Access to Knowledge Blogs

Nichole Saad, Program Manager, Wikipedia Education Program, Wikimedia Foundation visited Christ University, Bengaluru to conduct a periodic review of the Wikipedia Education Program. The meeting was conducted along with CIS-A2K and Department of Language faculty: Dr. Mallika Krishnaswami, Dr. K.A. Sebastian, Dr. Rathi and Dr. Shivaprasad.

The review kicked off with an introduction to Ms. Saad regarding the work that has been going on at the University. Registrar, Dr. Anil Pinto addressed the gathering of faculty of the Department of Languages and CIS-A2K team members. Student representative Shamama was also present.

Upon giving an introduction to the University itself, Dr. Pinto spoke about the genesis of the Program which was, at its heart, a loss of interest in languages. He spoke of the various ways in which the program has engaged with language: promoting science in regional language, publishing Christ University books on Wikisource, digitising old/ rare books, in addition to editing of articles, creating articles and creating articles in their specialities. On the future of the program, he felt that moving ahead to asking "faculty member in other disciplines if they can accept assignments submitted in languages other than English(despite the fact that the medium of instruction is English)” would be a good way forward. Dr. Pinto continued, “Wikipedia is the best tool available to us to go digital. We are happy that Wikipedia builds in the process and our students also learn.” He said that there were also plans to get all PhD students to go through a Wikipedia workshop to create knowledge specific to their subject.

Speaking next, Tanveer, Program Manager, CIS-A2K, expressed his gratitude to Christ University for enabling CIS-A2K to conduct the Wikipedia Education program at the University. He pointed out that even before the WMF started thinking about the New Readers program, CIS-A2K had engaging students at Christ University who had not previously engaged with Wikipedia. This marked a shifting away from digital learning to critical thinking in knowledge production and creation.

Just as in other WEP programs, there has been an inclination towards a specific topic. For example, Pune University has been working on gender. When this all comes together, it gives a composite view of knowledge production in indian language. There is also the need to escalate the discussion to a core academic level- a fruitful engagement mode with different points of view.

CIS-A2K’s WEP interventions have also been offering certificate courses for students as well as internships in order to understand a) the work their peers have done and b) the value addition they can do. This is exciting because this results in a large outreach and lends to learn and thinking on our feet constantly. As with every intervention, there are challenges that astonish that we need to think about and integrate into our work. In conclusion, he pointed out that the WEP at Christ is a challenge that CIS-A2K relishes.

The attendees further discussed the need to not only keep the community abreast of WEP activities but to also acknowledge and understand the feeling of ownership that comes with working on Wikimedia projects. Another commendable feature of the WEP at Christ remains the fact that students take on the role of campus ambassadors. The outcomes of the program have been documented in the Kannada media with a paper presentation as well. The attendees discussed possible research outputs as well.

Finally, Ms. Saad spoke of the importance of sharing wisdom and experiences in review meetings like these. She said that the focus of the Wikimedia movement is to go to places where people don’t have access and go to marginalised communities and make education accessible to them. This has the potential to change people’s lives as they will get access to information and skills to navigate a digitally literate world. Ms. Saad also spoke about using Wikimedia projects in classrooms. She said, “it can’t happen overnight, can’t become familiar with it right away or comfortable with it. However with pioneers like Christ University in this space, who areopen minded to it, the impact is greater than just number and statistics."

During the later sessions, Ms. Saad conducted activities that enabled students to ponder the following questions:

• how can technology enrich the learning of students in India?

• what are WEP challenges in India

• what are some of the improvements you would need to make WEP better?

The Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge program, in partnership with Christ University, is announcing its annual internship program for the 1200 students enrolled in the Wikipedia Education Program. The Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University, now in its fourth year, is an effort to bring together educators and students to use Wikipedia as an educational implement. CIS-A2K conducts the internship activity for passionate Christ University students to improve the quality of the articles created or edited by their fellow WEP peers. The internship will largely involve improving upon the articles created by their peers as well as gathering community consensus based on which these articles would be moved to the main namespace.

The students will be working on Wikipedia over the course of 21 days in developing upon the content created by Christ University Wikipedia Education Program participants. The fledgling articles currently housed in the individual “sandboxes” of the WEP participants will be improved upon by the interns through addition of detailed content, images and info-boxes.

The students are selected based on three main criteria: fluency of language(written and spoken), knowledge of Wikipedia and its processes, and their personal interest levels. The applications are open from 13 to 17 December, 2017. Interested students can apply here:

https://goo.gl/forms/Ffxh3T3DRZz8Q25F3

A Wikimedia Technical Workshop was conducted between 27- 28 November, 2017 at the Department of Mathematics, Savitribai Phule Pune University. The objective of the workshops was us to understand how Wikipedia works and what career opportunities there are related to Wikipedia and how one can contribute to and enrich the open source knowledge for the benefit of all.

On the first day, the students were given an introduction to Wikimedia projects as well as Marathi Wikipedia. They were also taught account creation and given a general introduction to Wikipedia , MediaWiki, and wikis in addition to Wikipedia structure, article structure, name spaces, common.css and common.js pages, and gagdets. In the post-lunch session the participants were given an introduction to gadgets, scripts, tool and bots.

On the second day, the participants continued where they left off by learning about advanced tools and bots like Archive Bot, Sign bot, Anti-vandalism bots as well as Phabricator. Finally, the session ended with talks about future projects and activities. 

22 participants attended the event.

A Kannada Wikipedia orientation workshop was held at the Entrepreneurship Centre, SID, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on 26 November, 2017. The day long event was aimed at adding content to Kannada Wikimedia projects on topics such as ecology, environment, wildlife and sciences of Karnataka. The event was organised by Gubbi Labs in conjunction with CIS-A2K. Gubbi Labs is a research collective and social collective run by environmental scientists. The event was attended was attended by 8 participants of which one member was female.

The participants created six articles and expanded one article. The impact of this workshop was the fact that participants were made aware of the importance of open access data. It helped initiate another similar workshop in Mysuru. Upon sharing the idea for projects like Wiki Loves Butterfly Idea, a participant was interested in starting a project titled 'Wiki Loves Spiders'. We are hoping to take this project forward on Kannada Wikipedia.

The Centre for Internet and Society recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Telangana Government’s IT, Electronics & Communications Department with an aim to catalyse the development of the Wikimedia movement in Telangana and improve the state of free-licensed digital content in Telugu and Urdu.  The Principal Secretary for IT Department Mr. Jayesh Ranjan and renowned Telugu Wikimedian and Theatre Scholar Pranay Raj were present for the occasion. Mr. Konatham Dileep, Director (Digital Media), IT Department and CIS-A2K Telugu Community Advocate Pavan Santhosh were signatories to the memorandum.

This MoU is the result of successive meetings between the Digital Media wing and Telugu Wikipedians, CIS-A2K members and the Wikimedia Foundation. These discussions enabled all stakeholders to come up with a comprehensive plan to develop the free knowledge movement in Telugu and Urdu.

Katta Srinivas, a historian, teach and long time Telugu Wikipedian, says, “As one of the participants in earlier discussions with the government, I am happy to see progress in this respect. Especially, [the planned] photo archives of museums, photos of historical places and other events can be free-licensed as part of these initiatives. This decision can lead other government organizations to take up similar initiatives in India."

Apart from these, some of the planned activities include releasing encyclopedic photos and media content from government archives, increasing awareness about free licenses and Wikipedia among government officials, etc.