this initiative, providing students with ways to enhance critical thinking and collaborative abilities, as well.

The Wikeys game is used as an icebreaker with young students.

With Arianiti Non-Public school, we have implemented the Wikeys game as an icebreaker, which led to the wikiclub establishment. Students play the Wikeys whenever they are in class to understand the pillars of Wikipedia, encourage their creativity, and impact their contribution to mostly editing articles on Wikipedia.

Editathon with the Aleksandër Xhuvani University in Albania

In partnership with Aleksandër Xhuvani University Linguistic Department, we developed one editathon to enrich articles about renowned linguists in Albania. 10 editors worked on improving and creating articles on Wikipedia and edited and created items on Wikidata. This collaboration helped us reach a university community and used references and materials produced by the University in order to illustrate the shared knowledge.

On Wikipedia:

10 editors
8 articles created
17 articles edited

On Wikidata: 95 total revisions

Upcoming editathon with 2 high schools in Elbasan

At the moment, we are in the process of planning an upcoming editathon with 2 high schools in Elbasan, Kostandin Kristoforidhi and Luigj Gurakuqi High Schools.

We believe this editathon will equip and empower students with skills by translating and improving articles on Wikipedia and Wikidata. More information will provided after this event.