Education/Countries/Germany/past activities

From Outreach Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Wikimedia Deutschland: Past Activities (2010–2016)[edit]

Mapping OER[edit]

The goal of the “Mapping OER – creating free educational material together” project was to find solutions that facilitate a broad implementation of open educational resources (OER) in Germany. In order to do this, we brought together policymakers with actors from practice. Mapping OER was a Wikimedia Deutschland project and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany. The results were summarized and published in early 2016 in a report entitled “A Framework of Practice for OER in Germany”. It proposes concrete recommendations to policymakers and educational actors regarding the ways in which the creation, distribution, and use of OER can be funded and supported. The report identifies challenges, puts forward concrete ideas, and demonstrates prospects for a broad implementation of OER in the German education system. For more information please visit Mapping OER.

Science Year 2014 – Digital Society[edit]

In 2014 Wikimedia Deutschland was officially partner of the Science Year 2014 which is launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. We participated in the Year of Science with several actions in order to increase public interest in current findings and developments, scientific research and projects related to online collaboration and participation, digital competence as well as openness and accessibility in the web.

Digitale Kompetenzen (Digital competencies)[edit]

The project “Digitale Kompetenzen” (“digital competencies”) was a series of five events that focused on the different skills that are important in the digital society. The project was co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

MS Wissenschaft (MS Science)[edit]

Screencast of our interactive exhibit onboard the MS science

In 2014 Wikimedia Deutschland was on board of the exhibition ship MS Wissenschaft (“MS Science”). Under the heading „Digital unterwegs” (digitally on the move), the converted cargo ship travelled more than 3.400km through Germany and Austria for about four and a half months. The tour started in Berlin on 6 May 2014. Together with the Open Knowledge Foundation we had developed an interactive exhibit that links OpenStreetMaps with Wikipedia and gave the visitors the opportunity to follow the route of the ship and read the Wikipedia articles for different points of interests along the way. In addition an international event took place onboard the ship in Vienna on 15 September. The event covered various topics such as open science, open data and citizen science and was organized by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Österreich as well as the Open Knowledge Foundation in Germany and Austria. It was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Together with scientists, politicians, experts and the general public we discussed different aspects of openness and free knowledge in science. The project was another activity within the science year 2014. It aimed to strengthen the public awareness for the social importance of free knowledge and to win scientific institutions as partners for a sustainable collaboration.

Open Educational Resources Conference 2014[edit]

Open Educational Resources Conference 2014

On 12 and 13 September the largest event by Wikimedia Deutschland in 2014 took place in Berlin: The Open Educational Resources Conference 2014 (OERde14). About 400 people with backgrounds in education, science, politics, media and publishing attended the conference and its numerous talks and presentations. We were very happy to welcome a number of international guests such as Dirk van Damme (Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress Division at OECD) and Nicole Allen (Director of Open Education for SPARC, USA) who were the keynote speakers at the conference. The goals of the conference were to bring together activists, educators and representatives of the political level and to discuss the future of OER in Germany.

Women Edit[edit]

The Project women edit, that started in 2013 with a series of monthly events, was continued in 2014 with a strong focus on the further development of the WikiWomen-Network and its contributors. The goal is to establish local networks of women that will independently initiate projects in the future.

Wiki Dialog (Wiki dialogue)[edit]

The project Wiki Dialog” (“Wiki Dialogue”) was a project by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Österreich that aims to improve social processes in Wikipedia. Wiki Dialogue was a series of online meetups where the participants exchange ideas about various topics related to the Wikipedia and its sister-projects in order to share their findings and skills. The meetings were based on the concept of cMOOCs and have a workshop character.

Silberwissen (Silver knowledge)[edit]

With the project Silberwissen (silver knowledge) WMDE was a partner in the EU-funded project Third Age Online (TAO). Goal of this project with 10 partners from three countries was to win contributors to Wikimedia projects. Silberwissen focused on encouraging older people with extensive work and life experience to start editing in Wikipedia and to increase the number of senior citizens contributing to the online encyclopedia on a long-term basis. The idea behind Silberwissen was to show older people how they can share their knowledge and experience in the online encyclopedia, thus making it available to interested users. A further aim was to improve the quantity and quality of the free knowledge available in the encyclopedia. The goal was to generate a win-win situation for the senior citizens participating in the project on the one hand, and for the Wikipedia communities and society as a whole on the other.

Wikipedia AG[edit]

The project Wikipedia AG was aimed at actively engaging teachers and pupils in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Within the project, high school students from five different schools in the region of Hannover intensified their work with Wikipedia in class. The teachers developed the concept for their classes themselves. Besides critical reading of Wikipedia, they were enabled and encouraged to complement and edit articles and to create new ones.

Wikipedia Diversity[edit]

The research and development project "Wikipedia Diversity" was a cooperation between Wikimedia Deutschland and the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. The goal was to develop a diversity concept for the German Wikipedia and the conception of innovative measures to increase diversity. The project was based on open innovation: an open, participatory research and development process that allocates new methods and approaches in order to make knowledge, creativity and innovation potential accessible. We published the key conclusions and recommendations with the paper "Charting Diversity – Working together towards diversity in Wikipedia". The paper starts off with a review of the current situation in the German Wikipedia. Furthermore if offers different concepts and possibilities how to improve diversity in Wikipedia.