Education/News/July 2025/The second semester of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia with challenges and learning
The second semester of Leamos Wikipedia begins in Bolivia with challenges and learning
Summary: In Bolivia we have started the second semester of the educational calendar 2025; this officially begins after the winter vacations that lasted three weeks, between July 7 and July 27.
On Monday, July 28, students and teachers will return to the classrooms. With this, Wikimedians of Bolivia also resume the activities of Leamos Wikipedia assuming challenges that left us the first semester of this 2025.
Our challenges
1st challenge: Before entering the winter vacations, a group of 15 teachers from the José Martí Educational Unit began the training process of the Let's Read Wikipedia program. This group of participants is composed of teachers who have a background in classroom teaching and teachers who are in the process of training, but who carry out their teaching practices in the Educational Unit; so the challenge we will face is the marked generational difference and the difference in knowledge and access to the web environment, which can mark the content and development of the lesson plans.
2nd challenge: As part of the Inter-institutional Cooperation Agreement we signed with the Simón Bolívar Teacher Training College, two new groups of teachers in training must graduate during this second semester. At the moment we are managing the second group and, later, we will have to manage the training of the third group. Here we must face the short time we have to graduate these two groups, assuming that, in the last months of the year, activities are intensified in all educational institutions.
3rd challenge: Together with the District Directorate of Education of Villamontes, Wikimedistas de Bolivia is planning the development of the program Leamos Wikipedia with teachers of the Weenhayek indigenous people. This will be the first occasion in which the program will be implemented with indigenous teachers, who have a differentiated educational calendar adapted to their own characteristics; therefore the Leamos Wikipedia program will also have to be adapted.
Bolivia at the EduWiki 2025 Conference
Thanks to the scholarships granted by EduWiki, Carlillasa and Guillotinado, from Bolivia, participated in the Conference that took place in Bogota, Colombia, between May 30 and June 1. The space was the scenario to learn about the experiences and challenges faced by Wikimedians in various regions of the world and contrast them with those we face in Bolivia and the region.
To know experiences such as Tanzania, where students are not confused to differentiate an internet browser, but with access to technologies; the experience of Ukraine, where the war conflict has left the development of science and educational processes in the background of interest and how they have managed to save this situation with the networks of educators that they had already formed; how Malaysia joined academia with popular knowledge for the documentation of indigenous knowledge; the release of educational videos through the Ikusgela project, in Basque language, among others, allowed us to reflect on the challenges and realities we face in our context.
Carlillasa, who had the opportunity to attend these presentations, shared with the group of Wikimedians from Bolivia this information that left us with the following reflections:
- The experiences applied in some regions could not be implemented in the Latin American region due to the realities and challenges that we still have to face in terms of gaps in access to technologies and digital literacy.
- There are regions, such as Africa, where countries have difficulties similar to those of Bolivia and Latin America, so it was valuable to learn about successful experiences to replicate them and adapt them to our contexts.
- Despite the progress achieved in access to information and communication technologies in the world, there are still gaps that have not been closed and prevent citizens from accessing information and development opportunities that this can provide.
What's next?
From the identification of the challenges that we will face in the second semester of 2025 and the lessons learned from the knowledge exchange that took place in EduWiki, Wikimiedistas de Bolivia will have to analyze their own challenges in a country characterized by the great diversity of nationalities, as well as social, cultural and political diversities.
Undoubtedly, the work we undertake with the Weenhayek indigenous people will be a great learning experience for our community.