Education/Countries/Colombia
Primary Contacts[edit]
- Educación Wikimedia Colombia. educacion@wikimediacolombia.org
- Monica Bonilla (WMCO) (talk). Wikimedia Colombia Executive Director
Background and context[edit]
The education program of Wikimedia Colombia was created in 2020 and started its implementation in 2021, its objective is to work together with teachers from different educational levels.
The education program of Wikimedia Colombia has always been the most ambitious, since in 2021 we formalized an alliance with the Ministry of Education of Colombia and Wikimedia Foundation. This agreement made the education program on the one hand to meet the objectives and scopes initially proposed from the knowledge and relationships of Wikimedia Colombia with the education sector, but also to assume the leadership of the implementation of the activities agreed in the agreement between the Ministry, WMF and Wikimedia Colombia.
Since 2021 we have been organizing within the education program teacher training seminars with the participation of national and international experts, presentations, editathons, awareness days and campaigns with teachers from schools and universities. We are currently in talks to re-sign a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of National Education and Computadores para Educar.
The activities of the education program are oriented to the national challenges facing the educational context such as currently:
- Social, digital and access gap in the national educational context. Access to education in Colombia is a challenge faced by educational institutions at all levels, according to the Economics of Education Laboratory of the Javeriana University (LEE, 2022) "three out of every ten people of school age (between 5 and 24 years old) did not attend educational establishments in Colombia between 2019 and 2021". Between 2020-2022 learning gaps grew during the Covid-19 pandemic, so at the national level, educational institutions aim to address learning gaps through innovative and context-appropriate solutions.
- Myths about the use of Wikimedia projects in an educational context. In Colombia there is currently a taboo on the use of Wikimedia projects in educational contexts, since it is considered that collaborative tools such as Wikipedia do not provide accurate information to students and their content is classified as unsuitable for use in learning spaces.
- Appropriation of digital resources, tools and methodologies inside and outside the classroom. Students and even teachers have stated that they use Wikipedia in order to obtain brief knowledge on a specific topic. For this reason it is necessary that Wikimedia Colombia manages to strengthen a line of work in education in order to generate partnerships with educational communities and create spaces where teachers and the educational community can learn how Wikimedia projects work and how to make them useful pedagogical tools in the classroom, and in turn allow the construction of a knowledge of local relevance, multiethnic and multicultural according to the characteristics of the Colombian community.
Education program plan Wikimedia Colombia 2022[edit]
Activities[edit]
- Editaton por el planeta
- Editaton Uniminuto
- Wikiclases 2022
Institutions Involved[edit]
- Universidad Nacional de Colombia
- Universidad del Rosario
- Uniminuto
- Ministerio de educación Nacional
- Universidad pedagógica
- UdeA
Additional information[edit]
For information about how Wikipedia is being used for Education, please check the Wikimedians of Colombia website, or write us to contacto@wikimediacolombia.org.