Wikimedia tables and displays/UNESCO Mobile Learning Week 2019

About the event

UNESCO Mobile Learning Week is the largest ICTs in Education conference run by the UN.

Audience

The conference has over 1000 attendees, mainly education professionals, government employees, ministers, UN delegation staff.

What we were trying to achieve

Connect with people attending the event to find potential projects

The table

We had very prominent Wikipedia branding, it is the brand everyone knows and it attracts people. We found this to be much more successful than presenting Wikimedia and expecting people to be interested something they don't know.

Overall view of the table (we added more things over the week)
Showing offline Wikipedia through leaflets, a tablet and Kiwix boxes
Wiki4Women event as part of Mobile Learning Week

Wikimedia Commons category

Key learnings

We presented ourselves as Wikipedia, a brand people are familiar with. They approached the table because they like Wikipedia and then could find out about other projects.
Having several Wikimedia people take part in the conference which allowed us to have someone at the table most of the time.
Wikimedia is spread across the world, both in terms of expertise and regional projects. We had a jar to collect all contacts, asking people to write their enquiry on their business card, we had one person go through the cards and send the contacts to the relevant people in Wikimedia.
Having access to a printer allowed us to create and print documents based on the kinds of people who were coming to the table, allowing us to improve the table over time.
Photographs from Wiki Loves Competitions were very popular.
Free sweets are very helpful to encourage people to come to the table.

Improvements

Next time we would have clearer labelling of what we are showing, often things have names which don't describe their function e.g Kiwix, and this needs to be explained clearly.
It may be helpful to split the table into different sections to help people understand the kinds of projects and services Wikimedia offer.
We need a Wikidata introduction flyer (not for editing but to explain what it is, how it is useful, powerful etc).

List of materials

Banner
Screen showing Wiki Loves competitions, slides here
Monumental
Raspberry Pi Hotspots
- Kiwix hotspots
- WikiFundi hotspot and on-demand demonstration
- Flyers for Kiwix https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kiwix_Hotspot_user_guides
Flyers
- Collaborate with Wikipedia
- FindingGLAMs flyer
- WikiSpeech flyer
- Wikimedia Education projects poster with QR codes
- Flyer of Wikipedia events during Mobile Learning Week
- Wiki Loves Africa - English and French https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_Generic_A5_flyer.pdf https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_generic_A5_flyer_fr.pdf
- WikiFundi - English and French
- Femmes Les Sans PagEs Mediterranée - French
- Vikidia - French
- Wikimedia & Education newsletter sign for easy sign-up
Wikimedia & Education videos
Collateral
- Wikipedia stickers
- Wikimedia & education stickers and badges
- Sweets: individually wrapped so people stood there unwrapping so we could talk to them
- Wiki Loves Africa stickers and badges
- Wiki Loves Women stickers and badges
- WikiAfrica Schools badges
- WikiChallenge Ecoles d’Afrique stickers
- WikiFundi stickers
A jar to collate contacts, many of the opportunities that were available that couldn’t be taken by the people who were there.
Contact cards for people who could help direct enquiries
Jar of sweets to encourage people to come to the table

Application process

We had to submit a proposal to the organisers, here is our submission

In previous years dozens of projects highlighted at Mobile Learning Week have used the information from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites in their work. This demonstrates the value of these platforms as public resources of open knowledge and as important tools that develop that support global education goals and help students learn critical 21st century skills. All Wikimedia content is available under Open Access for everyone to use and contribute to. Engaging educators and students with OER development increases the amount of content available that represents local languages and cultures, and helps improve their digital skills.
Having this table would be an opportunity for attendees to understand the possibilities and impact of using Wikimedia projects in the classroom in different contexts (including offline access) to foster 21st century skills, and how to make the connection between these projects and their pedagogical practice.
The table will be staffed by the Wikimedia Foundation Education team and others who can discuss both strategic partnerships and programmatic work. The team has wide experience in international education, community organizing, and working with policy makers and education institutions to promote global education goals.
Wikimedia projects both use AI and are used by AI projects. Wikipedia uses AI in assisting translation of articles, assessing article quality and in referencing. Wikimedia projects are used by a wide variety of AI projects, OpenAI uses Wikidata and Wikipedia for language disambiguation and Siri and Google Assistant use Wikipedia and Wikidata as information sources for their natural language AI. More information is available in the articles Google gives Wikimedia Milions - Plus Machine Learning Tools, The Stanford Question Answering Dataset, Discovering Types for Entity Disambiguation.
Attendees can also learn how students of all the age groups and the general public can actively participate in initiatives that promote sharing local culture including the largest photography competitions in the world, Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth as well as regional activities like Wiki Loves Africa and how to preserve local heritage and culture digitally. These projects promote equity in the representation of world cultures by empowering communities to showcase their own realities through their unique local lens.

The goal of this table is to raise awareness of how the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia commons, etc.) contribute to SDG4, and encourage MLW participants to engage with the Wikimedia movement. We will have 3 staff from the Wikimedia Foundation, and representatives from other Wikimedia affiliates supporting the table the entire week as well as a 200 person Wikipedia workshop organised with UNESCO on Friday. We will have brochures, stickers and other tangible materials to give to attendees. The Wikimedia Foundation education team is creating an interactive poster of how Wikimedia projects are being used around the world that participants can engage with. We are hoping to have periodic demonstrations of how to edit the Wikimedia projects, like Wikidata. We will also demo some of the offline tools our community has developed: Kiwix and WikiFundi. Our table will be engaging, informative, and hopefully lead to an increase in collaboration of MLW participants with our community.

Other activities

Presentations

Two presentations

Wiki4Women

A 200+ person Wikipedia editathon for International Womens Day organised by UNESCO, Wikimedia France, LSP, WMF. Offering a practical event to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia was very helpful to be able to concentrate on making connections at the display table and also offer people a practical first step if their interest was in contributing themselves.