MonthlyReport-Apr2021


This month our agenda was full of exciting events. To name a few, for the first time three wikimedians did an oral presentations on a national archive symposium and talked about Wikimedia movement and ways of colloboration with archivists. We did have a podcast intervivew published in which 2 wikimedians talked about knowledge activism and wikimedia projects. We also discussed Wikimedia Movement and its role in fighting witn misinformation at a webinar for participants of Factory incubation Program, designed to develop solutions for the misinformation problem. A member of our team had a chance to travel Kahramanmaraş and together with a local wikimedian they visited Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University as awell as Directorate of Culture and Tourism of Kahramanmaraş, to discuss partnership opportunities. We disccussed "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" program" with Öğretmen Ağı (Teacher's Network) facilitators. We had "Electrical chargers edit-thon", "Artistic Freedom Edit-a-ton" and third round of "Kocaeli webinars". Please find a summary about those and all other activites below.

Reintroducing Wikipedia to Turkey
Monthly Reports
April 2021

Wikipedia Education Program

 
Artistic Freedom webinar
  • April 14: Wikipedia training webinar for 150 students taking Critical Reading and Writing (TLL101) course at Kadir Has University. Students of 6 classes participated the webinar. The course is a part of Common Core Program recently developed by the university specific for freshmen. The program is designed to build universal skills and competencies. We are exctied that contributing to Wikipedia is now a part of such skills the students will develop. It's the first time we carry out Wikipedia Education Program in collobration of a team of instructors and try to integrate it to their program rather than colloborating with one instructor individually. This time, each students were assigned to create or develop a Wikipedia page about a Turkish author from the list their instructor prepeared. We gave a presentation specifically focusing on writing biographies on Wikipedia.
 
Today and Tomorrow Archival Studies in Turkey, Women's Place in Archives" Symposium
  • April 14: Meeting with Öğretmen Ağı (Teachers Network), a network for empowering teachers in Turkey and providing creative solution alternatives for teachers’ and other education stakeholders’ needs. We shared them information about "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" program. We planned two activites for the begining; A presentation to Teachers Network's Change Ambbassadors in April and an edit-a-thon in September. We are proud that they already added our user group in their stakeholder list.
  • April 21:We introduced Wikipedia Education Program at Gender Studies course in Bahçeşehir University. The course is taken by 48 students from different departmens ranging from sociology to mechatronics engineering. We informed the participants about different ways they could contribute to Wikipedia and also about the Gender Gap problem. The students will write articles about gender issues assigned by their instructor.

Partnerships

 
Wikimedians visiting dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University.
  • April 3: Third webinar organized in cooperation with Kocaeli Municipality for volunteers from Kocaeli. The participants learned core principles of Wikipedia editing. Their questions were answered as they get ready to contribute Wikipedia articles about Kocaeli region.
 
Edit-a-thon on Electric Vehicle Chargers
  • April 6 : Visiting Directorate of Culture and Tourism of Kahramanmaraş.
  • April 7 : Webinar for participants of Factory Program, designed by Teyit.org fact-checking organisation to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for the misinformation problem. We discussed Wikimedia Movement and its role in fighting witn misinformation.
  • April 8: Visiting Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University.
  • April 11: 3 wikimedians submitted an oral presentation at a national symposum on "Today and Tomorrow Archival Studies in Turkey, Women's Place in Archives" Symposium ". In the presentation the ways Wikipedians, Archives and Gender Movement activits could collobrate were disscussed. The Women in Red Project and Art & Feminism activites were introduced by wikimedians who are organising those events in Turkey. After the presentation, the participants were invited to create articles at Turkish wikipedia on women activists.
  • April 14: Meeting with Ekaİstanbul (a commnity of university students from different universitys and disciplines; working for more accessible cities). We discussed organising an edit-a-thon about climate change.
  • April 21: Meeting with Pera Museum. We have planned an edit-a-thon about the concepts dealt in the group exhibition of the museum until june. The Exhhibion is called "Question of Taste"; and we disscussed developing content about the artists involved as well as the content on the concepts of post-internet art, Asthetics, Avangarde, Camp (style), populer culture with the help of the curators and the volunteers.
  • April 27:Edit-a-thon in collobration with Susma Platformu (Speak up Platform), a platform set up to stand against restrictions to freedom of expression. During the event , we discussed the concept of Artistic freedom with the participation of people from art and culture fields. After a presentation about Wikimedia movement and Wikipedia editing, the participants were sent to three breakout rooms to disscuss how the concept could be explained clearly at Wikipedia in more detail. They will keep working on a document for about a week after the evetn and a Wikipedia article will be written in the guidence of the document and suggested sources.
  • April 28: Meeting with Ankara City Council Culture and Art Working Group. We discussed organizing a webinar to introduce colloboration opportunities with working groups of the city council.

Community meetings

In March, we had two online community meetings. We discussed the completed edit-a-thons and coming projects in the next month. In the second meeting, there was also a small training on adding Fair Use media files to Turkish wiki. Please find the meeting notes below (in Turkish).


March 2021 13 - 27 -