Education/News/June 2019/Wikipedia as a classroom activity kicks off in Kosovo

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Wikipedia as a classroom activity kicks off in Kosovo


Author: Rina Zhubi


Summary: Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Riinvest College as well as held the first training program for teachers at “Mileniumi i Tretë” High School.

After months of planning, outreaching and meetings, the Wikipedia Education Program is finally kicking in Kosovo.

During May 2019, WoALUG signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Riinvest College, one of the top private colleges in the country. Riinvest College, an organization aimed at advancing student education, wants to encourage its students and staff to participate in WoALUG's programs to increase the availability of information in Wikipedia Shqip.

As part of this agreement, Riinvest has committed to engage Wikipedia editing in at least 2 classes per semester, while WoALUG will support instructors and student editors through materials and staff time. In the following months, we plan to work closely with professors in building a curriculum for the Wikipedia assignment.

Training provided to high school teachers[edit]

At the same time, WoALUG held its first teachers’ training involving 15 teachers from “Mileniumi i Tretë” High School. The training was divided into 2 parts.

During the first part of the training teachers were introduced to:

  • Wikimedians of Albanian Language and the importance of integrating Wikipedia as a class activity;
  • Encyclopedic article on Wikipedia, research, references, reliable sources and copyright;
  • Technical editing in Wikipedia;
  • Translation of the content through the translation tool;
  • What is Wikidata;
  • Multimedia content in Wikipedia; and
  • Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of the day, teachers were asked to choose an article topic backed with reliable sources and take 3 photos to upload in Wikimedia Commons.

The second part of the training was based on practical work. Practical work included:

  • Uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons;
  • Final editing of the article;
  • Posting articles to Wikipedia
  • Translation of 1 short article through the Wikipedia translation tool.

In the final part of the training, they were introduced to the Outreach Dashboard as a monitoring tool and the most successful strategies of integrating Wikipedia editing in the classroom.

To acknowledge their participation, teachers received certificates at the end of the training.

The enthusiasm and positive feedback of the teachers make us believe that Wikipedia editing will be integrated into the classroom in the upcoming semester.


Social Media channels or hashtags: Facebook: @SQWikimediansUG; Twitter: @SQWikimediansUG; Instagram: @SQWikimedians_UG Website: www.wikimediashqip.org