Grants:TPS/Tamara Karvajar/Wikimania/2019/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2019!

Participant

Tamara Karvajar

Wikimedia Armenia

Outcome

This was my first Wikimania, and I tried to attend as more events as possible and to get as more ideas and new information as possible. On the first pre-conference day, on August 14 I attended GLAM+WIKIDATA collaboration meeting, where the GLAM coordinators from different countries shared their experience of work with GLAM institutions. During the meeting I briefly presented the collaboration which Wikimedia Armenia had with Hovhannes Toumanian museum in Yerevan. Discussions about the Open License Declaration and the experience of various countries were interesting and useful. Motivated by this meeting now I am planning to launch collaboration with local museums.

Aram Pakhchanyan from Armenia at Wikimania 2019, Educational Space

As I am the coordinator of Karvachar Wikiclub and am engaged in educational programs in my community, the three main days of the conference I spent mainly attending the Educational space meetings and sessions. Two keynote speakers of the first day, Aram Pakhchanyan from Armenia and Olle Terenius from Sweden were especially impressive. Ole's presentation about engaging researches to contribute in Wikipedia is a topic in which my community is also interested, so the experience of Uppsala University should be shared with my community members.

Enhancing Students' Learning through EDUWiki Initiatives, session at Wikimania 2019

I myself participated in three sessions. On August 16 along with Ivana Madžarević from Serbia and Lucy from UK we talked about how to encourage students learning through EDUWiki initiatives. I shared the experience of two Armenian wikiclubs: "Wikiclassroom" project in Lernapat (coordinator Armenuhi Voskanyan) and Karvachar Wikiclub's initiatives to collaborate with local schools and also had opportunity to speak a bit about Karvachar Wikiclub's other activities.

The next session I participated was on August 17 and was about Wiktionary and Wikisource projects in education initiatives. Here also I shared Karvachar Wikiclub's experience to use the noted projects in school students' educational process.

Building Locally Relevant Knowledge with Wikisource, session at Wikimania 2019

The last session I participated as a speaker was led by Satdeep Gill in Transcription Space and was about Wikisource as tool to create free knowledge with this project. Here I had an opportunity to share the experience of Armenian community and to present the work which has done by Armenian Wikiclubs in Wikisource project.

Connections

Motivated by the GLAM meeting I had a decision to start collaboration with local museums and discussed it with a participant from Armenia, Armine Aghayan who is very active GLAM collaborator. We decided to cooperate in future.

During the talks with Rupi, teacher from Israel, we shared our experience of working with students and engaging them in Wiki initiatives. She shared her community's experience of having Wikipedia edition as a school subject in the whole country.

Wiki Women's lunch during Wikimania 2019

During the WikiWomen lunch I had an opportunity to talk to Manavpreet Kaur from India about a future collaboration. As both of us are engaged in educational programs, so just on these days we are working on collaboration between Indian and Armenian school students. As a part of educational program we are going to make presentations of our countries for the students, to organize a video call for them and launch an edithon about Armenian and Indian topics.

Anything else

• As I enjoy Interwiki Women project and participate in, it was a pleasure to meet Camelia Boban from Italy who is one of the organizers of the project and also to enjoy her and Armine Aghayan's (another organizer) presentation about the project.
• I had taken some photos of the event and of the beautiful city of Stockholm and shared them in Wiki Commons.
• It was great to meet so many people who are working to make the world better every day.
• My trip to Sweden was a great motivation for my students who live in a district Armenian settlement. After the trip I shared my experience with them and we together planted the seeds of flowers in my Wikimania 2019 badge.

Planting seeds of Wikimania 2019 badge

• Quality Education is the aim towards which Karvachar Wikiclub moves every day and participation in Wikimania 2019 was an important step for me personally and from my local community.

Thank you so much for this great opportunity.