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Wiki Awareness Campaign Karnal 2018

Event details

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Program

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15 May 2018

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18 May 2018

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Brief report

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The detailed report can be found here.

Outcome

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We planned this event to help these underprivileged girls discover a new way of learning and the results were amazing.

Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
50 Participants 59 Participants We had planned to include only 50 students from Class 12th but then the students from Class 11th requested to be included.
20 New Users 58 New Users Only one of the Students had heard of/used Wikipedia before the Workshop

A post event feedback session was also organised on May 18, 2018. A quiz was conducted from the study material provided in the workshop and all the student participated in it too.

What worked well?

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  1. Audience: Working with the girls was a wonderful experience. They were very excited to learn and follower the instructions carefully.Their enthusiasm was so high that we had more participants than we intended to take in this workshop. They even shared their experience with their families and thus, created further awareness.
  2. Speakers: During the feedback survey we expected all the students to say that they liked the commons session more, as we had it in open air and took photographs, but to our surprise, many students said that they liked the Hindi Wikipedia editing session a lot. This itself speaks for our speakers, who had the participants fall in love with Wikipedia.
  3. Additional Speakers: We planned our event with two speakers but as chance would have some Punjabi Wikimedians came to Karnal on their way to Delhi. We asked them to join us and thus, had an additional lecture on the importance of languages by the senior most Punjabi Wikimedian Charan Gill.
  4. Mobile Phones: Although not a part of the plan mobile phones became an integral part of the event due to a technical issue. But this soon turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the benefits were manifold: a) mobile phones are more accessible to these girls while computers are available in the school only and that too for a very limited time; b) Apart from learning to use and edit Wikipedia the also learnt how to upload pictures to WikiCommons; c) We could conduct an open air technical session about photography and WikiCommons as we were no more restricted to a laboratory.
  5. Quiz and Prizes: While concluding the lectures and technical session on May 15, 2018, we informed the participants that a quiz will be held on May 18, 2018 and the winners will be rewarded. This encouraged the girls further and they came prepared. Everyone wanted to participate so instead of forming teams we had an open quiz. The responses were great and we had two winners.
  6. Coverage of Syllabus on Wikipedia: A list of topics from the syllabus of Class 12th was uploaded to Hindi Wikipedia village pump. The volunteers from the Hindi community linked many of them to the relevant articles. Thus, creating a base for the students to start their search.
  7. Staff cooperation: While the girls were eager to learn, their teachers left no stone unturned in helping them do so. Right form creating email addresses for the students to providing gadgets and other support they were all unflinching in their efforts. It was due to their promptness and help from User:Satdeep Gill that we could create the User IDs for the students beforehand. Their support was vital in the success of this event.
  8. Food Management: The items in the refreshments package for the students were selected by holding a discussion with them prior to the event and the staff helped in the arrangements. This reduced the workload for us.

What did not work so well?

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  1. Computers: Although the school promised to provide us a computer laboratory, equipped with 22 computers, for the technical sessions yet the systems failed.We also had arranged more than 10 laptops and other gadgets for the students to work on.
  2. Projector: Although the school offered two projectors yet none was of any use. One was out of order and the other worked with only pendrives.
  4. Very few Volunteers: The Wikimedia Movement is new in Karnal and we were short of organizers. The event would not have been a success if the school staff had not supported us . We need to recruit more people to help with organizing such events.
  5. Lack of Wikipedia Awareness in Teachers: Although the staff was really helpful yet their lack of Wikipedia awareness lead to a lot of confusion. For the most of the time students as well as teachers thought that we wanted to teach them topics that their teachers found tough to teach. It lead to a lot of confusion.

What would you do differently next time?

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  1. Start Early: Next time we'll start early so as to have ample time to handle things that go wrong. Also, this way we'll have time to cover more topics from their Syllabi and possibly in Hindi.
  2. Include Teachers: We'll try and include teachers also so that they can help the students after the Workshop.
  3. Have a designated Teacher Coordinator: We'll try that at least one teacher who designated as co-ordinator by the school. This would reduce the workload on us.
  4. Rent a Computer Laboratory and Projector: The state of instruments in schools is more or less the same in Haryana. So we'll try to rent some private computer facility for the day of the event as explaining different tools is easier on computers. Also, we'll try and have our own projector.
  5. Have More Volunteer: The scale and success of an event is directly proportional to the number of dedicated volunteers working for it. Therefore, we too will try to add more local volunteers to the movement.

Media Coverage

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The event was covered in various Hindi language dailies. Some of these are:

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Day 1
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    Group photograph of wiki awareness campaign at Govt. Girls Sr. Sec. School Karnal
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    Dr. Aniruddha Kumar demonstrating editing on Hindi Wikipedia
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    Dr.Manavpreet Kaur discussing diversity
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    WikiCommons demonstration by Dr. Manavpreet Kaur in the technical session
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    Students in Hindi Wikipedia editing session
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    Charan Gill discussing the importance of languages with students
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    Students and Wikimedians
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    Goodies
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    Certificate distribution
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    Certificate distribution
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    Group photograph of students of Govt. Girls Sr. Sec. School Karnal
Day 2
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    Winner of Wikipedia Quiz
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    Winner of Wikipedia Quiz
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    Organizers thanking the Principal
 
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Finances

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This event was funded by the WMF Rapid grant under the New Reader program.

  1. Student's Kit = ₹3782
  2. Food = ₹5965
  3. Travel for Speaker = ₹1224
  4. Banners = ₹944
  5. Stickers = ₹1000
  6. Prizes = ₹885
  7. Wikipedia Pens = ₹840
  8. Certificates = ₹1382

Total = ₹16002.

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