Centre for Internet and Society

Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore to bring Tulu Wikipedia live

pavanaja — 2015-09-15T09:07:24Z

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th to encourage more Tulu-language speakers to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is is currently in the Incubator but the enthusiastic editor community is putting their best effort to bring it live out of Incubator. This edit-a-thon is one of the many activities the Tulu Wikimedia community has organised.

30 Wikipedia editors participated and created about 89 new articles. Interestingly, 12 of these 30 participants crossed more than 10 edits. Some of the new participants faced problems with using the input methods and the Wiki-markup. It is important to note that because of the lack of addition of Tulu-alphabet code points in the Unicode chart, and the speakers being well conversant in Kannada, they are using Kannada script for Tulu Wikipedia Incubator project. There is a plan to organise a monthly meetup and/or edit-a-thon to continue the momentum these editors have brought in. Tulu Sahitya Academy has kindly supported the event.

More details in the event page (in Tulu).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-mangalore-to-bring-tulu-wikipedia-live

Wikipedia edit-a-thon at TEDSummit 2016, Banff, Canada

garule — 2016-06-13T06:44:49Z

The TEDSummit 2016, an annual conference of the TED community, is taking place during June 26-30, 2016 at Banff, Canada. Wikimedians Netha Hussain, Ayyappadas along with Abhinav Garule, Programme Associate, CIS-A2K will be conducting a 90-minute long workshop to educate the participants through Wikipedia's guidelines and help them write their first articles.

A list of articles have been suggested in the event page that participants can create. They can also play with a mock article. Please note, this is an invite-only event and only the conference participants that have registered beforehand can attend this edit-a-thon.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-at-tedsummit-2016-banff-canada

Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad!

noopur — 2013-02-13T11:40:06Z

This post is a report on the series of Wikipedia meets organized in the city of Hyderabad on September 29-30, 2012. These workshops were a a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community.

The city of Hyderabad is not only an IT hub but also home to many English and Indian language Wikipedians. In a recent series of weekend workshops and meet-ups conducted within the city, I had the opportunity to interact with many of them. We conducted a Wikipedia workshop at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, an Odia Wikipedia workshop as well as a general Wikipedia workshop for people interested in contributing to all language Wikipedias. I would like to convey my gratitude to the Computer Science department students at BITS, Hyderabad, Odia Wikipedians Swetapadma and Amaresh and English Wikipedians Tausif and Abhijith for making these events happen despite festivities and protests in the city.

To provide a brief report on the events, the BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad workshop was organized as a general introduction to Wikipedia. The event was organized with the support of the Computer Science department at the college and saw a presence of more than 60 students. It was 2 hour session where 6 students created their Wikipedia user accounts and entered their names on the BITS project page. They were also shown how Wikis work – live and global.

Students were encouraged to make changes to their college article and they discovered how to view recent changes, page views and other functions. It was a particularly informative session because majority of the group did not know that Wikipedia articles are written by common people from all walks of life! The session ended with a proposal to start a Wiki club for their college. The Odia Wikipedia meetup organized on the same day registered 11 participants while the general meetup on the next day had over 20 participants. In all three workshops, the majority of participants were not aware how one could contribute to Wikipedia articles.

Next steps:

It was great to see existing Wikipedians discuss the idea of having a Hyderabad SIG (special interest group) to conduct regular meetings, workshops, photo walks and more! Since the participants have shared their email-IDs, we will stay in touch and inform them about upcoming Telugu and English editing workshops. Students at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad have also requested a Wikipedia workshop and hackathon for their upcoming techfest this month. A Telugu Wikipedia workshop has been proposed for the second week of October.

For more information on how to conduct a Wikipedia workshop in your city, you could contact noopur@cis-india.org

There was newspaper coverage about this event:

Wiki Meetup, Hindu, September 28, 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-hyderabad-report

Wikipedia can establish Tulu in a wider way

praskrishna — 2014-10-24T16:01:07Z

In his predential address after inaugurating the three-day workshop on ‘The use of internet for promotion of Tulu language,’ organised by Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy President Janki M Brahmavar opined that internet media, especially Wikipedia, can contribute to a large extent towards the promotion of Tulu language. The president said there was a need for the effective use of Unicode for the digital interpretation of Tulu.

This was published in Mangalore Today on October 17, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja gave his inputs.

Delivering a talk on the occasion, Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore) Indian Languages Programme Coordinator and Wikipedia representative Dr U B Pavanaja said that Tulu Wikipedia is in the process of getting life. He said that minimal work has taken place in Tulu language and that too, is not up to the mark, to be considered for the inclusion of the language to the 8th schedule. There is a need for Unicode, which would enable the language to acquire wide recognition, though it positively qualifies as a classical language of ancient times.

There should at least be 500-600 articles in Wikipedia to consider it as live. At least 8-10 articles should be uploaded every month. He added that only eight people had updated their Tulu articles into Wikipedia, during previous year, when the workshop was held at Mangalore. At present the number has gone up to 320. Until March, the number of articles uploaded was 137. The government should work towards it. Dr Pavanaja added that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, and is in 287 languages across the world. Anyone who is interested can update his or her articles into the encyclopedia. There are nearly 6000 languages across the world. The people who avail the internet facilities at home can also work on some articles and upload their write ups into Wikipedia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalore-today-october-17-2014-wikipedia-can-establish-tulu-in-a-wider-way

Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages

praskrishna — 2013-08-12T04:29:28Z

The number of Wikipedia entries in vernacular languages has grown substantially in the last eight months

This article by Divya Saboo was published in DNA on August 1, 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.

In the last eight months, the number of Wikipedia entries in vernacular languages has grown substantially, says a Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Wikipedia, the world's largest encyclopedia, where anyone can write and publish, was mainly written in the English language until a few years ago. There is a sudden boom of interest in regional languages on the internet because browsers now support Indian language scripts. Thus, people are now more interested in typing in their mother-tongues. Interestingly, this initiative is fueled by diaspora.

Mahit Gar, who has been working with the Marathi Language Wikipedia, said, “Since the last one year, we have concentrated on improving the quality of the content more. We are ranked #20. There are also some new editing facilities that are being introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMS). We can now write in Marathi as well. 40 per cent of the people can type Marathi well but the rest still find it difficult to do so. The rural people interact mostly with Marathi."

He adds, "We have had this sudden boom because in 2011, we had some conferences with the English Wikipedia team and we talked about how people are not able to communicate without their mother tongues in place. Also, we don't spam. Most people love their mother tongue so they don't touch the content inappropriately (this is not the case with the English Wikipedia).”

Tinu Cherian Abraham who was on the Wikimedia India Chapter talks about how an NRI's love for Malyalam kick-started the project. There are people from all walks of life involved in this project. The collective passion for knowledge of a visually challenged editor of Hindi Wikipedia along with an elderly contributor from Kerala, has aided him in forgetting his ailments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dna-august-1-2013-divya-saboo-wikipedia-boom-in-vernacular-languages

Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages

praskrishna — 2013-08-01T05:28:28Z

A vibrant vernacular Wikipedia seems to be taking root in India. In the last eight months, the number of Wikipedia entries has grown substantially in 20 Indian languages, says a study by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on August 1, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

Wiki, the world's largest online encyclopaedia where anyone can write and edit articles, didn't have much content in vernacular till a few years ago. According to the study, Wikis in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi have added thousands of new articles on various subjects from September 2012 to April 2013. A few of these pages were viewed more during this period. Marathi, which had 30 lakh page views per month previously, had another 10 lakh visitors, while Bengali Wikipedia had 14 lakh page views.

While Malayalam Wiki took the top position with an enviable team of 100 plus editors, the number Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit editors came down. "Marathi has 40,000 articles. But most editors in Mumbai prefer to work on English. Pune has more Marathi editors,' says T Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, Access to Knowledge project at CIS.

"In the last two years, the demand for knowledge in Indian languages has grown as we have moved to the motto of 'roti, kapda and internet'," says Vardhan.

One of the reasons for growth is that many browsers now support Indian language scripts. But this was not the case in early 2000. Though many wanted to read and type in their own language, there was no browser support, says Shiju Alex, blogger and Malayalam Wiki editor. Moreover, many didn't know how to type in their mother tongues.

But once Indian languages were encoded in Unicode, the fonts became accessible. "There was no need to write Malayalam in English and people started blogging in their mother tongues," says Alex. According to Vardhan, communities with better literacy rates seem to have taken the lead online.

"Telugu Wiki is stronger as internet penetration in Andhra Pradesh is higher than in places where Bhojpuri or Assamese is spoken."

As with most online language initiatives, the Wiki movement was also fuelled by the diaspora. Tinu Cherian Abraham, a former board member of the Wikimedia India chapter, talks about how an NRI's love for Malayalam kick-started the project.

But now there are many Wiki foot soldiers in India, including a blind editor of Hindi Wikipedia and an elderly contributor from Kerala whose passion for free knowledge has helped him forget his ailments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-august-1-2013-sandhya-soman-wikipedia-boom-in-marathi-malayalam-other-desi-languages

Wikipedia at Forefront in Christ University

syed — 2014-02-04T05:08:41Z

Wikipedia has entered Indian undergraduate language classroom in Christ University, Bangalore. Recently the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) organized a series of events in Christ University. This blog post provides a brief analysis of the outcome.

Every year, universities worldwide and in India recognise the need to revise their curriculum to provide up-to-date knowledge for their students. Fresh topics are identified and prescribed replacing the ones which have become obsolete. As technology advances, the need for redesigning the syllabus is not just restricted to the theoretical elements of the academic programme, as the need for a paradigm shift in emphasising the practical implications of the acquired knowledge is recognised universally.

In line with this, universities and colleges across the world have introduced innovative ways of making their curriculum more contemporary than traditional and more pragmatic than academic. One of the leading examples of such initiatives was the "WikiProject Medicine" started by the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF School of Medicine) which aimed at making quality article writing on medical subjects a quintessential part of the syllabus completion. The result of this exercise was startling — 25,825 articles produced under the project received 189,908,947 hits — a record achievement for any Wikipedia project (Source: http://bitly.com/wikiprojmed).

Universities and colleges in India also realise that internet is a boon for educational system. Students often refer to informative websites for their projects and assignments, with Wikipedia articles topping the list of the reference resources that are easily accessible. Although English Wikipedia is more viewed and referred by the students, of late there has been an increase in both readership and voluntary editorial contributions to the Indic language Wikipedias such as Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and other language versions of Wikipedia.

Keeping in view these developments, CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Christ University, Bangalore to make article writing on Wikipedia a core exercise for their continuous internal assessment of its 1600 undergraduate students. The state-of-the-art university which also has a recording studio agreed to host the first of its kind Wikipedia video tutorials in two languages — Hindi and Kannada.

During the month of December 2013, 10 videos each were recorded in both Hindi and Kannada for the respective language Wikipedia editing. While the video scripts were prepared by CIS, the students of the Christ University played an active role for the introductory videos and rendered their voices for the other video tutorials which featured various Wikipedia editing screenshots. These videos have been uploaded on the Moodle Learning platform of the Christ University website, Wikimedia Commons and the "Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K)" Channel on YouTube.

In order to help the students assess their grasp of the knowledge disseminated in each video, each uploaded video on the Christ University website ends with a set of objective questions. Students were also given the right answers along with their scores. The questions were designed by CIS staff in consultation with Christ University professors.

During December 2013 and January 2014 separate campus ambassadors’ orientation programmes were organized by CIS for Hindi and Kannada second language students at Christ University. A training programme was also held for Urdu students. An orientation programme for Tamil students was organized by CIS at Christ University with support from noted Tamil Wikipedian Bala Sundara Raman. Similarly, an orientation programme for Sanskrit students was organized by CIS at Christ University with the support from Shubha of Sanskrit Bharati.

Beginning from January 23 to the first week of February, 2014 is the timeline for Christ University students to finish their assignments. With the video tutorial, training and orientation programmes, constant monitoring by CIS, and with support from Christ University, it is hoped that students will contribute significantly to the five different language Wikipedias — Hindi, Kannada, Sanskrit, Tamil and Urdu.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-at-forefront-in-christ-university

Wikipedia at Avenir

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T04:08:23Z

A 4 hours Wikipedia event at Avenir, 2013 is being held at Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal on 11th March 2013. The Centre for Internet and Society is supporting this event.

Read the event page on Wikipedia

Basic Agenda

1 hour Wikpedia edit-a-thon Workshop with Kolkata based Wikipedians.
3 hours long MediaWiki Workshop on Wikipedia-Gadgets and UserScripts.

Edit-a-thon

A 2 hours long Wikipedia editing workshop with Kolkata based Wikipedians.

Why an Edit-a-thon

It helps build the encyclopedia
It builds relationships in the community
It can help new Wikipedians to contribute
It's fun :)

Pre-requisites

Bring your own laptops if possible, we will be creating things!

What will you have learnt at the end of it?

Along with the idea of how to create and edit articles in Wikipedia, you will get to know about Wikipedia, about setting knowledge free, about all those awesome things, that make us believe in this huge repository of knowledge.

Articles Planned

Lascar War Memorial, Calcutta (Kolkata)

Facilitators

MediaWiki Workshop

3 hours long MediaWiki Workshop on Wikipedia-Gadgets and UserScripts with Developers from Wikimedia.

Goal

The Wikipedia community needs small bits of web tech that make the site better for lots of users. We'll take people who know wiki stuff and also a little programming stuff, and have them be able to write code for Wikipedia.

Pre-requisites

Please bring your laptops! This is a hands on session, and you'll be creating things!

Basic grasp of Javascript, CSS
An account on Wikipedia
A modern browser (preferably Chrome, but Firefox with Firebug will also do)

What will you have learnt at the end of it?

Understanding how user scripts work
Be able to use the MediaWiki API appropriately
Improve your own wiki experience / experience for your language wikipedia by writing scripts

Lesson Plan

Environment (JS, Dev Toolbar, Common.js, importScript)

Facilitators

Yuvi Panda

Register Yourselves!

Folks who are interested to join us, are requested to fill up the form and register themselves for the event. We shall send you an invitation via email!

Harsh Kothari

Data (API, API Sandbox, actions)
Accessing Data from the Environment (AJAX concepts, mw.API, mw.loader.using)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-at-avenir

Wikipedia assignments workshop for Post Graduate students in PAH Solapur University

subodh — 2019-06-22T03:21:39Z

On May 3, 2019, Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) along with PAH Solapur University conducted a Wikipedia workshop for students from the post-graduate stream in PAH Solapur University. Ten students from Mass Communication department and three faculty members participated in the workshop. Prof. Ravindra Chincholkar and Subodh Kulkarni were the facilitators for the workshop.

CIS-A2K is working in collaboration with PAH Solapur University, Solapur in Maharashtra on Wikimedia projects. The Mass Communication and Journalism departments are involved in content generation on Marathi Wikipedia & Commons for the last two years. In 2019, the department has given assignment in the form of Wikipedia articles for Post graduate course. The primary objectives of the workshop were:

To review the articles by students. The articles are given as assignment by Mass Communication department.
IPWT sessions for potential students for quality improvement and retention

The Mass Communication department has involved students in Marathi Day and Independence Struggle edit-a-thons conducted by Marathi Wiki community. After this experience of Wikimedia projects, the faculty decided to give assignments on the theme - Newspapers & notable editors in pre-independence era. The students explored offline & online references for the content. They first prepared the articles in Word document, which were verified by faculty and A2K representative. The manual of style, using citoid for references and Wikipedia pillars were explained. After the verification of content, the articles were uploaded on Marathi Wikipedia. About 40 articles were created by 10 students and two faculty members. As the stories of editors and journalists in the British period were full of sacrifice & adventure, the students got inspiration also. The faculty reviewed the assignment completion process with the stakeholders in the last session. The department has decided to plan the process more systematically in the next academic year. It has also decided to replicate this methodology for other departments in the university.

This was originally published on Wikimedia Blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-may-3-2019-wikipedia-assignments-workshop-for-pg-students-pah-solapur-university

Wikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science

bhuvana — 2019-12-23T08:18:11Z

An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.

Hour of code event

The “Hour of Code” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of Grace Hopper, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 400-500 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were Wikimedia, Mozilla, Google Developers Groups, Facebook Devcircles, Women Tech Makers and School of AI where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.

Wiki Orientation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg

I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikipedia, Wikimedia commons and Wikimedia in Education program. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.

Bridging Gender Gap

After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg

The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.

Key observations/ learnings

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg

The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).
The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.
Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.
Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia.

Press coverage about the event can be seen at Desathin Nambikai , The Covai mail news , Prime Time Tamil , Covai news and Updatenews360.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science

Wikimedia Workshop at Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College, Satara

Subodh Kulkarni — 2017-10-24T11:52:19Z

A Wikimedia Workshop was on 4 August 2017 at the Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College in Satara to introduce the Wikipedia and its sister projects to the students.

A Wikimedia Workshop was conducted at the the Ismailsaheb Mulla Law College in Satara. The workshop provided an introduction to students on the various Wikimedia projects. The workshop also aimed to equip them with Wikipedia editing skills. However, owing to time constraints the editing component has been postponed.

The workshop saw at an attendance of 30 participants, with 20 women participants. The Principal of the institution, Ms. Sunita Pawar said, "Wikipedia is good platform for students to do online assignments. We are eager to integrate it in academics." A discussion on integrating academic assignments with Wikimedia Projects was conducted to develop the basic theme and concepts.

The meta page of the event can be found here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-workshop-at-ismailsaheb-mulla-law-college-satara

Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021/Report

Nitesh Gill and Tito Dutta — 2021-08-20T14:01:55Z

In March 2020, the whole world came to a standstill. What many deemed as a regular ‘flu’ turned out to be the pandemic that brought everyone to their knees. The things that we always did, we could no longer do them. We were all confined to our homes with no choice but to work online. Hanging out with friends, attending weddings, and being a part of the conferences and seminars suddenly became a part of the past. We started using the word unprecedented a lot.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change!”

- Wayne Dyer

For the last many months, we have been getting used to this new ‘normal’. Students and teachers are getting accustomed to the classes and tests happening online. What people thought was impossible, has now become possible. No one could have guessed that birthday parties, gatherings, even marriages would be conducted online. We have now got used to being part of webinars, sessions, and conferences online. A2K is not an exception to this. We planned and conducted a national meet named ‘Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021’.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success!”

- Henry Ford

Background: We, at A2K, have organised many such training sessions and conferences like Train the Trainer, Media Wiki Training, Advanced Wiki Training. But due to COVID restrictions it was not possible to organise such an event offline this year. So this year, we decided to organise a virtual meet for the Wikimedians of India. This meet was planned and conducted especially for the Wikimedians who are already working or are interested in working on Wikimedia projects that deal with Indian content.

Our main objectives behind organising this meet were to celebrate the work done by Wikimedians of India, to provide an online platform for wiki-learning and skill-share, to support discussions and interactions, to give training on important and relevant topics, and explore the medium of online training and wiki-event for future use.

After all the planning, our three-day event of Wikimedia Wikimeet took place from 19 February to 21 February, 2021.

Community Engagement: We decided to organise this meet as there seemed to be a scarcity in volunteer’s and user’s contribution. Moreover, we have always believed in giving back to the community. So, we took an initiative to keep the community engaged. Our goal was to encourage volunteers and users to come forward and take lead in Wikimedia activities. To make it easy for our volunteers and the users to select their area of interest, we started Request for Comments and Community Engagement. It is a forum where open discussions can take place about and where participants can share their knowledge, expertise, and experience. The tasks that were conducted under this were Logo Design, Translation, and Knowledge on Hybrid / Blended Learning Model.

Modes of Promotion: This event would not have been a success if not for our participants. We began promoting the event by using our India Mailing list. Our next step was to publicise the event on our social media channels and pages and also in messenger groups. We sent bulk messages on Indic Village Pumps announcing that the Wikimedia Wikimeet was about to take place. Our next step was to start a fortnightly newsletter about the event. It was started to notify the people of updates. We encouraged our users to sign up for the newsletter so they would get immediate updates. This way, our volunteers and users knew what was happening with regard to the event and they also came to know what was about to happen in the coming 15 days.

Another thing we did was to put up a blogpost on Diff about our event. Our blogpost stated the importance of organising such an event. We have also discussed the background ideas in the same post. Our next blogpost dealt with the ‘how’ of our event. In it, we discussed the ideas of designing the event. Total 5 blogposts were written and put up. Another article named Wikimedia Wikimeet and Beyond: Ideas and Opinions was written and posted a few months later.

Organisation Methodology: Every great journey begins with one step. With that in mind, we first decided on the organisation methodology. The team tried its best to maintain transparency from planning and organisation till the execution and the end of the meet. This was the first ever large scale meet that we were planning to organise. Thus, some of the resources came in handy in our planning stage. To mention a few, we took inspiration and guidance from Celtic Knot Conference, LD4 Conference, Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting, Creative Commons Global Summit, Italy Wiki Conference, Wikicite Virtual Conference, and Wikimedia Strategy Global Conversation.

Next step the core team took was to appoint a program committee. The main function of this program committee was to select important submissions and presentations. Following are the 5 members of our program committee:

Kiril Simeonovski: He is the founding member of Wikimedia Macedonia and Shared Knowledge and has been the president of Shared Knowledge since 2014.

Netha Hussain: She has been a volunteer in the Wikimedia Movement since 2010. Nowadays she mostly works in English WIkipedia and Wikidata, but she is also active in Commons, Metawiki, and Malayalam Wikipedia.

Shyamal: He is interested in the natural history of India, environmental consciousness in general, and history of science, especially biology.

Mahir256: He is an administrator on Wikidata, an administrator on Bengali Wikisource, and has a native understanding of English language.

Bodhisattwa: He has been a volunteer editor in different Wikimedia projects since 2012. He is mostly active on Bengali Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. He is also a part-time coordinator at the Center for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge.

It was necessary for the participants of this event to register prior to the event. A registration form was open and made available for the duration of a month. After the deadline of this registration form, another special registration form with criteria was given to the participants. The participants were then selected according to the criteria.

The event took place on Zoom. We used the official Zoom account of the Center for Internet and Society. The main reason behind registrations was to avoid zoom-bombing. The eligible participants were given the link to join the event.

Wikimedia Wikimeet was a three - day long event. We tried our best to accommodate all the presenters, moderators, attendees, and participants. Time was set according to them. This was a national level event but we were able to involve a few experienced international experts. So we had to take the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as well as the Indian Standard Time (IST) into consideration so that the volunteers, participants, and experts could all attend all the sessions and could engage in fruitful discussions.

Selection of Presentations and Sessions: We received 44 submissions for this event and eventually after discussions 29 were selected to be featured in the event. A committee was given the task to select the submissions based on the topics that are crucial to Indic editors. We also had willing participants from the Wikimedia Foundation as presenters to acquaint the members of Indian community and volunteers with the important topics and issues.

We also invited international guests and experts to speak to our Indian Wikimedian community about the topics that are relevant currently and would be crucial for Indic writers and editors in future. We invited the experts from France to talk about their Lingua Libre project. We also invited the team to talk about Strategy. Our keynote speakers were also invited for this event.

Event: After taking all the submissions into consideration, our program committee made a program schedule for the three-day event. The tracks that were selected by the program committee for the presentations were: Growth of Wikimedia communities and partnerships, Information on technical Aspects and tools, Strategy of Wikimedia movement, GLAM & Content copyrights, etc.

Other than that, we tried to follow the Friendly Space Policy completely. All the rules of the said policy were cleared before the event. The team tried its best to remove the language barrier for our Non-English speakers. We urged the Wikimedians to translate their content in their language for their respective communities. This practice was followed by quite a few Indic Wikimedians.

30 sessions were planned in all. Every session had a separate Etherpad link. As this was a virtual event, this facility was provided for the participants as well as the experts to interact during and after the session. Due to shortage of time, the notes and questions were made on the Etherpad. Experts and presenters wrote their answers on the Etherpad as well. All the sessions and presentations were recorded and are now available to everyone on the Commons under the name Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021.

During this three-day event, around 200 participants joined in at different times. Out of the 30 presentations, 18 presenters were from India and the remaining were international presenters.

Day 1 (Friday, 19 February, 2021):

There were 9 presentations on Day 1 of the event. After the introduction by Tito Dutta, the keynote speech was delivered by Asaf Bartov (Ijon). This was attended by 86 participants.

After the keynote speech, Dipantshu Das shed a light on ‘Attracting experts to contribute to Wikimedia’. He highlighted that it was the need of the hour. And this work would greatly help communities in India. He talked about urging academicians to contribute to Wikipedia more openly.

Next presentation was made by Sudhanshu Gautam and Angie Muigai. They talked about ‘Growing Wikipedia’s reach in India with a new Wikipedia app’ in their presentation, they talked about the importance of making Wikipedia mobile friendly with the increase of internet users in India. They mentioned that there was an opportunity to provide ideas to increase the readership.

The next two presentations under the growth track were: ‘Help your community grow’ and ‘Introducing newcomers from Wikisource to Wikipedia: A case study from Hindi Wikipedia’. The first session was a 20 minutes long presentation followed by a conversation and it was beneficial to welcome and retain new users to Wikipedia and also increase the quality of new users’ edits. The second presentation shed some light on how to retain the new users and volunteers once they join the community after attending sessions and workshops.

On day 1, there were three presentations about the partnerships: ‘Engaging with partners in the movement! WMF's approach’, ‘GLAM Mapping leads to Wikimedian in Residence’, and ‘Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners’.

In the first presentation, Praveen Das underlined the importance of working with various partners from different fields for mutual growth.

Next presenter Arya Joshi talked about the GLAM mapping research conducted by CIS - A2K and her work with Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, Pune. She talked about offline and online documentation of work and creating new opportunities for research.

The final presentation of the day was Discover Structured Data on Commons for you and your partners by Alicia Fagerving. In this session, the presenter gave recommendations to make optimum use of the Structured Data on Commons (SDC) to improve workflow. This presentation was followed by a workshop where the participants edited SDC and then there was a discussion.

Day 2 (Saturday, 20 February, 2021):

Day 2 began with a special morning session and keynote speech by Katherine Maher and Amanda Keton. In her speech, Katherine highlighted how Indian community is important to the Wikimedia movement. She also talked about the growth of emerging communities. Groups and Wikimedians who have been doing good work were also recognised. She talked about relaunching the Grant strategy. It was a fruitful session with comments and question - answers.

After the keynote address, there were 3 presentations that dealt with the technical aspect and issues.

The first talk was about Gadgets and tools for a Wikipedia Editor by Ranjith Siji. He introduced and explained different kinds of scripts and tools required to edit and browse Wikipedia.

The second session was a 60 minute long workshop followed by a conversation about Transforming Data from the Web with OpenRefine. It was conducted by Gnoeee and Ranjith Siji. This was a basic level training given to the new users of OpenRefine.

The last technical presentation was Writing UserScripts and gadgets by Jay Prakash. In his session, the presenter imparted basic to intermediate level training on writing user scripts and explaining how to use it as a gadget on Wiki.

The last 4 sessions of the day dealt with Strategy. The first presentation ‘An update from the Sustainability Initiative’ in this category was made by Gnom from Germany. He gave an update on the Sustainability Initiative. His talk consisted of an update on current developments around environmental sustainability in the Wikimedia movement.

Next presentation named ‘Grants in 2021 - What is the process?’ was by Tanveer Hasan. As a part of the Community Resources team, the presenter shared a process update and gathered feedback on how to improve the strategy relaunch process.

Next presentation titled ‘Movement Strategy and South Asia’ was done by Anna Torres, Hillun Vilayl Napis, Kayode Yussuf, Tanveer Hassan, Mehrdad Pourzaki, Ryan Merkley, and Kaarel Vaidla. In this session, all the presenters talked about the initiatives that are most relevant and important in 2021 in communities of South Asia.

The last session of the day was ‘Distributed leadership and global decision-making - the Interim Global Council’. It was delivered by Mehrdad Pourzaki, Ryan Merkley, and Kaarel Vaidla. They talked about global decision making and distributed leadership. Their aim was to acquaint the South Asian communities to the conversations, possibilities, and updates.

Day 3 (Sunday, 21 February, 2021):

The last day of the event was dedicated to ‘International Mother Language Day’. The day began with 2 consecutive sessions by Dipantshu Das named ‘Copyright, Copyleft, and Wikimedia movement’ and ‘Building a diamond open access journal on Wikimedia platform’. In the first session, the presenter talked about the importance of intellectual property rights and copyright to the Wikimedia movement. In the second session, the presenter talked about the importance of having diamond open access journals especially in India as the article processing charges for open access journals can be very high in India due to conversion rates.

Next session was a workshop conducted by Jayanta Nath on Wikisource. Another workshop was conducted at the same time by Rangan Datta on Wikivoyage.

Next 4 presentations on Day 3 were community based. The first presentation in this series was titled ‘Internship Program in Tamil Wiki Projects’ and was delivered by Neechalkaran. It was a knowledge sharing session on the internship program for college students.

The second presentation was made by Subodh Kulkarni and the title was ‘Re-licensing and Digitisation process in Maharashtra’. The presenter explained the relicensing process taking place in Maharashtra Marathi community, authors, copyright holders, and organisations.

The third session was conducted by Ziko and was named ‘Rules that every wiki needs’. In this session, the presenter introduced the topic ‘law and rules every wiki needs’.

The last session in the Community category was ‘100wikidays’ and it was conducted by Sangram Senapati. In this session, the presenter shared his story of writing an article for Wiki each and every day for 100 days.

The last four presentations of the day were dedicated to language. In the session titled ‘Servants Of Knowledge initiative for Digital Archiving Kannada & other Indic language content’, Omshivprakash talked about the impact of digitisation of art, history, and culture on language preservation. He primarily talked about the Kannada language.

Next session was on ‘Spell4Wiki - Audio upload tool for Wikimedia commons & Multilingual dictionary based on Wiktionary’ by Manimaran. In this presentation, he introduced the Spell4wiki app. He also described the features and benefits of using the said app.

Next session was conducted by invited guest experts from France. The session was about ‘Lingua Libre - record your language’ and ‘Lingua Libre bot and recording wizard’. It was conducted by Adélaïde Calais, Poslovitch, and Yug. Lingua Libre is a website created by Wikimedia France to record vocabulary. Its aim is to build a collaborative and multilingual bank. In the session, the two tools used in the Lingua Libre project, the Record Wizard and the Lingua Libre Bot, were also introduced.

The last session before the closing keynote speech was ‘Section Translation: New Ways to Contribute on Mobile Devices’. It was presented by Amir Aharoni, NGkountas, and Pau Giner. The presenters talked about the content translation extension. Further, they talked about two new features that are to be deployed that can be used by more people in many countries and languages.

The closing keynote speech was given by Tarunno. He spoke about ‘International Mother Language Day - The love for Language and a sound of silence’ The event ended with a closing session by Tito Dutta.

Hurdles we faced: At the beginning, we found it difficult to form a team to organise the event. Due to the pandemic, we were unsure about approaching the wikimedians and were also worried about the participation. As it was a virtual event, the internet was the most important factor in it. Many participants and volunteers faced problems due to low internet connectivity.

Our achievements: This was the first ever national level virtual event conducted in India by A2K. We were able to create a platform for the wikimedians to interact. Though it was initially a national event, we were able to get international guests as well.

We received positive feedback and precious suggestions from the participants. Following are some quotes:

“Productive, helpful sessions. Was very helpful to me personally. Good effort by all involved. If I were to suggest improvements, Would have liked slots for conversations, and networking sessions. A "state of nation" like updates by projects would have helped too. “

“Thanks a lot again, this was a very good event.

Online events are not the same as physical ones but it was still very interesting and useful.”

“I was a presenter and presented a workshop on Wikivoyage. It was a nice program and I'm looking forward to more such virtual and physical events.”

We also received some feedback videos that were an appreciation for A2K. Following are a couple of links:

Manavpreet Kaur

Mehrdad Pourzaki

We also received audio feedback from Ashwin Bandur.

What’s next?!: After all the stumbles and hurdles and achievements we had in Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2021, we have already started planning for Wikimedia Wikimeet India 2022. Tito Dutta has written about the planning for next year’s meet.

“It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.”

- Carl Friedrich Gauss

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-wikimeet-india-2021-report

Wikimedia Technical Workshop at Savitribai Phule Pune University

manasarao — 2017-12-19T16:03:48Z

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.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-technical-workshop-at-savitribai-phule-pune-university

Wikimedia Summit India 2019

Admin — 2019-03-03T05:31:35Z

CIS-A2K team is organizing a two-day Wikimedia Summit event for the participants taking part in the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin.

Wikimedia Summit India 2019 is an national-level event which intends to prepare representatives of various user groups, affliates, committees, groups, and teams associated to Wikimedia foundation from India who are going to attend in Wikimedia Summit 2019 and helping them understand about Movement Strategy process.

The Wikimedia Summit 2019 (WMSummit 19) will be designed along the needs and status of the Movement Strategy Process and its Working Groups, as well as the participants’ input. The 2019 event will be an important milestone of the Movement Strategy Process.

Wikimedia Summit India 2019 will serve following goals:

Helping participants understand Ongoing phase in movement strategy process: Some of the participants are participating in Movement strategy process' ongoing phase in different capacities, while others might not have a good understanding about it. This conference aims to improve understanding about strategy process especially regarding 9 strategy Working groups and their scoping.
Preparation for WMSummit 19: The Summit will be an occasion where the affiliates’ and WMF’s leadership will come together to check in on the broader direction of the Strategy Process, with the opportunity to reinforce their co-ownership in this process. All Working Groups will have reached the point in their work where they prepare to draft and discuss first recommendations within their thematic area. From Indian Wikimedia movement's perspective, this offers them an opportunity to share their experience in different thematic areas of strategy process and help the broader movement strategy to have different perspectives. Also, this helps Indian Wikimedia movement to utilize experiences and learnings from different areas of Wikimedia movement and utilize them to grow the movement in India exponantially. Wikimedia Summit India 2019 also aims on gathering the collective and diverse experiences and learnings of Indian Wikimedia movement and understand where they can help in movement strategy process.

Schedule

Friday - 15 March 2019

6:30 PM to 8 PM: Introductions

Saturday - 16 March 2019

9:30 AM to 10 AM: Introduction to WMSummit India 2019
10 AM to 11:30 AM: Strategy Process: Necessity, Strategic direction 2030, Timeline
11:30 AM to 1 PM: Reinforcing co-ownership in Strategy process: How communities and affliates can be part of process
1 PM to 1:30 PM: Lunch
1:30 PM to 2:30 PM: Potential Impact of Strategy process
2:30 PM to 5 PM: Introducing various working groups: Working group representatives will be requested to explain over video calls

Sunday - 17 March 2019

10 AM to 10:20 AM: Working group scoping documents' introduction
10:20 AM to 12 PM: Various community learnings and to what working group's scope they matter: Group activity
12 PM to 1 PM:
1 PM to 1:30 PM: Lunch
1:30 to 2:30: Way forward: Consulting their community and framing agenda before WMSummit 2019

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/wikimedia-summit-india-2019

Wikimedia Education SAARC Conference 2019

subodh — 2019-07-04T02:48:58Z

Christ University in association with the Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) organized a conference, from 20 - 22 June 2019, at Christ University, Bengaluru. Forty-nine Wikimedians from four countries (Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India) participated in the event.

The meta report published on Wikimedia Blog can be accessed here.

CIS-A2K is working with various universities and educational institutions to develop content in Wikimedia projects. One such institutional partner, Christ (deemed to be university) has taken the initiative to organize Wikimedia Education SAARC conference in association with CIS-A2K and Wikipedia & Education User Group. The participants included one member from Sri Lanka, four members from Nepal, seven members from Bangladesh and 37 members from India. In all 14 language communities were represented.

The broad objectives of the conference were:

To know the nature of education programs being conducted.
To share the best practices.
Discuss the challenges like retention and quality.
Explore the methodologies to evaluate & measure the work being done.
Enhancing the community involvement in the education programmes.

The applications for participation and thematic submissions were invited from Wikimedians of SAARC countries. The selection committee comprised of representatives from Wikimedia Foundation and community conducted the scrutiny. The scholarships were provided to 49 selected participants. In all 12 submissions on diverse topics were received from different language communities. Wikimedia Foundation’s Partnerships & Global reach team member Praveen Das, Trust & Safety team member Neha Nair and advisor for this conference Tanveer Hasan were also present for some of the sessions during the conference.

The following report gives a summary of all the deliberations at the conference.

Day 1, 20 June 2019

The inaugural session was graced by chief guest Dr. Ramesh Sharma, an expert in open education and Associate Professor of Instructional Design at Ambedkar University Delhi along with Dr. Anil Pinto Registrar of Christ University who was instrumental in launching Wikipedia in education for the students. The other persons on the dais were Tito Dutta, Program Manager CIS-A2K, Dr. Mallika Krishnaswami, Dr. John Joseph Kennedy, and Dr. Sebastian K A.

In this session the speakers stressed upon the advancement of language, to adopt latest knowledge sharing technologies, innovation in education programmes and collaborations with multifaceted institutions to actualize new ideas. The journey of Christ University regarding the Wikimedia education program during the last six years was also elaborated.

The inaugural session was followed by a session on Code of Conduct and Friendly space policies by the Response Team of CIS-A2K. The objectives, diversity statement, general community guidelines, unacceptable behaviour and process of reporting described in CoC were discussed. To explain the motivation and hierarchy of Wikipedia in Education at Wikimedia movement the following sessions were conducted during the conference.

In the keynote address, Dr. Ramesh Sharma revealed many facets of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the field of academic courses, science, mathematics, music, multimedia etc. He shared many experiences of working with Open Education Resource University (OERU) and appealed for future collaborations. He also deliberated upon some wider topics like Government education policies, licenses and quality improvement framework for OERs. In a remote session with Nichole Saad, Senior Programme Manager (Wikipedia Education Programme) from Wikimedia Foundation, she explained the rationale behind the Education in Wikimedia projects and the execution process.

The session on Wikipedia & Education User Group focused on the global user group that supports the work around Wikimedia and Education in various capacities. One of the Board members of user group, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga gave an introduction to the user group, its background, vision, and objectives. Later the functioning of the group was also explained including the membership process and the governance. The three focus areas of the group were explained in detail — community, resources, and outreach. Later, the participants were briefed on various ways in which they can get involved with the group. These included joining the newly formed working groups for each focus area, taking up membership, and also attending the monthly open meetings held by the group, and share their stories to the broader community. The session ended with a brief upon areas where community members could seek the support of the group, such as mentorship, securing resources, advocacy, etc.

The participants were introduced to each other through their work. Session on sharing of various programmes being conducted, it’s learning, challenges and way ahead were very informative and stimulating. The participants from different language communities explained the present status of the education programmes being conducted with institutions. The challenges like lack of initiative, the paucity of resources, trust in Wikipedia and consistency were discussed collectively. New and innovative ideas that were not tried so far were also put forth by the members making it an interesting session.

The last session of the day one was group work on the theme - ' कल आज और कल ' : Past Present Future. The participants were divided into eight groups. Enthusiasm was very high during discussions on the past, present & future of education programmes with the community. The groups collectively worked on the poster presentations.

Day 2, 21 June 2019

The second day started with an interactive session on the topic - The interesting ways of Introducing Wikimedia projects (Wikidata, Wikisource, etc.) into classrooms. The participants shared their experiences with different entry point events other than Wikipedia. Many felt that Wikipedia is complicated to start with. The community also reacted strongly sometimes due to the quality of the articles. This discussion was followed by promoting planned growth process for bridging the gender gap.

The conference submissions on education projects were presented in two parallel tracks. According to interest, the members attended the various sessions. The highlights of the presentations are given below.

Goals of Wikimedia + Education: Content, Retention, Skills: The session started off by asking participants about why they do an education programme, and what else can we include as the goals for any EduWiki activity. Different approaches for achieving each of these goals, and how each of these goals affects the rest were discussed. This included a quick brainstorming on how communities should collaborate with the EduWiki activities so that it adds value to its goals. Eventually, the presenter along with the participants realized that retention of users should be prioritized over the other two goals to easily reach all the three goals. Caution points regarding assignments like copyvio, reliable references were also discussed. The scale of the activity and scoping student interest are also an important criterion.

Challenges of growing communities : Make Wikipedia trustworthy to educators: In this session, challenges before Bangla Wikipedia were discussed. There is a need to collaborate with institutions and capacity building of editors to improve the quality of articles.

Non-Conventional methods of knowledge expansion by programs involving Wikimedia and Education: The formal approaches like giving compulsory tasks for students will not work in the Wikimedia movement. We can expect better outcomes by adopting non-formal methods like digital skills development and team building through collaborative work.

Wikimedia Program Outreach Mentorship: Proper awareness and detailed planning of resources are the key aspects of outreach programmes.

School Wiki in Kerala: State government education department of Kerala has developed School Wiki with Wikimedians in Kerala. In all 15000 articles of schools have been created with their history, location details, alumni, maps, cultural activities, photos and creative works of students like stories, poems and paintings. The innovative project - Folk encyclopedia is also shaping up. The linkages with Malayalam Wikipedia are being established slowly. As the students are now aware of the Wiki environment, there are chances of getting good editors in future.

Wikipedia in School: State government of Tamil Nadu took the initiative to organise capacity building programme for teachers through the EDUSAT on a mass scale. This Wikipedia training started in 2016 and till now 40,000 teachers are trained. Due to this, teachers became active on Wikipedia.

Retaining Tulu Language and culture: the ways and means: Karavali Wikimedians user group is active in the coastal part of Southern Karnataka and Northern Kerala. It is focusing on the preservation of language and culture. They have started the first physical Wiki library with 650 books. Other innovative activities are ‘Karavali Wikimedians to Home’ and Text-Performance-Documentation and Reconstruction of rare Folk Performing art Sidda Vesha.

VVIT WikiConnect : A Year in review : The coordinators of Wikiclub presented the activities conducted in the last two years. The focus is on capacity building of active students, leadership development, quality of content and retention. According to the scoping of students’ interest, various events were conducted like Edit-a-thons, Photowalks, Wikidata workshop, 1lib1ref session, Wikimedia Strategy Salon, Mini Media Wiki training, Thematic workshops, etc. The user survey was also done to get the feedback of students.

Wikipedia Student Association at Alva's College Moodubidire: The regular Wiki activities have resulted in active Students’ Association at Alva’s College. The major activities are publishing of wall magazine - Wiki Suddi : Mundu and newspaper - Wiki Samachaara, Wikicamp and internship by Department of Journalism.

Wikipedia in Education at Christ University: The coordinator presented the journey of six years programme at Christ. The process of engaging students from day one to the last day of the second semester was explained. The students learn digital skills, language typing, writing articles on the topic of interest and respective stream. From writing in the sandbox, they even progress up to documenting case study on research related to Wikipedia. The structure of monitoring and evaluation systems within the department was elaborated. The community engagement aspect was also discussed in detail. The challenges and the preparations for the next curve of WEP Christ were presented.

In the last session of the day, groups presented their work through posters visualising ‘Past, Present & Future’ of the education programmes. The interaction and loud thinking provided many ideas to be taken further for implementation.

The second day ended with Cultural programme by Christ University students. The vibrant performances of music and dance were enjoyed by the participants.

Day 3, 22 June 2019

The day started with early morning ‘Bird Walk’ at the university campus with rich biodiversity. Seven enthusiasts joined this walk and captured images of 22 different species of birds which is documented on eBird portal.

The last day of the conference started with a remote presentation on OER by Wayne Macintosh (Director OER Foundation, and UNESCO - ICDE Chair in OER). Wayne started with an overview of demand for education vis-a-vis the infrastructure available in the global south. The fundamentals of OERs, OER Foundation and OER University were elaborated. He stressed the need to start at least two OER courses by every Indian University. They can join the OERu network for free to host the courses. The credit system for various micro courses was explained through examples. He also discussed the WikiEducator programme and appealed Wikimedians to join this evolving community as all courses run using media-wiki software. Regulatory issues for universities to adopt OER courses are to be looked into in Indian context. Dr Ramesh Sharma assured to facilitate in this matter.

The next session, ‘Strategy in Wikimedia and Education’ by Pavan Santhosh intended to help participants understand the importance brewing Strategy and figuring out a Big dream in their programs. This session started with demystifying the word strategy. With examples from the Wikimedia movement that participants can relate, the presenter explained how can a Big dream help prioritizing activities and programs. Later in an interactive part of the session, participants came up with ideas to run a strategy process in their programs and communities.

Lively group activity - ‘Revolving cafe’ happened after the strategy session. The activity was planned around five themes - Program and Events Dashboard, Wikidata, Communication & Blogging, GLAM in Education and Support structures (WMF grants and CIS Requests page). As the groups were small, the participants utilised this opportunity to clear doubts through one to one dialogue. The session was mutually beneficial for group leaders as well as participants.

After the cafe activity, Wikimedia Education Staff member Sailesh Patnaik deliberated upon the outreach and communications aspects. He stressed on using social media effectively and give publicity to innovative activities through newsletters. He also explained about upcoming Greenhouse pilot.

The last session, ‘Wikisource in education’ was conducted by Jayanta Nath. He explained how Wikisource activity is complementary to the qualitative growth of Wikipedia. The basics of Wikisource like licenses and workflow were discussed in detail. Various ways to combine the education programme with Wikisource were explored in interaction.

The conference closing ceremony was meaningful with spontaneous feedback from the participants.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-june-22-2019-wikimedia-education-saarc-conference-2019