Education/About/Office Hours/April 17 2019

Ask me & Tell me Anything

hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation Education Team

Etherpad for Quick Notes

Wednesday, April 17, 13:00 UTC

Agenda

Which topic would you like to share/discuss/ask about? Add your suggestions here:

1. W&E Greenhouse: overview, team applications, Q&A
2. Education Newsletter and Office hours
3. Manavpreet - conference in India
4. Paulo - question about education activities with cellphones

Participants

1. Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Hindi Wikimedians User Group
2. Melissa Guadalupe (WMF)
3. Sailesh Patnaik (WMF)
4. Sandister (Wikimedia Ghana UG)
5. Manavpreet Kaur
6. Md Galib Hasan (Bangladesh)
7. Yogesh (IT for Change)
8. Justice Okai-Allotey (Wikimedia Ghana UG)
9. Rocky Masum (Wikimedia Bangladesh)
10. Jackie Bucio (Wikimedia Mexico)
11. Uzoma Ozurumba (Igbo Wikimedians User Group)
12. Rajeeb Dutta
13. Paulo Perneta

Minutes of the meeting

• Melissa: I am Melissa Guadalupe from Peru, I work at the education team in the Wikimedia Foundation
• Sandister: Nice to meet or emeet everybody, I am from Wikimedia Ghana UG one of the founder
• Manavpreet:
• Yogesh: Yogesh from IT for Change, we seek to build participatory model in the public Education system. We are working with government schools in South Bangalore, Telengana and Rajasthan
• Justice: I am from Wikimedia Ghana UG
• Rocky: I am the executive member of Wikimedia Bangladesh
• Jackie: From Mexico
• Uzoma: From Igbo Wikimedia UG
• Melissa:If it is okay for us to record the meeting? As it was requested by some community members who couldn't join the call and want it to be recorded. (pause for answers) Thanks for allowing us to record, I will share the recording later. First, Iwanted to check if you have already seen the Greenhouse space on Outreach Wiki. If not, I will share it here again... I am sharing my screen. The Wikimedia and Education greenhouse initiative from the Education team at the WMF. We want to bring Wikimedia and education projects from ideas to reality, It is just a pilot, so one team will be selected to participate in this first edition. We will provide seed funding to start and get the project off the ground. There will be two onsite visit by one team member of the education team at the Foundation, one at the beginning and one at the end to support with evaluation, monitoring and data collection. Along with that we have a free online course which I will describe in detail in a few minutes. This initiative is for our community members passionate about Wikimedia projects, we are giving a priority to communities who haven't had access to these kind of opportunities or don´t normally have easy access to them. We want community members having interest and knowledge of local education context. There are three ways to participate in this process, Individual application, Team application and Volunteer collaborator. In team application the teams should be of at least 3 Wikimedians, right now application is open until May 12. The teams should present a project idea and one selected team will have access to the seed funding, on-site support and online course. If you don't have a team, you can join the greenhouse as  an individual through the free online course, there´s no limit to the number of participants, we already have 30 people signed up for the course. This is going to be global multi-cultural co'learning environment. The third modality is volunteer collaborator, we need some help from experienced Wikimedians already involved in Education movement, we need help from the volunteers to help us in selecting the one chosen team.  During the online course to faciliate lessons or create resources. We are looking for people to helping others as a buddy, we are also working with Education UG. If you see the outreach space, you´ll notice we have developed a code of conduct, this is because there will be forums and discussion spaces online and we want to make them friendly and supportive. A little bit about the online course..Unit 1 will be about Knowledge equity, how to work with Education institutions....we´ll share some basic principle. Unit 2 we will talk more about project management, logic models, grants writing. Unit 3 will be about evaluation, also advocacy. By the end of the course we are expecting you will learn many things, gain skills and be part of a supportive network of Wikimedians. Applications are right now open till May 12, every team application that the group makes will be open on Wiki. The online course is going to be end on February 28, it is lengthy because there will be enough time for participants to fully engage with each module regardless of their limitations of time and accessibility ... Like I said there is a lot more information in the website, if you have any doubt you can ask now or send me an email later.
• Uzoma: What is the selection criteria for the team
• Melissa: I will explain it in details
• Melissa: If you go to the Greenhouse page, there is a section for team application, this gives you an idea of the team application. Some highlights: your team application should indicate your knowledge and relationship with the local education actors and with the local Wikimedia community. Your application should indicate clearly the role of all collaborators or team members. What are your goals. What do you want the participants involved in your project to achieve. What do you want your participants to learn, and sustainability plans of your project. This project is not a space for learning how to edit, funding chapters or UG, to develop academic research paper, or to pay other stakeholder to develop project. The seed funding isof $3000 to start project, also they should have an idea on how to get money from other platforms. If you go to selection criteria, you can have an idea of how your application will be evaluated. There's basic criteria like your application has to be complete. Then criteria regarding your motivation and understanding of the Greenhouse. Your perspective on the value of Wikimedia in the education field. The description of the project, goals, participants, challenges you may face. Extra criteria includes the fact that the team comes from an underrepresented community, from a small language community, or that it connects to the WMF strategy. For more information: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Greenhouse#Team_Applications
• Rajiv: Can one individually join or apply and be a part of a team?
• Melissa: You can join the online course and you then find a team... it is perfect.
• Uzoma:So only one team will be selected at this stage?
• Melissa: Sadly, It is the first pilot so we will focus on one team. We hope that this pilot is successful so we can offer funding for more teams in the future.
• Manav: are the teams comprised of wikimedians from diff regions eligible?
• Melissa: It is not ideal, it is very less money and a year long project. If you can demonstrate that it is not a problem and you have a good plan to develop the project with well defined roles it then it is not a problem,
• Uzoma: the course can it be self paced?
• Melissa: We are giving a long period of time for each module of the course so participants can move at a comfortable pace. You will have freedom to complete the course in your own time but there will be for example virtual class sessions once per module.
• Ajit: If it's not about editing basically, how we will evaluate the outcome of the project. For example if I have a plan a course about Copyright laws and I want to educate my students as well as fellow Wikimedians. How will it be evaluated if we don't edit any Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia or Wikisource?
• Melissa: You could do the copyright laws project using other Wikimedia projects, for example you can use Wikimedia Commons. You can be creative. Think about comparing the knowledge of your participants at the beginning of your project and then after your project. If you get selected to the team we can help you structure the program.
• Melissa: I am going to share my screen to help you how to apply for team application. As you can see it's a template similar to the one for the Education Newsletter or a grants application. There are examples to help you complete it, just write your answers underneath the sentences with the < > symbols.  
• Rajib: Is it mandatory to have all the participants to Wikimedians?
• Melissa: 3 Wikimedians yes, then the other members can be non-Wikimedians
• Justice: For the volunteers that are going to work on the curriculm design how they will be selected?
• Melissa: I will show you in a bit. Here's the collaboration spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TMVVHqXFaeErgO-KFOA-2qlqehTLygukQwnuCsj_QLA/edit#gid=0), you select which role you want to support with and write down your name on the second tab. Then with the help of the Wikipedia & Education UG we get a final group of volunteer collaborators and we get in touch and start working with them.
• Ajit: Is it possible if we don't receive any seed funding, just get the access to the platform and design our program as our local needs.Just asking because this time only one team will be selected. So if it's because of funding then we can accommodate more teams otherwise.
• Melissa: Yes, you can access the online course and take advantage of the platform. Just complete the individual application form additionally to your team application, it only takes 10 minutes, it's very simple.
• Uzoma: Can you be a volunteer collaborator and as well take the courses?
• Melissa: Yes, you can be both. Also for example, if you already know Unit 1 and Unit 2 and not interested in Unit 0 and Unit 3, that is completely fine. You will receive a recognition, a badge for every unit you fully complete. You will recieve a certificate of completion once you have finished all the units.
• Melissa: We are not only focussing on Wikipedia, Wikidata or Wikisource. It is upto you to decide which Wikimedia projects you want to work with. We encourage you to think of more possibilities. Thank you for all your questions.
• Sailesh¨Deadline for newsletter articles is tomorrow (18) but we have 3 buffer days before publishing. Please share your stories with us. We're looking forward to see at least 3 or 4 newsletter articles. Also, we will have another office hours after today on the 23, so please spread the word about office hours with your community.
• Manavpreet: We have this event called education awards in India. There are 300 schools that are participating and I've been invited as a guest speaker there, organizers are interested on how we can help their students expand their knowledge and how Wikimedia is beneficial to students overall. I-m working on a presentation, could you guide me to someone that can assist me on this presentation? It's a big event.

(Melissa and Sailesh will provide assistance.)

• Paulo: I noticed that there are a lot of networking in Bisau worse than in Ghana, I think it has to do with the connection in cellphones. Besides multimedia things that can be done with cellphones, I'm looking for more ideas on how to use cellphones for education initiatives. There's a work that's there to explore. I'd like to hear from that approach. If you have any program that's working in those conditions I'd very much like to know and share ideas.
• Sailesh: Thanks everyone for joining us, see you next week.