Wikipedia Community Schools Association Greece/Reporting/2017

Finances

Financial report Wikipedia Community Schools Association Greece April 6, 2017 - December 31, 2017
Income			Expenses
Fund balance (total) April 6, 2017 a) Cach April 6, 2017 0,00 € b) Bank April 6, 2017 0,00 €	0,00 €		Rent (office)	180,00€
Μembership subscriptions	508,00 €		Third party payments (legal counsel)	502,96 €
Donations (2 persons)	300,00 €		Various expenses	81,68 €
SUM	808,00 €		SUM	764,64 €
New fund balance (total) December 31, 2017 a) Cach December 31, 2017 43,36 € b) Bank December 31, 2017 0,00 €				43,36 €

The finances correspond only to forming and sustaining the legal entity of WCSAG.

Membership subscriptions came from WCSAG members.

Donations came from a member of WCSAG and a non member.

Third party payments regard legal counseling, in order for WCSAG to become a legal entity.

Various expenses were for office material, meetings and election needs.

Accountant services have been donated to WCSAG, for 2017.

All activity described below was offered for free.

Wikipedia School (long lasting courses on Wikipedia editing)

4th Gymnasium of St. Dimitrios (Athens)

5-month weekly courses to 11 gymnasium students (ages: 12, 13 & 14), as an official school program run with the assistance of a visitor wikipedian. Their professor was trained in the two-month weekly Wikipedia School seminar hosted by the Ministry of Education in Athens, in 1016, run by WCSAG. Each student was awarded with a t-shirt for uploading his/her first article with the article picture printed on it. T-shirts were not eligible for funding in 2017 by WMF and the expense of 20€ / t-shirt, that were promised to the school students, was covered by the wikipedian visitor (200€) and the professor (20€). Three pentium 4 class personal computers and two flat screens were donated within corporate social responsibility to the school to enhance the computer lab and run Wikipedia School program. A blog page presenting the student's work was built. Professor: Anastasios Paliouras , Wikipedian visitor: Manos Kefalas

1st Lyceum of Vironas (Athens)

3-month weekly courses to 8 lyceum students (age: 15), as a non-official school program that was decided by the school's professors council, to run. The responsible professor was trained in the two-month weekly Wikipedia School seminar hosted by the Ministry of Education in Athens, in 1016, run by WCSAG. One article was produced and one article was improved. Lyceum students focus in their exams to higher education, especially in ages of 16 and 17, and have little time to contribute. Professor: Dimitra Dailiana , Wikipedian visitor: Manos Kefalas

Case study: 7th Elementary School of Kaisariani (Athens)

4-month (11 courses) to 26 elementary students (third grade's 8-year-olds) as an official school program, run with the assistance of a visitor wikipedian. Their teacher was a trainee of Wikipedia School for adults in Kaisariani. The students worked in groups of two or three, plus one alone, and produced 11 articles in Wikipedia (one more was almost ready to be published to main space). They were introduced to the same topics as the adults and they handled difficult issues as copyright and fair use. Students found the way, on their own, to structured text. User sandbox+ tool was used, without template libraries. The result of their work lies in their blog page. This case study became a featured article in Outreach. Teacher: Dimitrios Sotirakopoulos , Wikipedian visitor: Manos Kefalas

Adult school in Kaisariani (Athens)

March - June

4-month courses, twice a week, to adults. Local banner was used in Wikipedia for calling to participation. Sessions were of 2 (several times up to 3) hours, or time was given after the 2 hours class for extra guidance. As usual, first day participation of 15 people drops in the following days to 12-10 and fades to only a few on June or July, with those really intersested, who remain active. Adult trainer: Manos Kefalas

October - November

1 month seminar, twice a week, for adults. Wikipedia School in Kaisariani has been the core action of WCSAG. It started as a non-stop action, 4 times/week for 10 months in October 2014, calling twice for participation (October & March). It was the first time it was tried to squeeze the full Wikipedia School curriculum in one month, in an heterogenous adult team. It was also the first time experienced Wikipedia editors participated in the adult class. The whole curriculum was covered on time and most participants successfully created a new article. Nevertheless the need for more classes was stated by most participants. Adult trainer: Manos Kefalas

Mentoring to experienced editors, in Kaisariani (Athens)

November - December, once every 2 weeks: After the end of the one month seminar to adults in Kaisariani, Wikipedia School continued with the experienced editors, to cover their needs with mentoring. The meetings were continued in January 2018. Adult trainer: Manos Kefalas

Secondary Educators School in Pendeli (Athens)

3 month seminar to secondary educators, once a week, started in March in Pendeli area of Athens. The seminar is hosted by the Interorthodox Centre of the Church of Greece, in its library. The courses are under the aegis of the Ministry of Education. Program leader: Christos Nasios , Wikipedian visitor: Manos Kefalas

Senior Citizens School in Grava (Athens)

10 month pilot program, once a week, starting on October 2017, to senior citizens in Grava district in Athens. Grava is a somewhat poor area where older people are not particularly skilled with technology. Programs are being run in Greece to make senior citizens computer or mobile-device literate, focusing in socializing them through the internet. Wikipedia School had a different approach by enabling them to interact with Wikipedia, which was used as a source of knowledge, a place to contribute in the knowledge, as well as a field of discussion for several issues. Training had to also focus in technology skills like browsing, file handling, emails and sharing files. Wikimedia Commons mobile application was used with success for uploading pictures. An average of 12 people followed the courses, reaching up to 17. A voluntary organization offered refurbished laptops to the poorest. The senior citizens purchased themselves a projector to enhance the lessons. Grava's senior citizens Wikiclub has made a written request for the lessons to continue by next season. Adult trainer: Manos Kefalas

Training over the internet

Open calls for adult Wikipedia School participation get response requests for on-line trainings, especially for those not living in Athens area. On-line training has always been run throughout the whole year, in a one by one basis (trainer / trainee). This changed in the second call of 2017, during the autumn, where groups of trainees were meeting together in on-line sessions, along with their trainer, due to the increased number of requests. Group on-line training is efficient up to 5 trainees. Adult trainer: Manos Kefalas

Workshops

March 30: Panteion University, Department of Psychology, Athens

Workshop to psychology students, regarding the life skills a wikipedian acquires through editing in the collaborative environment of Wikipedia. The role of Wikipedia School was discussed and parts of the courses of Wikipedia School were presented. Students left a feedback on their personal blog accounts on the internet. This is the second in a series of workshops that began in 2016. Organizer: Alexis Brailas , Wikipedian visitor: Manos Kefalas

July 15, VoluntaryAction Festival, Athens

Workshop: "Volunteerism from a distance - Writing in Wikipedia". A brief introduction to Wikipedia, its policies, as well as a workshop for new editors. Target audience was volunteers and the voluntary ecosystem in general. Direct outcome of the workshop was partnership with attendees. Organizer: VoluntaryAction / skywalker.gr, Presentation: Manos Kefalas

October 8 - NGO Fair, Higgs, Athens

Higgs is an organization that empowers NGOs and also the host of WCSAG office. NGO Fair was a celebration within Higgs that gave us a chance to present parts of our work to the volunteering ecosystem. We chose to demonstrate part of Wikipedia School's curriculum regarding developing EQ skills while contributing to Wikipedia under guidance, with the workshop titled "Emotional intelligence on the internet". Presentation: Manos Kefalas

October 21: Enastron Cultural Club, Athens

Enastron is a cultural club on the basis of a publishing house, a book cafe and a venue for events. After a short introduction to Wikipedia concept and basic policies, we demonstrated creating an complete biography article from scratch, using user sandbox assisted editing, in half an hour's time. Presenters: Menalaos Gkikas, Manos Kefalas.

Conference Presentations

May 5: Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Crete

3rd Panhellenic Scientific Conference with international participation: "Humanitarian Sciences, Ecucation, Society and Political Education" was a conference closely related to WCSAG 's purpose. We participated with the reviewed published lecture: "Greek Wikipedia, monuments, museums and writers of Wikipedia articles: How to select thematology and where/how to find reliable sources for documentation" page. 145

May 17 & 23: Counseling and Guidance Center of Aigaleo

An outcome of Wikipedia School courses in the Interorthodox Centre of the Church of Greece was the interest of Counseling and Guidance Center of Aigaleo to show the need for digital skills in the modern society and the role of Wikipedia School as a means to developing them. Together they set up and run a two day conference and workshop for educators in Aigaleo and Pendeli areas. Members of WCSAG were presenters and trainers in the conference: Dr. Christos Nasios and Manos Kefalas.

September 6 - Dare to Dream III conderence by Maria Kapetanidou

Maria Kapetanidou, as a School Councilor in Athens, run a conference for educators, presenting good practices in Primary Education, that she had supervised. Members of WCSAG presented the results of Wikipedia School in primary education with the talk: "The little ones conquer the adults world: Students of Third Grade of Elementary School write Wikipedia articles". Presentation: Dimitrios Sotirakopoulos, Manos Kefalas

September 9 - Education Festival Conference, Athens

Education Festival runs in Athens since 2016. In 2017 WCSAG participated in its hosted conference with the talk "New ways of learning, skills, cooperativeness and life attitude: Mentoring in Wikipedia writing". Presentation: Manos Kefalas

September 30 - eTwinning 2017 international Conference for Education, Athens

E-Twinning is a European action through which, schools from all over European countries use information technology and communication tools to cooperate and acquire pedagogical, social and cultural benefits. In e-Twinning 2017 international Conference for Education, in Athens, UCSAG participated under the: "Use of widely spread open platforms for educational purposes and production of Open Educational Resources" workshop, organized by GFOSS-Open Technologies Alliance, presenting the innovation of Wikipedia School, in the third session of the workshop. Presentation: Manos Kefalas

October 14 - «Informatics Conference in Piraeus University, Piraeus

The 9th Conference on Informatics in Education 2017 was held in Piraeus University. This year WCSAG participated with the laboratory session: "Wikidata Collaborative knowledge base and its apply in Wikipedia. Access and retreive data to assist teaching and school assignments". Presentation: Ioannis Papaioannou , Manos Kefalas

Conference Attendance

Wikimedia Conference 2017

Manos Kefalas - Report

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017

Pavlos1988 - Reports 1 , 2

Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2017

Manos Kefalas - Report

Voluntarism Ecosystem

July 15 & 16, Kiosk and presence in VoluntaryAction festival in Athens

In VoluntaryAction 2017 festival WCSAG participated wth a kiosk in addition to the workshop "Volunteerism from a distance - Writing in Wikipedia". Contributing to Wikipedia came closer to the volunteering ecosystem and people came in touch with our values and passion and Wikipedia's role and opportunities for the humanity. WCSAG developed relationships and cooperated with an organization that is providing refurbrished laptops for free, to secondary education students who need them. They helped us with the senior citizens program with people that could not afford to buy a personal computer.

Material Resources

Software toolkit (user sandbox)

Wikipedia School has been run based on the assistance of tools developed to help semi-computer-literate people edit Wikipedia. In 2017 user sandbox tool was the main tool used, which was later extended to user sandbox+. User sandbox gave the option to easily start and edit pages concurrently in user space, organize the working space, avoid mistakes during page move to main space and provided a generic page for editing, prefilled with a basic structure.

Donations

• WCSAG printed material and banner stand, initially used in VoluntaryAction 2017, all came from a donor in the context of corporate social responsibility.
• Old computers, from either individual or coorporate donors, were given for free to schools to support Wikipedia School programs.

International Collaboration

November: Assemby of the international group to propel user sandbox+ project

During Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2017 an international group was formed to support user sandbox+ project. The project came live in 2018.

Awards

July 16, Award for Education (VoluntaryAction Festival 2017, Athens)

In VoluntaryAction 2017 WCSAG was awarded with the bronze prize for education. WCSAG 's contribution was evaluated by a committee of distinguished persons. Awarding for educaton is expected to be capitalazed during 2018 - 2019 school year.