Learning patterns/How to design and develop an education hackathon within the Wikipedia Education Program

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Grants:Learning Patterns / How to design and develop an education hackathon within the Wikipedia Education Program
problemWorkshops and lectures for educators are traditional and in some point useless. Specially because these learning spaces don’t establish links between assistants or generate educational products. Most importantly, they do not generate a commitment to an education issue or present solutions to the educational realities of the attendees.
solutionTo Promote in education a methodology that is already validated within the creation and construction of collaborative knowledge such as hackathons.
endorse
created on16:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

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Educators are tired of attending conferences and workshops regarding the topic “innovation”. Generally they are perceived as a waste of time and are not considered as an answer to their daily education problems. That is, theses kind of activities have little impact on their perceptions and practices.

What is the solution?

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The hackathons are carried out under a methodology that has been already validated in other contexts. We wonder why we could not apply this methodology in education and thus strengthen the dissemination of Wikipedia educational program, find strategic partners and generate education materials as examples for the entire school community.
The first steps:
1) Define an education problem, for example: How to use digital sources in education? this problem or question will be the challenge to solve in the day.
2) Meet with strategic partners and research for the main topics. In our experience the topics were provided by Wikimedia Argentina and Chequeado.com.
3) Build a database of educators interested through an open call and encourage them to be part of the activity where they can build networking and design new educational resources.
4) Design an agenda with prudent duration (no more than 4 hours) with specific and different activities: motivational talks (to give a framework for the proposal), work dynamics and end up with the team conclusions exhibition.
5) Have different coordinators and volunteers to assist in the day. In our case we were helped by graduated educators of our third partner involved (PENT Flacso).
6) Find a comfortable and inspiring place to work in teams. The fourth partner involved was Telefonica Foundation, which provide us the place.
7) Design an attractive call (for example with digital flyer) to generate a sense of belonging regarding the event/hackathon. Anticipate the main rules to participate to the possible attendees.
8) Spread on social networks and have a hashtag before the event.
9) Give certificates of participation at the end of the event. Make sure the people attending knows it in advance.

Consolidating the educational Hackathon: It is recommended to use strategies of design thinking (like prototyping) to create education proposals that aims to resolve the challenging problem. That is, the results, were different classroom guides to teach with Wikipedia and other digital sources. That guides were further improve afterwards. It is important to invite all the participants to contribute with their experience and needs. Involve different profiles in different teams to get more original and creative final productions. Use badges to identify the participants, that generates a sense of belonging within the experience.

Use innovative platforms to create and exchange the final productions/results. To encourage the team work we use : https://stormboard.com.

Then publish and spread the results: for the education hackaton we use the dashboard digital platform:Creaton dashboard where each institution made a post about the event. This strengthens an educators network who seek to participate in innovative proposals in education, as Wikipedia.

Things to consider

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When to use

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To Involve in the design and development of education proposals to different institutions that are already linked to innovation and education, as strategic partners.
To position the education program in education agendas.

Endorsements

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See also

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References

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Program Wikimedia Argentina Education Program