Grants:TPS/Banfield/Wikimania/2015/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2015!

Participant

Banfield

Spanish Wikipedia

Outcome

That's me (on the left side, backward) on the first day of the Education Preconference.

Option 1: Shared Experience: What is one way you shared something from your experience with your community (either locally or globally), after the event?

Unlike last year, this time I wanted to focus more on Education activities, participating in all the related talks I could. First, because the importance this topic has within Wikimedia Argentina activities, of which I am a member of the Board, and second, because if all goes well, this year I will graduate as an English teacher so I expect to have a group of students in a few months. At the monthly meeting of the board that we had immediately after the conference, I had the opportunity to share my experiences with more members of our community. On August 22th, we have scheduled an edit-a-thon at the Teatro Colón and I hope it becomes a massive event where I will have (and other local volunteers will have too) the opportunity to approach more members of the community. Such events, where many people come out of curiosity, without even knowing that Wikipedia is editable, are ideal for teaching and guiding their first steps into the Wikimedia projects, with the aim to turn them into regular editors. This offers an excelent opportunity to apply ideas and suggestions that have emerged from the talks I attended during Wikimania and the skills and strategies I learned there.

Connections

La brecha digital: una respuesta plural para un problema global (The digital gap: a pluralistic response to a global problem) talk, on Satuday 18th.

During the pre-conference workshops I interacted exclusively with people I had not known before, which was great. I remember having discussed the importance of technology in education with an Icelandic teacher, who described to me the reality of her country in relation to this matter. We agreed on the importance of government programs that deliver laptops to students and how this helps to reduce the digital gap. I also talked with a Philippine wikipedian already working with children and he recounted his experiences in front of the class, trying to combine and join the education programs with the use of Wikipedia.

In other education lectures, I attended as a listener and I could capture experiences of some projects already underway. In addition to that, I attended other meetings with differents themes, among which I highlight a talk on gender gap by the staff of Wikimedia Argentina and another talk related to copyright and civil liberties, issued by the Chilean activist Paz Peña, an issue that had already caught my attention at the last year conference and remains a hot topic in my country, given the existence of projects to extend the term of copyright in photographs.

As I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to meet wikimedistas from other countries, such as Iceland, the Philippines, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico, some of whom I knew virtually, but not personally.

Anything else

• Here are some images, uploaded to Flickr with a compatible license, taken by me. Some of them are already available on Commons and others will be uploaded in the following days.
• Finally, I would like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation for giving me the opportunity to participate in this conference and for all the experiences and learning that I have taken, arising directly from it.