Education/News/November 2025/Wiki as a tool for technological empowerment of indigenous knowledge

Wiki as a tool for technological empowerment of indigenous knowledge in Brazil

Author: TCarvalho (WMB) and AHilsenbeck (WMB)

Summary: As we work to help establish Wiki platforms as an educational resource that can be used by students, teachers, and researchers in schools and universities, new partnerships emerge with different perspectives. This is the case with the new partnership with the Kaingang indigenous people, established in November. See how the community intends to use Wiki tools to promote local knowledge and other educational activities that took place in Brazil during this month.

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Activity with the Kaingang people

Wikimedia Brazil was invited by Professor Gilvan Müller de Oliveira, coordinator of the UNESCO Chair in Language Policies for Multilingualism, to give a workshop in conjunction with the Indigenous Knowledge in Schools Action Project at UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul). In the city of Passo Fundo, teachers from the Kaingang indigenous community participated in an activity to edit pages on both the Portuguese Wikipedia and the Kaingang language Wiki (which the prototype is available in the Wikimedia incubator).

The idea behind this activity was to present the Wiki's technical resources so that the community can use them for their own needs, such as providing educational resources.

38th Wikimedia & Education Workshop

Full vidoe of the 38th Wikimedia & Education Workshop.

The 38th Wikimedia & Education Workshop took place on October 30th and featured presentations by Hector Gabriel Corrale and Artur Souza Corrêa discussing artificial intelligence, open knowledge, and Wikimedia platforms.

Hector, from the Hearing Health project on Wiki, spoke about what artificial intelligence is and its intersections with the open-source knowledge ecosystem. Artur, projects assistant at Wikimedia Brazil, presented how it's possible to use AI ethically on Wikimedia.

Climate Finance Project on Wiki

The Climate Finance Project on Wiki, which aims to expand and improve the encyclopedic content available on climate finance in the Portuguese-language version of Wikipedia, was presented at two important events.

Alexander Hilsenbeck and Tiago Lubiana presented the project at the 1st International Conference on Social Technologies of Memory, which took place in São Paulo. And Evelin Heidel spoke about it during the panel Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change at COP 30, which happened in Pará.

Edit-a-thon in Edumatec

Students in the Mathematics and Technology Education course at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) held two edit-a-thons this month with the goal of improving entries on Wikipedia on the topic of mathematics education.

Open Science on Wiki campaign

The Open Science on Wiki campaign came to an end in November. In total, seven activities were carried out within the context of this campaign. The most recent were the Information Sources Edit-a-thon – Library Science – an editing activity on Wikipedia for the Information Sources class of the Library Science course at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), taught by Professor Aldinar Martins Bottentuit-, and the Wikidata Workshop of the Digital Observatory of Latin American Women – another activity carried out in partnership with the Digital Observatory of Latin American Women, this time focusing on Wikidata, with contributors editing items about intellectual women.

Adding up all the edits made on the Wiki, 70 editors participated in the campaign. Together they improved or created almost 500 entries about science on the Portuguese Wikipedia and 2500 items on Wikidata.