Education/News/January 2026/A look back: reviewing the main education activities in Brazil in 2025
A look back: reviewing the main education activities in Brazil in 2025
Workshops and edit-a-thons
In 2025, Wikimedia Brasil organized and supported 32 edit-a-thons, community sessions, and editing workshops on education. In partnership with educational institutions such as USP, UNIFESP, UNEB, APESP, UERJ, UFRGS, UFMA, UFRJ, USCS, UNIFAL-MG, Escola da Cidade, História Editorial, Sesi, and COC/Fiocruz, topics covered included history, biology, communication, political science, health, women, indigenous peoples, among others.
The goal of the activities is to provide training on how to edit on Wiki platforms, thus bringing together people from the Wikimedia community and new contributors to improve the available content in Portuguese.
Last year, WMB also held four Wikimedia & Education Workshops. In March, May, August, and October, educators, researchers, and members of the Wikimedia community were invited to share their experiences in the Wiki universe and offer tools and tutorials for those who want to start using Wikimedia platforms in the classroom and for extension activities.
Among the topics covered in the presentations were artificial intelligence and the Wikis, scientific dissemination through Wikidata, cultural dissemination and open science on Wiki platforms, the experience of the Center for Metropolitan Studies on Wikipedia, the use of the online encyclopedia in the classroom, and the Wikipedia mini-course for university professors.
Open Science on Wiki campaign
One of the main focuses of education at WMB last year was the "Open Science on Wiki" campaign. Between August and November, a series of events, workshops, edit-a-thons, and seminars were held with the aim of not only identifying barriers but also fostering practical solutions that promote a more inclusive and collaborative scientific culture, thus helping to shape the future of open science and its dissemination in Brazil.
The main activity of this campaign was the seminar "Open Science and Scientific Dissemination – Challenges and Opportunities", in partnership with RIDC NeuroMat and the IME-USP library. The event featured presentations by 11 researchers and communicators, a poster session, and the screening of a documentary. The debates and presentations revolved around scientific communication initiatives carried out by research centers and the journalistic community, as well as the challenges of conducting open science in Brazil. All seminar materials are available on Wikimedia Commons. As a result of the event, an e-book was also produced, containing seven texts with reflections, experience reports, and critical analyses on the emergence and challenges of open science in Brazil, with special attention to the intersections between digital scientific dissemination and Wikimedia platforms.
Partnership with the Center for Metropolitan Studies
In 2025, Wikimedia Brasil began a partnership with the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM), based at USP. With more than two decades of experience in social science research, the center found in Wikipedia and Wikiversity a new way to disseminate scientific knowledge.
Under the coordination of Edney Cielici Dias and with the support of WMB, six researchers linked to CEM edited more than 160 articles on social sciences on Wikipedia in Portuguese, which has already yielded 258,000 views. In addition, the center also created a page on Wikiversity. The partnership with the Center for Metropolitan Studies will continue in 2026 and will expand the scope to the production of audiovisual materials related to the entries worked on.
Environment and the Wiki
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Continuing the work of recent years, Wikimedia Brasil focused even more on the theme of the environment in 2025, especially considering COP-30, which happened in Pará. Throughout the year, WMB ran the Climate Finance on Wikipedia in Portuguese project, which sought to fill knowledge gaps on the subject. Seven editors were dedicated to the project, working with 99 articles. This work was presented at WikiCon Brasil 2025, at the Wikimedia Festival in Portuguese, at the 1st International Conference on Social Technologies of Memory and at COP-30 itself.
In addition to this project, WMB also developed resources on biodiversity on Wiki. In a video and a folder, the importance of discussing topics related to biodiversity was reported, as well as how Wiki platforms can contribute to this issue and activities carried out by the Wikimedia community to improve content on the subject.
Research on users of the Portuguese-language Wikipedia
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Who are the people who edit Wikipedia in Portuguese? What are their motivations and challenges? What are their age ranges and levels of education? After all, who are we? These were the questions that the research "The Portuguese-language Wikipedian community: a new portrait" tried to answer.
WMB collected data from editors of Wikipedia in Portuguese, which showed that most are between 35 and 49 years old, men account for 75%, Brazilians make up 85% of the editors in Portuguese, most have higher education, and the greatest motivations are contributing to free knowledge and the interest in increasing and/or improving information.
The research, which is yet to be published, was presented at WikiCon Brasil 2025 by Alexander Hilsenbeck. It is possible to check the full speech, explaining the data collected, on Wikimedia Commons.