Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UG GLAM Macedonia/Wiki conference for teachers/Report

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Violetova and Виолетова, and thanks for your report on this Wiki conference for teachers. It's very exciting to hear about the interest in the conference and the prospect of incorporating Wikimedia projects into the classroom. Here are my comments about your report:

• On the one hand, I can imagine it was quite hard to reduce the number of reservations for the event. But as you've said, it's very clear that based on some of the last-minute requests and from overall interest in your talk, that teachers wants to learn more about contributing to Wikimedia projects and how they can use it. I applaud that you are starting to reach out to this captive audience, and I think it makes sense that, if you plan for this kind of event in the future, you have a good rationale to request more funding for a larger space and additional materials to accommodate.
• Thank you for providing the survey results. It's good to see many plan or are considering using what they learned in the classroom. However, it looks like many teachers are seeking support in how to do this (around 75% of respondents). What support is available to them to implement Wikipedia in their classrooms?
• Nice work with the booklets as well, I'm glad you were able to provide these to participants, as it's clear teachers will hold onto them beyond the conference for reference and for implementing some tasks in their own classes. I think having a more hands-on component makes sense. Do you have any initial ideas for what this hands-on component might look like?

Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 05:21, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi I JethroBT (WMF), thank you for your comments.

• Thank you for your suggestion to consider larger space and additional materials while planning this kind of event in the future. For sure, we will organize this kind of conference again and for sure we will consider your advice.
• About support for teachers to implement Wikipedia in their classrooms, as a User Group we already agreed that we could provide help while planning (teachers have to feel free to ask any questions while planning the implement of Wikipedia in the clasroom) or with presence of volunteer at the classroom if it is necessary.
• Hands-on session / component, which was asked by the teachers, has to be some kind of edit-a-thon, I suppose. The teachers wanted to edit Wikipedia by themselves in the presence of Wikipedians, in order to ask any question arise while editing. Unfortunately, this time we don't have space for that: in the venue there were only chairs without tables, no space for lap tops of participants at all.

Regards, Violetova (talk) 09:57, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Violetova: Thanks for this insight in your response. I've approved your report. Thanks very much for your work in educating teachers in Macedonia on incorporating Wikipedia in their classrooms. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 09:02, 4 May 2017 (UTC)