Improving hearing health content in Brazil
In March 2023, Wiki Movimento Brasil supported a Wikipedia Workshop at the 38th International Audiology Meeting held in Florianópolis, Brazil. The event gathered almost 60 people to edit and improve hearing health content on Wikipedia with the help of a dozen of experienced Wikimedians. The participants were thrilled with all the possibilities Wikipedia offers for education and scientific dissemination purposes.
Wikipedia at the 38th International Audiology Meeting
The Workshop was part of the #Wiki4WorldHearingDay2023 campaign, one of the official activities of the 2023 World Hearing Day. In total, the campaign reached the mark of 50 new articles created, 288 articles edited, 1.67k editions in total and 142 editors. All the campaign's metrics are available at the "Outreach Wikipedia Edit-a-thon 4 World Hearing Day 2023" Dashboard page.
The aim of the workshop was to familiarize new and experienced editors with improving content on hearing and universal health on Wikipedia. Participants learned the basics of editing Wikipedia, followed by hands-on editing with expert guidance and support. We would like to individually thank Fernanda Zucki, Hector Matos, Lilian Jacob, Adriano Arrigo, Priscila Cruz, Maria Julia F. Cardoso, João Peschanski, Felipe Lima, and Thais Morata (in the order they appear at the organizers' photograph displayed above) that made this possible.
Strategies for using Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Projects as pedagogical tools were also discussed at the event. Wikimedia Projects were also present at the conference program in several round table discussions, panels, and poster presentations. Even Shelly Chadha, technical lead for ear and hearing care at World Health Organization, spoke about the advantages of using Wikipedia in promoting quality and accessible health information.
The workshop is part of a project funded by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation, Brazil) in 2022, in which researchers from six Brazilian universities are collaborating with Wiki Movimento Brazil to develop a MOOC at Wikiversity as an introduction to Audiology (study of hearing) – a work in progress.
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The Group of Brazilian Wikimedians with Shelly Chadha (OMS) -
The participants during the workshop -
Workshop in course -
Wikipedia matches with Education -
Wiki Movimento Brasil's stand at the conference
Extension course on Modern History using Wikipedia
March 27th, Wiki Movimento Brasil and the University of Brasilia (UnB) had their fist meeting of the ten-month program coordinated by Prof. Marina Thomé Bezzi of the Department of History that aims to use Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool.
The program of the extension course consists of creating and editing articles related to the modern era (1400-1700) in the Lusophone Wikipedia by undergraduate students at UnB. In addition, the project will promote internal work meetings, student training in digital humanities, and editing-creation on Wikipedia. Wiki Movimento Brasil will also co-facilitate workshops and events aimed at the community outside UnB for their training as editors-users of the platform in a dialogical and collaborative process.
The team consists of 8 undergraduates, mostly from History major courses, and Wiki Movimento Brasil's Education and Scientific Dissemination Officer, Amanda Chevtchouk Jurno. There will be a selection for a fellow Wikimedian in Residence to be trained by WMB to help with the technical and wiki parts. The events will be held every 2-3 months, target an audience of approximately 50 participants, and the work meetings will be held monthly. We are very excited and looking forward to all the possibilities that this partnership promises.
XXII Wikimedia & Education Workshop
Elisa Frühauf Garcia, Associated Professor of the Department of History at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF - Brazil) was the invitee of the XXII Wikimedia & Education Workshop. The event was held on March 23rd and was the first one on the new time and day: Thursdays, 5pm (UTC-3).
Prof.Elisa talk was "History of Indians on Wikipedia: reflections based on editing in the classroom". She spoke about how Wikipedia can be a powerful venue for sharing information about people erased by the traditional dominant history. It is also a medium to disseminate scientific production and finds in a more rapid pace than academic publications.
After her presentation, the WMB's Education and Scientific Dissemination Officer gave a tutorial on the educational use of the Outreach Dashboard tool to the participants.
New paper mentioning Brazilian Wikidata initiatives
Shani Evenstein Sigalov and Rafi Nachmias had their paper "Investigating the potential of the semantic web for education: Exploring Wikidata as a learning platform" published in the Education and Information Technology academic journal on 13 March 2023.
It discusses how Semantic Web can be used as a learning platform in the context of education, focusing on Wikidata as a prime example. The authors describe a methodology of multiple case studies demonstrating Wikidata uses by early adopters, including four Brazilian cases. They are the case of the Municipal elections and reconciling data from heterogeneous databases case, both held in the School of Journalism, Faculdade Cásper Líbero; digitally recreating lost Museum artifacts, at Brazil’s national museum; and tracking the COVID-19 pandemic with Wikidata. The results of the research shed light on Wikidata’s potential as a lifelong learning process, enabling opportunities for improved Data Literacy and a worldwide social impact.
Click here to read the full paper.