MonthlyReport-Dec2020
December 2020
Wikipedia Education Program
This month wikipedians have visited 5 online university course at 4 different cities (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Sakarya). Additionally we gave Wikipedia training to members of psychology club at Ege University, Izmir under the guidance of a professor from their department; and for the first time we met with high school students to talk reading and contributing to Wikipedia.
Training at İstanbul Commerce University
The students of Digitalization and Society course at Istanbul Commerce University Communication Department were assigned with contributing Wikipedia articles. With the invitation of the professor, we visited their online course to support them in their assignments as well as supporting their instructor.
Ege University
We have met with 70 members of Psychology Club of Ege University in an online meeting. It was organised with the request of their professor, who initially planned to give Wikipedia assignment to their students but failed to do so, because this year university admministraiton asked professors not give any assignments. In the meeting, we asked attendees to contribute wiki projects as volunteers instead of as a part of their course requirements and explained how to contribute. They have planned to contribute on categories under developmental psychology and publish their work on wiki after review of their instructor.
Hacıbayram Veli University
We visited the Citizen Journalism course at Hacıbayram Veli University Journalism Department, Ankara. We discussed the reliability, the relation with journalism and wikipedia, notability criteria. The students were assigned to contribute Turkish Wikipedia about concepts related tot citizen Journalism .
Izmir University of Economics
.jpg)
We were invited by our partner Teyit.org, a fact-checking organization in Turkey to the Civil Participation and Voluntarism course at Izmir University of Economics. This is where they were collaborating on teaching fact-checking methods to students. In the course, we talked about the functioning of Wikipedia in detail. The students were given the task of checking COVID-19 information on Wikipedia by using the fact-checking techniques they have thought of.
Galatasaray University
This year we were invited to Communications Department of Galatasaray University, Istanbul for the third time since we have started Wikipedia Education Program in Turkey. We met with the students of Digital Media and Society course at an online session. We talked about different ways of contributing wiki projects and different motivations behind contributions; and we discussed the differences of productions content for wiki from contributing for several social media platforms. The students were assigned to find the most suitable way of contributing Wikimedia projects for themselves and report their contributions.
Sakarya University
In the first week of 2021 we have visited the Geography department of Sakarya University, for the fourth time since the beginning of Wikipedia Education Program in Turkey. The students of Sakarya University are developing the quartener and geomorphology articles at Turkish wikipedia. This year, they will contribute by translating some articles from English Wikipedia. In an online video conference session, we showed the students how the could use the content translation tool and told them how valuable their contribution on their study field.
Bahçeşehir College HeforShe Team
Our user group has been making presentations and conducting Wikipedia Education Program in universities since the begining of the group; this year we have trained a small group of high schools students about editing Wikipedia for the first time. The students were the HeforShe team of Bahçeşehir College. During the online video conference the team did not only learn about the functioning of Wikipedia but questioned the realibility, asked questions about vandalism, wanted to learn about is it possible to protect Wikipedia from sexist language. We delightfully answered the questions and enjoyed being with HeforShe team very much.
Editor community meetings
Our WikiTuesday meetings were held at December 15 and December 29th. There were 21 and 14 attendees. At the first meeting of the month we made a presentation about Contributing to the Wikimedia commons for new begginers, in addition to a small presentation about "Zonguldak Wiki Project" by a community member and presenting preperations for 1Lib1Ref campaign. On the second WikiTuesday meeting there was a presenation about how to adg Public Domain material to Commons project. There were participation from Creative Commons and they answered the questions about public domain works. Meeting notes are available here : Dec 15, Dec 29
GLAM partnership talks
Dec. 15- Meeting with Toplumsal Bilgi ve İletişim Derneği (Common Knowledge and Communication Association) on partnership oportunities. We have agreed on supporting them in their project related to digital violence sponsored by UNFPA by organizing and edit-a-thon on that theme.
Dec. 19- Meeting with Turkish Librarians' Association on introducing Librarian-Wikimedia collaboration ways. The meeting was held with the administrators of Istanbul and Ankara branches. It's understood that in general the librarians have almost no knowledge on how Wikipedia, Wikidata and other projects funciton; although they have heard of librarians in the world were using wikimedia projects in their work and colloborating with wikimedians, they do not have a clue on how; and they are willing to understand. It's decided to organize a webinar on January and introduce the projects and colloboration ways first to librarians working in Istanbul and academicians of the 4 Librarian Education Departments in Istanbul universities.
Dec,. 23 - "Practise of Commons" Meeting. Goethe Institue Istanbul suggested to make a series of online workshops for introducing concept of Commons. We made an onine meeting with Creative Commons Turkey, Yerçizenler (OpenStreetMap volunteers organisation in Turkey), and VOYD (Data Literacy Association) to organize it together. The first event will be held at the end of February. We will be making a presentation in the first event and later organise a wikipedia editing workshop in a date that will be announced later.
