Education/News/June 2023/WMB goes to Serbia

Between May 26th and 29th, Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) was represented by four of its members at EduWiki Conference 2023, in Belgrade, Serbia. Stela Madruga, Thais Morata, João Alexandre Peschanski and Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno are volunteer members of the Brazilian User Group – the last two are also WMB's Executive Director and Education and Scientific Dissemination Manager, respectively. WMB was also pleased to be one of the supporters of the event that was organised by the Wikipedia & Education User Group in collaboration with Wikimedia Serbia.

The Brazilian participation included two presentations, one lightning talk, a workshop session, and a panel discussion. Although João Alexandre Peschanski used Wikipedia & Education User Group's hat at several times, he also spoke about our local context and activities as described below.

At the first day of the Conference, Thais Morata, Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno and João Alexandre Peschanski talked about a partnership developed with professors from six Brazilian universities, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH, US), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), in coordination with Wiki Movimento Brasil.

The group received a Brazilian federal grant to develop and coordinate actions to improve hearing and healthcare content through classroom programs, to create a MOOC as an introduction to Audiology (study of hearing) in Wikiversity, and to participate in the global campaign #Wiki4WorldHearingDay2023.

At the presentation, the WMB members highlighted elements to expand and strengthen one's effort in education based on this experience. It is essential to build a multi-component strategy and articulate with other groups that share the same interests in your area. Also, connecting with a local affiliate and using a technical infrastructure (such as the Outreach Dashboard) helps coordinate mechanisms and see the results through metrics. The presenters also encouraged people to seek resources, because they exist and are spread across stakeholders. Finally, systematic academic documentation and dissemination of the work in various environments help to spread the idea that is being built, attract and gather more volunteers and legitimize the effort.

On May 27th, the second day of the Conference, WMB's Executive Director and member of the Wikipedia & Education User Group, João Alexandre Peschanski, participated in the Day 2 opening discussion about the future of Wikimedia & Education. On the occasion, education program leaders from around the world shared their perspectives on the future of the thematic area. As you can see in the photograph below, João was accompanied by Brahim Faraji, Bukola James, Rahmi, and Frank Schulenburg in the talk. Moderation was brilliantly done by Yop Rwang Pam (WMF) who was able to stitch together the experiences and information shared by the participants into a meaningful whole. See the open discussion of 2nd day of the EduWiki Conference in the video below:

Also on the 2nd day of the Conference, WMB's Education and Scientific Dissemination, Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno, shared a presentation with Rahmi (WMID) and Dian (WMID). The three Wikimedians' presentation was called "Building online courses to reach more editors: Indonesian and Brazilian experiences". The women spoke about how online courses are effective ways to reach more editors, and educators and to collaborate with educational institutions. They described the behind-the-scenes process of Indonesian and Brazilian experiences and you can see the full slides here. Rahmi and Dian talked about the development of a suitable online course for Indonesians who want to learn about Wikipedia. Amanda presented the work in progress of the creation of a MOOC on Wikiversity. The course aims to present, in a condensed and simplified way, information that Brazilian educators need to start using Wikimedia projects with their students.

On May 26th, Stela Madruga, WMB's volunteer member and librarian of the University of São Paulo (USP/Brazil,) presented the lightning talk "Professional development through Wikidata: a case study of a Workshop for Brazilian librarians". The presentation is available in the video on the side.

Finally, on the last day of the Conference, Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno had the opportunity to help LiAnna Davis (EduWiki) during a workshop about the Programs & Events Dashboard. The participants learned from the basic steps of getting started, through advanced tips and tools. The full video is available below:

April 26th, 2023 was the International Noise Awareness Day (INAD). Professors from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC - Brazil), University of Tuiuti Paraná (UTP - Brazil), University of São Paulo (USP-Bauru - Brazil) and Université de Montréal (UM - Canada) joined Wiki Movimento Brasil (WMB) at an edit-a-thon about the subject. The event aimed to highlight the impact of noise on everyday life and create meaningful and quality content on Wikipedia.

Undergraduate and graduate students in phonoaudiology (speech therapy) and related areas, physically gathered in two different Brazilian cities: Bauru, in the countryside of São Paulo state, and Florianópolis, the capital of Santa Catarina state. The event also brought together several participants remotely and the two locations connected with the online team through local projectors. WMB's Education and Scientific Dissemination Manager, Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno, gave the participants an online tutorial on the basics of editing on Wikipedia. The tutor of the Dangerous Decibels Brazil Program and Member of the National Coordination of INAD Brazil, Professor Isabel Cristiane Kuniyoshi, participated online in the event, welcomed the participants, and praised the initiative.

Altogether, the edit-a-thon gathered 62 editors who created 10 Wikipedia articles, edited 119 articles (in Portuguese and English Wikipedia), and summed 147k bytes added. The event's dashboard is available here.

The event was also registered as an extension program at the Department of Phonoaudiology at UFSC. At the right side of the screen are some selected pictures showing the event's participants.

At the XXIV Wikimedia & Education Workshop, Fábio Souto de Azevedo presented "Good teachers assign Wikipedia. Others don't know what it is". The event was held on May 18th, at 5 pm (UTC-3). Fábio is an associate professor of the Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS - Brazil). He edits Wikipedia since 2011 and has a lot of experience using the project with undergraduate students. During the workshop, he shared his experience with the participants, including the difficulties and issues faced by his students through the years.

After his presentation, Erika Guetti Suca, Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of São Paulo (USP - Brazil) and Wiki Movimento Brasil volunteer member gave the participants a tutorial on the tool Scholia. She introduced the possibilities of using Wikidata to create visualizations and showed some examples to illustrate them.

• Education/Newsletter/June 2023