CEE/Newsletter/November 2017/Contents/Greece report

Greece report

Wikimedia Community User Group Greece: From monuments to gender gap and beyond

By Geraki

WikiFemHack

Presentation during WikiFemHack

Wikimedia User Group Greece organised the WikiFemHack editathon/hackathon. The event showcased Gender Gap, focused on finding the roots of this phenomenon and ways to mitigate it. Among others, our main goal was to welcome women, inform them and increase their participation in technology, programming and in Wikipedia. WikiFemHack aimed at designers, scientists, educators, students and graduate and PhD students with no or a lot of experience in similar projects. Our aim was to inform and exchange views and opinions so we could, through conversation, take a step towards mitigating the Gender Gap in Technology. Everyone that attended had the chance to learn about the rules and code behind Wikipedia and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, enrich the Greek Wikipedia with content and also show off their coding skills.

CorfuPedia

One of the CorfuPedia teams

CorfuPedia, a student project with main purpose to introduce students to Wikipedia, via creating new articles in the history of the island of Corfu was organised in cooperation with Wikimedia Community User Group Greece. The participants were 106 students, 4 teachers of informatics, 4 teachers of greek language and literature, 2 english language teachers, 2 french language teachers, and 1 german language teacher. Marios Magioladitis provided constant support while User:Geraki, User:Ggia organised online Wikipedia tutorials via Skype. The results of CorfuPedia were presented in October in an International Conference on Education held in Larisa, Greece.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 winners

Winning photo: Vaulted ceiling of the Church of Our Lady of the Castle

The organizing committee of Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 in Greece announced the 10 winning photos. The photos were already submitted to the international committee. The awards event is expected in December.

Participation in conferences

VoxxedDays is a developers' conference. A number of free seats for VoxxedDays Thessaloniki 2017 were provided for WikiFemHack participants, and from the other side, WMUGGR participated with a booth in the main event.
Fosscomm is an annual open source/ free software conference established in 2008. Once more WMUGGR participated with a booth, handouts, and a presentation from Marios Magioladitis.
User:Geraki made a presentation at the Panhellenic Conference of Academic Libraries: "Collaboration, contribution and use of Wikidata and Wikipedia for Academic Libraries".

Wikipedia Community Schools Association Greece: From 8-year-olds to senior citizens

By Manos Kefalas

Wikipedia School

Wikipedia School, instituded in Greece since May 2014 as free systematic courses of teaching and mentoring writing in Wikipedia, continued in October 2017 in Athens. This time the courses were time bound to one month period only. Experienced wikipedians watched the seminar too and benefited from the mentoring. Wikipedia School is based on tools developed to provide equity in participation for everyone and mentoring on how to live and collaborate well in Wikipedia, in addition to editing skills developed in classes. WCSAG has been recently awarded for Wikipedia School contrubution in Education during the annual Volunteerism Festival in Athens, as in 2016 8-10% of new Greek Wikipedia articles were written by people benefited from these classes.

Primary education

Results of a class of 26 8-year-olds case study who produced 11 articles that remained online, under an official school program during Spring 2017 were officially presented to primary educators in Athens by the school councilor who supervised the classes, in Autumn and educators from this conference day participated in Wikipedia School courses of October 2017. Results were announced in all conferences for Wikipedia School, in Autumn.

Online courses

Wikipedia School has been using online Skype courses since 2015. In October 2017 groups were formed in Skype where screens were shared between participants, so that everyone had their turn on getting experience and giving example. Online courses continue on December, leveled now by editor experience.

Senior citizens

Senior citizens are usually given classes on how to use email and social media, in Greece. Contributing in Wikipedia while at the same time they are being mentored in academic-like type of embracing and interacting with knowledge, is pioneering in Greece. WCSAG tried this after the succes with 8-year-old article creators, using more than 900 hours of accumulated experience in teaching people of all ages online and offline. Senior citizens from Grava, an area in Athens where chances for good education are average, participate in Wikipedia editing classes since October 2017 and courses are still ongoing.

Participation in conferences

Dare to dream III conference, by Maria Kapetanidou, School Councilor in Athens, (September)
Skywalker Education Festival in Athens, (September)
eTwinning 2017 Conference for Education, in Athens, (October)
HIGGS NGO Fair in Athens, (October)
Informatics Conference in Pireaus University, (October)