What has the education team been up to? Year end review and updates!

Summary: Everything (or almost!) that the Education Team has been doing since July 2018.

This is our last newsletter of the year, so we wanted to take some time to recap the work the Education Team has been doing, and share what you can look forward to seeing from us in the near future.

July

Many of you joined us for an education themed pre-conference day at Wikimania. More information about the event can be found here. The event was well attended with more than 40 participants. Feedback on the event was also positive: 100% of participants who provided feedback agreed that they have a deeper understanding of the impact Wikimedia projects can have in education, and feel they have improved their ability to advocate for Wikimedia in education.

August

Our summer interns Alen Ameni and Sailesh Patnaik their work on a data mapping exercise that aims to comprehensively map education in the Wikimedia movement. The mapping exercise is ongoing. The next steps are to clean the existing data and open it up for community input.

Nichole met with the regional director for Education at the British Council in Johannesburg, South Africa to discuss potential for regional collaboration in Africa. The meeting went well and a formal partnership is currently being explored.

We initiated the hiring process for an open role on the education team and started collecting applications.

September

Nichole attended e-learning Africa in Rwanda, and co-hosted a fringe workshop that explored Wakoma’s “Wiki in a box,” Kiwix, and WikiFundi. You can find out more by reading Eric Nitschke’s (founder of Wakoma) report on his experience at e-Learning Africa. For the Education Team, the conference was an incredible opportunity to learn more about the needs and challenges across the continent, and to network with like-minded organization leaders, policy makers, and educators.

October

Sailesh rejoined the team as Contractor for Communications and Outreach Revision. You can find another article in this newsletter about the great work he’s been doing.

Nichole attended the CEE meeting in Lviv Ukraine and presented a workshop titled: Wikimedia & Education: developing a framework that values our community. During the workshop participants discussed three key questions: 1. What is the role of the broader Wikimedia community in supporting Wikimedia & Education? 2. What standards or best practices would you recommend for facilitating the relationship between the Wikimedia community and students? 3. What would be the impact of fostering a positive relationship between the community and students?

The Conference was also a great opportunity to hear from community members doing education work, with some really inspiring examples shared from Armenia, Greece, Serbia and others.

November

We finally completed our hiring process, bringing Melissa Guadalupe Huertas on board as Education Program Officer.

We engaged the community to help us select a color for our new logo, which was designed for us by Blanca Flores from the WMF Communications team.

Nichole joined the Basque User Group in Pamplona, Spain to provide a keynote speech for an event hosted by the Government of Navarre, where they also took the opportunity to work on details for the upcoming Education Conference.

Some of our upcoming work, projects, & events

Coming soon, you’ll see us completing a lot of revisions to the Education space on Outreach with updated content and a more user friendly navigation. We’re also working on a new pilot project that will provide opportunities to help program leaders with great ideas take them from idea, to action, to evaluation. Stay tuned for more info in the new year! We’ll also be continuing to pursue partnerships with like-minded international actors like UNESCO and British Council among others. And of course, we’ll be supporting the Basque UG with the Education Conference.

We’ll be publishing Dec & January news in January. We’ll keep you posted with updated deadlines for submissions and the publication date on the education list and on social media.

See you next year!

Tags: