Wikimedia MKD/Reports/2024-11
Training workshop at Nova International School in Skopje
editWikimedia MKD continues organizing events for trainings students and the organization aims to teach and motivate young people to edit articles on Wikipedia. In this way, with the increase in the number of students, the wiki clubs also grow and the educational program of Wikimedia MKD is richer.
For the second time this year, Wikimedia MKD held a training session for new students at International School "Nova". The workshop was held on 5 November 2024. Bosa Filipovikj, the organization’s Education Program Manager, opened the session by introducing students to the core principles of Wikipedia, explaining how it operates, and underscoring the value of volunteering for this global knowledge platform.
The workshop then moved towards in-live training, where students, with the guidance of the organizers, opened user accounts and learned the essential steps of Wikipedia editing. They practiced their skills, such as creating, editing, and publishing articles. The students published four new articles. Their engagement and enthusiasm were evident, as many expressed a desire to continue editing and expanding quality content in Macedonian.
Wikimedia MKD will continue training students for Wikipedia editing in the future because we think that young people are the future of creating free knowledge.
Assembly Meeting November 2024
editOn 9 November 2024 Wikimedia MKD held an Assembly meeting. The organization decided that an assembly meeting is needed for the discussion of the future of the organization and its community, as well as the programme development. The meeting was held with the certain number of on-site participants and at least 10 person consulted about the topics before the meeting.
The meeting was held on 9 November 2024 in Skopje. The meeting started at 14:30 o'clock local time. The participants at the meeting gathered to discuss the future of the organization, its future development and enriching the programmes of Wikimedia MKD. Furthermore, the participants shared ideas and proposals on how to enrich the numbers of the volunteers of the Movement in Macedonia and how to find external fundraising opportunities.
Since the year's end is near, the participants of the Assembly had discussion and were proposing ideas for improving some of the activities, proposed new ideas for possible future implementation for the next year. The importance of the volunteers and its number increasing was also discussed and the participants are expecting the upcoming year to be marked with even greater success and larger number of content created by Wikimedia MKD's volunteers and supporters.
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Wikimedia MKD assembly.
Editing Competition 'Music'
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Editing competitions organized by Wikimedia MKD, since the beginning, have been marked by a great success and excellent results. The primary goal of these competitions is enriching Wikipedia in the Macedonian language, however, they also provide various opportunities to receive prizes for the participants who write articles. In doing so, Wikimedia MKD always tries to cover different topics in order to decrease the content gab.
The three-week edition competition organized once in the year in this format is intended for high-school students. The competition's topic was 'Music' and it started on 21 October 2024 and ended on 10 November 2024. This contest was intended to help improve existing and create new articles on the topic of "music". 24 high school students participated in the competition and a total of 92 articles were published.
All articles had to be written in accordance with the principles and rules of Wikipedia, so all articles had to be written in an encyclopedic style and have sources. The articles were reviewed by a jury, which was composed of three experienced Wikipedians. The jury made the final decision on the winners, after reviewing all the articles and scored each one individually with points from 1 to 10. The three winners of the competition are as follows:
- First place: Emilija Dobreva with 394 points,
- Second place: Kostovska with 392 points,
- Third place: Adouuuuu with 237 points.
In addition to these prizes, there were also prizes for the best articles for each week individually. The winners of these awards are the following:
- First week best article: Emilija Dobreva with the article "Севентин"
- Second week best article: Emilija Dobreva with the article "Аеспа"
- Third week best article: Kostovska with the article "Deftones"
Conference for professors at the "Goce Delchev" University
editConferences for teachers/ professors are one of the project activities of Wikimedia MKD through which the teaching staff receives training in using Wikipedia and guidance and instructions how to use it in the educational process. For the first time, such a conference is being held for professors from the highest level of education. Thus, on 14 November 2024, Wikimedia MKD held a conference for professors at "Goce Delchev" University in Shtip. Besides the professors, the conference was attended by interested students who wanted to learn more about Wikipedia. A total of 22 professors and students from the UGD from Shtip participated. The conference itself started at 10:00 a.m. at the premises of Campus 2 at UGD Shtip.
The conference was opened by Snezhana Shtrkovska, executive director of Wikimedia MKD, who introduced the participants to the encyclopedia itself, how Wikipedia works, what are the benefits of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool, and how to properly use Wikipedia as an information source for accurate and verified information. Towards the end of the first part, Bosa Filipović, manager of the educational program, spoke, who introduced the participants on how the educational program of Wikimedia MKD works, and then followed editing Wikipedia. The participants, assisted by the organizers, were trained and instructed on how to successfully create a Wikipedia user account. In addition, they were introduced to the basic principles of Wikipedia editing and were introduced to how to start, edit and publish new content.
After the break, the second part of the conference began, where Tony Ristovski, lectured on Wikidata. He mentioned that Wikidata is a collaborative database editing project for Wikipedia. Ristotvski also mentioned that the project was started by Wikimedia Germany with the intention of enabling a common source of certain types of data such as dates of birth, a class of certified data, to be used by all language editions of Wikipedia. This is also the first new project of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2006.
The conference took place in a pleasant and working atmosphere. The participants were interested in the way Wikipedia works, but also the possibilities that exist for using the encyclopedia as one of the teaching aids in the educational process in Macedonia.
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Editing Wikipedia articles during the conference. -
Lecturing the participants on the basic principles of Wikipedia -
Helping the participants to edit Wikipedia -
Helping the participants to edit Wikipedia -
Giving speech at the conference -
Giving speech at the conference -
Giving speech at the conference
