Education/News/March 2024/Wiki Movement Brazil will once again support the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad
Wiki Movement Brazil will once again support the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad
Wiki Movement Brazil will once again support the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad
Wiki Movement Brazil will once again support the Brazilian Linguistics Olympiad (OBL) by offering tutorials and assistance in creating and managing the Outreach Dashboard. This will be the second edition of Olympiad, one of the four Olympic activities of the Autumn School of Linguistics (ELO), and is carried out by students participating in ELO, considered the last phase of the Olympics.
During the event, participants will be mentored by Wiki Movement Brazil staff and volunteers as part of the program. Additionally, OBL now has a page on Wikiversity. In this activity, each student writes an encyclopedic article about a language and then publishes it on Wikipedia in Portuguese. With the help of tutors, a list of mandatory topics, and a bibliography selected by the Olympiad organizers, students produce high-quality work in just two weeks of dedication.
This process results in great linguistic and writing knowledge for the participants, as well as in a benefit to the community with the dissemination of quality information about the different languages of the world. Recently, on March 2, Wiki Movement Brazil conducted training for the OBL team, with the participation of 14 members. During the training, Alexander Hilsenbeck, Education and Scientific Dissemination manager, emphasized the importance of educational activities. OBL organizer Artur Corrêa Souza presented the details of Obelepédia, while Lucas Piatá addressed issues related to writing articles on Wikipedia, including style, references, and sources. Valério Andrade de Melo also contributed with the discussion about the Wikipedia community, common questions, and recurring problems.
WMB conducts workshops for Brazilian universities
Throughout February and March, Wiki Movement Brazil conducted workshops for Brazilian universities. See more information below.
1st MediaWiki Workshop Indigenous Women on Wikipedia Laboratory
The event was a collaborative workshop focused on analyzing and improving the main page of the Indigenous Women's Laboratory on Wikipedia. Participants met to identify and discuss possible enhancements to the page, to enrich the content and representation of Indigenous women on the platform.
The workshop aimed to promote a collective review that values the diversity and accuracy of the information presented, helping to achieve a more complete and faithful representation of the contributions of Indigenous women to society and culture. During the workshop, the main page of the Indigenous Women's Laboratory on Wikipedia was collectively analyzed to identify areas for improvement.
This workshop was conducted as a part of the Wiki Movement Brazil partnership with the program Teaching the History of Indians, which is a part of the course taught by Professor Elisa Garcia at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). The initiative seeks to promote greater visibility related to ethnic and gender history for Indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Edit-a-tona Laboratory of History and Theory of Art.
This event aimed to encourage undergraduate students of History of Art at the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), who are enrolled in the "Laboratory of History and Theory of Art" course taught by Professor Dr. Fernanda Pequeno. The objective was to improve their entries about modern and contemporary Brazilian artists to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia. The initiative aims to expand the dissemination and knowledge about works and biographies of great importance for the history of Brazilian art on an international level.
The action seeks to reduce the gender issue on Wikipedia, which is well documented in data analyses and studies. It shows that there are fewer biographical articles about women on the plataform, and the existing ones are, mostly, less extensive and often equipped with gender prejudices.
The first meeting was held on March 15 and featured Michaela Blanc, Regional Ambassador of Art+Feminism, who led a session on Free Knowledge and the Wikimedia Movement. This was followed by an introduction to the Art+Feminism project. On the occasion, Project Assistant Juliana Cunha gave a presentation of the main Wikimedia projects, representing Wiki Movement Brazil.
A second meeting is scheduled to April 12th. Participants will have the opportunity to further their knowledge and contribute practically to the expansion and improvement of related articles on Wikipedia.
Wikimedia & Education Workshops
The XXXI Wikimedia & Education Workshop took place recently, including a presentation by Professor Dr. Eliene Araújo from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) on the topic of "Wikipedia in Health Education: A View from Students and the Community." The presentation focused the integration of Wikipedia as an educational tool in health education and explored the perceptions and experiences of students and the community regarding the use of the platform to improve understanding and dissemination of knowledge in the area of audiology. The benefits of this collaborative approach were discussed, as well as the challenges and opportunities for teaching about health education through Wikipedia.
After the presentation, Fabiana Dias, Project Assistant at Wiki Movement Brazil (WMB), provided instructions on how to insert a wiki-education program into WikiConecta. The objective of the workshops is to form a network of support and exchange of experiences between educators. Each event features a presentation by an educator or researcher who already uses Wikimedia platforms for educational purposes, as well as a practical tutorial led by a Wikimedia expert.
Resource of the month: The use of Wikipedia as a strategy for disseminating knowledge and promoting health: evaluating the quality of articles and other metrics in the health area
This month's resource tip is the doctoral thesis "The use of Wikipedia as a strategy for knowledge dissemination and health promotion: article quality assessment and other metrics in health topics". The work was authored by researcher and Wikimedist Alexandre Alberto Pascotto Montilha (Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru – USP/Bauru). Below is the summary of the thesis:
This study is aimed at examining the feasibility, reach and potential impact of using Wikipedia as a tool for health promotion and strategy for knowledge dissemination. Activities involved editing existing Portuguese-languageWikipedia health articles, as well as translating English-language articles to Portuguese during 6 online campaigns held between 2018 and 2021 at Bauru School of Dentistry and 2 global awareness campaigns: Wiki4WorldHearingDay2019 and Wiki4YIOS2020. Wikipedia efforts were carried out by undergraduate students in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and specialization students in Dentistry at Bauru School of Dentistry and at Federal University of Santa Catarina. Among new and existing Wikipedia articles, the groups edited several articles, which attracted more than 330,000 views during the set tracking periods (from 30 days before the beginning of the activities to 30 days after their ending). Moreover, the quality indexes for pages either created or expanded were improved in almost all situations, by registering an increase rate up to 300% (50% or 30% on average for pre-existing articles). Wikipedia centered activities expanded the availability of quality scientific content to the public. Students worked in audiology, dentistry and public health topics, by assessing existing information, validating it, creating new content, and sharing information steps that contributed to the mission of knowledge dissemination and health promotion for the benefit of society. The tracking of activities also pointed out to the importance of references in article quality assessment, so that the need to implement a better software tool aimed at searching for references to Wikipedia articles became more evident.
WikiConecta: the connection between Wikimedia and Education in Brazil
WikiConecta is an online and asynchronous course designed for educators who want to incorporate Wikimedia projects into their teaching, especially in university extension programs. It also serves as a platform to learn about wiki-education programs and activities throughout Brazil. In Module 6 of WikiConecta, the Wikimedia and Education in Brazil unit displays the locations where wiki-education programs are being carried out, with pins indicating the geolocation of the educational institutions involved.
In this unit, the activities carried out by WMB in the area of education are presented with an overview of wiki-education programs across the country. So far, only programs carried out from 2023 onwards have been included, which total more than 20 programs distributed in 10 Brazilian states and the Federal District.
If you click on the pins, you will be able to access more information about programs such as Editatona Arq-a-Ton 2023, which is associated with the Universidade Federal do Piauí. The program involved 28 students who added 103K bytes, made 248 edits, and improved eight articles. Another impactful program is Modern History I, linked to the History Department of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo. The activity brought together 16 editors who edited 25 articles, of which 23 were created from scratch. Also, they added 23 references, with a total of 461 edits.
Apart from assisting educators interested in Wikimedia, WikiConecta also creates a network of education professionals to facilitate knowledge exchange. By sharing experiences and challenges, it enables the search for solutions collaboratively, creating innovative educational program formats and encouraging the use of digital platforms in teaching.