Wikimedistas de Uruguay/Leamos Wikipedia en el aula

Resultados y estrategia para la implementación del programa de Leamos Wikipedia en el aula en Uruguay.

Esto es un borrador producido como parte del programa Training of Trainers for Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom - 2022 Cohort. Por lo tanto, puede estar incompleto o desactualizado.

Program summary

Program summary: In a few sentences tell us how many teachers will participate in your program, where it will take place, any key partnerships, the timeline, and your preferred mode of implementation (virtual, blended, in-person).

We expect this program to have two cohorts of 75 teachers each (total 150 teachers), with the first cohort happening in Q2 and the second one in Q3 of 2023. Key partnerships will include Plan Ceibal and UNESCO Chair on Open Educational Resources at UDELAR university. Timeline for this will be as specific below (see timeline). The preferred mode of implementation is virtual, but it might be blended if circumstances allow.

Statement of purpose

Statement of purpose: Tell us why this program is important for your context and the impact it could have. You can include insights from your assignments in Module 1.

Context analysis

One of the major opportunities in Uruguay is that we can bring the leverage of important educational platforms such as ANEP, Plan Ceibal and UTU (Universidad del Trabajo de Uruguay) to deliver the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom training. Plan Ceibal is eager to develop programs that can support the professional development of teachers and students alike. The Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program can help them both to gain new digital literacy skills but also identifying important information gaps about Uruguay, bringing to the forefront the importance of having local and contextualized knowledge.

The main body in charge of the education system in Uruguay is ANEP (Administración Nacional de Educación Pública), which is in charge of all the education levels in the country, including tertiary education and teacher's education. The public education system in Uruguay serves over 80% of the population ages 4-15. One of the main challenges for the country lies within the secondary education system, where the failure rate is significantly high, according to different public documents, including the World Inequality Database in Education by UNESCO.

ANEP has developed a very ambitious plan 2020-2024. This plan includes several aspects regarding the role of ICT in education, including a proposal to "transform the curricula" that in its point 8 prioritizes all those orientations that serve the following goal:

...the appropriation of skills in Science and Technology (STEAM), including digital citizenship, as a resource and as a specific skill. From the curriculum, a line of promotion of Science and Technology will be proposed from childhood, which means, on the one hand, developing the scientific spirit that transcends the specific area and incorporates the individual as a way of acting having the evidence as an axis in decision-making, and on the other hand, knowledge and skills will be promoted that allow the development of new responses to real problems. Science and technology developing together for these purposes, with the digital as a privileged space for technology. This emphasis on science and technology should not go to the detriment of the Humanities, which will seek to be developed with the same emphasis, since they are central to personal discernment, decision-making and cultural access. (page 197)

In addition to this very ambitious proposal by ANEP, the public education system has two major digital education & innovation programs, Plan Ceibal for kids and young adults in school age, and Plan Ibirapitá to promote digital skills among people from the third age with low income. While it is not the focus of this question, I'm noting here the Plan Ibirapitá as something to explore further.

Plan Ceibal is one of the most ambitious digital innovations programs, I dare to say in the Latin America region. They describe themselves as: "the center for educational innovation through digital technologies of the Uruguayan State." By describing themselves in this way, they are highlighting a very important aspect of the Plan, which is not only delivering computers or hardware. They actually accompany the delivery of hardware with educational programs that are targeted to both students and teachers and that heavily use digital technologies to connect kids and teenagers to a plethora of opportunities. They have programs such as "Ceibal en Inglés", a program to help primary school children to learn English; "Jóvenes a Programar", a plan to teach testing & software development skills to teenagers in the secondary bracket (even dropouts, which emphasizes the important role that other tertiary institutions have in connecting kids with learning opportunities), among several other programs. Importantly enough, Plan Ceibal uses the 21st Century Skills for several of their programs, so there is a significant opportunity to connect around the topics of "digital citizenship" and "21st Century Skills".

- For teachers, what could be the value of approaching Wikipedia through the MIL framework?

In Uruguay, Plan Ceibal is constantly offering teachers with good opportunities to improve their access & retrieval skills. They know how to navigate complex platforms and they don't get lost in all the tools that you can use (in my implementations of Reading Wikipedia, most of them were able to participate in Jamboard, Mentimeter and Google Docs without getting lost). To me this shows that at the very least, in the surface area, they are able to recognize the different software platforms and understand how to navigate them (is not the same as "information literacy", but being able to recognize channels is actually an important skill).

They are also quite good at understanding and evaluating information, particularly if they are given a simple prompt. For example, in our implementations of Reading Wikipedia they all quickly understood how to scan for references and judge their quality without going into too much detail.

Where I think that they could benefit a lot is in the creation and sharing part. In the last workshop I gave, some of them were very much aware of some fields where they have identified knowledge gaps on Wikipedia, but they still don't feel comfortable with taking it to the next step. The ability to give them a clear path through Reading Wikipedia and putting that in the context of the MIL framework might empower them to go to the next step.

- What could be the impact of introducing the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program as a professional teacher training opportunity in your country?

My impression is that there is an important gap that hasn't been filled for quite a while around Wikipedia. Plan Ceibal folks have been very enthusiastic about this program and they like the activities we have been providing so far. At the very least, filling that gap would be the most immediate, effective impact: teachers are already using it but they don't have all the tools they need to navigate it. As a mid-long term impact, I'd love if we can help create safe and supportive environments that encourage teachers to actually implement activities with their students around Wikipedia. I think Reading Wikipedia is a very first important step, because it removes them away from the complexity of learning "how to edit" and it puts them more in the "how to read it", which for them feels safer. But I see a lot of potential for them doing more ambitious projects in the near future.

Goals and milestones

Goals and milestones: Tell us the primary and secondary goals for your program implementation. Add the milestones you expect to reach and celebrate! Make sure they are SMART goals and they include some metrics around reach, engagement and certification for the teachers involved. You can include insights from your assignments in Module 3.

Ultimate impact we expect to have with the local implementation of the program

The program makes teachers aware of the value of Wikipedia as a tool to create critical skills for digital citizenship and is aligned with national curricula requirements.

Changes for teachers in the long term

In the long term:

• Teachers critically use Wikipedia in their day to day activities, as a tool to teach and learn.
• Teachers contribute with Wikipedia by actively using it.
• Teachers are aware of the role open knowledge plays in digital citizenship.

Primary goal by the end of the program

By the end of the program, we would have implemented two training cohorts, with at least a 40% retention. Retention will be defined as having completed all the training requirements, including at least ten edits in Wikipedia.

2 secondary goals

• By September 2022, we have a consolidated strategy to approach high school levels for both private and public sector in Uruguay, including an internal needs assessment.
• By December 2022, we have identified and aligned with the potential partners to implement the program.

6 milestones for tracking

1. September 2022: Program implementation makes it into annual planning.
2. March 2023: Localised materials are uploaded into e-learning platform.
3. April 2023: Outreach & launch of the program.
4. May 2023: Training of cohort 1 begins.
5. August 2023: Training of cohort 2 begins.
6. September 2023: Program evaluation concluded.

Timeline

Estimated timeline: Tell us the timeframe you have in mind for your implementation. Indicate the estimated months/weeks during which you plan to conduct the planning, implementation, and evaluation activities of your program. You can include insights from your assignments in Module 2 and 3.

Calendar	Activities
June 2022	Early stakeholder engagement. Outreach to potential interested partners in the program.
July 2022	Strategic planning. Produce a draft strategy and validate it with the Wikimedistas de Uruguay group.
September 2022	Apply for funding. Wikimedistas de Uruguay will apply for the new round of Community Funds, in order to obtain funding for the program.
January-April 2023	Early implementation stages. Prepare needs assesment, localize the curriculum, upload materials to LMS. Get more people from Wikimedistas UY trained in the ToT. Do outreach & communication to enroll people in the program.
May-June 2023	First Alpha cohort trained.
July 2023	Evaluation and monitoring takes place. Changes are made to the curriculum. A decision is reached on whether to continue with the program or not for 2024.
August-September 2023	Second Beta cohort
September 2023	Based on the decision made on July 2023, we might apply for a more stable round of funding to extend the program for more years.

Curriculum localization

Curriculum localization: Tell us the main changes you will do to the program curriculum (language, format, localization of examples), particularly if you're planning to expand any of the modules. You can include insights from your assignments in Module 1 and 2.

The Modules are in Spanish, the official language of Uruguay. For the most part, I've reviewed the Modules and they seem to be quite in alignment with the overall interest of people from Uruguay. I think however I could try to localize the following aspects:

• Incorporate specific language coming out from Plan Ceibal's and ANEP around digital citizenship and 21st century skills
• Change examples from Latin America to make them more specific around Uruguay
• Incorporate and add language from education scholars from Uruguay (i.e., Virginia Rodés, who is a reference on OER)
• I'd definitely remove some examples, for example, in page 31 in Module 2 there's an example that isn't very relatable or clear.

All in all, I think most of the changes I'd make are around examples & more local context and expertise.

Localize at least 1 section of the curriculum

This round I'll take a shortcut but I'll show some things I've already localized. This is a folder that contains all the materials from our last workshop with Plan Ceibal. The activities (the Google Doc) is already localized to include examples from Uruguay, from the local culture and context. In the slideshows, I'd add some language from Virginia Rodés around OER: "La investigación en torno al tema del desarrollo del modelo REA a nivel mundial da cuenta de que, al menos hasta el momento, los REA no logran formar parte del paradigma dominante de la educación. Si bien el uso de REA se ha extendido entre los educadores, éste se desarrolla en el marco de prácticas solitarias, sin marcos pedagógicos, económicos ni institucionales bien establecidos. (...) Uruguay no es la excepción en este panorama global. (...) El desarrollo de iniciativas de política a nivel gubernamental e institucional resulta esencial para la integración y el uso de REA como un elemento integral y no como un elemento periférico del curriculum (UNESCO, 2017)." (Díaz Charquero y Rodés, 2018)

Needs assessment

Needs assessment: Tell us the actions and tools (surveys, interviews, etc) you would use to learn more about the teachers in your locality before you start the program. You can include insights from your assignments in Module 3.

For making our needs assessment, we will take the folloiwng actions:

• Conduct in-depth interviews with the people in charge of implementing digital trainings at Plan Ceibal and other institutions, such as UDELAR, to learn from their experiences on what works better with high-school teachers.
• Survey past participants that have taken workshops with us to understand better what worked for them.
• Conduct a short survey with potential participants to understand better their expectations of the training.

Partnerships and outreach

Partnerships and outreach: Share with us the key partners you have identified through your stakeholder engagement plan. These insights come from your assignments in Module 3.

Outline

Budget

Budget: Include a simple budget plan indicating the resources you need in order to implement the program. You can use the budget document you created for your assignment in Module 3.

Initial draft of the budget

Evaluation plan

Evaluation plan: Finally, include the evaluation strategy you created in the previous section!

One or two sentences explaining the purpose of your evaluation activities (the "why?") The purpose of the evaluation activities will be to assess the level of awareness teachers have of Wikipedia by the end of the course, and monitor how they continue using Wikipedia six months after the course has ended.

Your primary and secondary evaluation questions - These should be aligned with the objectives you had previously established. Remember they are meant to help you determine if you have actually reached your objective.

1. To what extent has the teacher changed their perception of Wikipedia as a source of information?
2. To what extent the teacher continues to use Wikipedia as a tool in the classroom?

Your main evaluation tools - Online survey? In-depth interview? A combination of both? You can use the tools we shared in the previous section - they are yours to implement! Just make sure you share how you would contextualize them to better fit your context and particular program goals.

For the evaluation post-course, it will be a simple online survey. In the online survey, we will ask for people to leave their email if they want to be contacted six months later for an in-depth interview where we can learn the impact the program had on them.

Your reporting plan - How will you communicate the results of your evaluation? Let us know if you would prefer to use a written evaluation report, a video report, or a different format depending on the audiences you hope to engage.

• A written evaluation report to be shared on Meta and with relevant stakeholders.
• A short infographic for Wikimedia members.