Education/News/October 2018/The first Wikimedia+Education conference will happen on April 5-7 at Donostia-Saint Sebastian
The first Wikimedia+Education conference will happen on April 5-7 at Donostia-Saint Sebastian[edit]
Author: Galder Gonzalez & Edurne Agirre
Summary: After some months of preparation the Wikimedia Foundation has granted the organization of this very first Wikimedia+Education conference, next April 5-7 in Donostia, Basque Country. It will be a whole weekend discussing, learning and working on the role Wikimedia has in education and the role education institutions can adopt inside our knowledge equitiy movement.
Wikipedia belongs in education, we claim. And it’s true. Wikimedia Movement, chapters, user groups and affiliates are developing Education Programs elsewhere, teachers are using wikis (and not only Wikimedia) as a teaching resource, students are using Wikipedia to complete their assignments... and are even doing assignments on Wikipedia. Education community and Wikimedia movement are two sides of the same broad idea: knowledge must be accessible by every humankind.
The Basque Wikimedians User Group (EWKE, in Basque language) is developing a three-year program with the Basque Government to make better contents for schoolchildren in our language with the help of the education community: University students are working on the enrichment of Wikipedia with their knowledge, University professors and lecturers are giving them assignments to work on and High School teachers and school institutions are working to detect what information gaps we have, what we can improve. It is not the first time this kind of programs are made in the Wikimedia Movement, but it’s a good example of collaboration between knowledge institutions, Governments and Wikimedians. We have a mature educational program in a small linguistic community with support from the local government, this allows making efforts to document and create models and templates and documents that can be reused by the rest of the global community.
As part of our project, we will host a Conference on Education and Wikimedia, Wikimedia and Education, wikimedians and educators. It will be a three days conference in the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastían (aka Saint Sebastian). We will have discussions about different education-related topics, and we will have the opportunity to learn from each other. Soon we will announce next steps in this conference, but let's save the date: April 5-7.
Tags: wikimedia conference, conference, education, basque country