What ecologists and Wikipedians actually have in common
“Hi, how are you? Do you want to learn about Wikipedia and education?” It may be pretty simple, sure, but that’s the phrase I said over and over at the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting. As it turns out, many people did want to learn more. I spoke to biogeochemists, dendrologists, and limnologists, graduate … Continued
Wiki Education at the LD4 Conference
In May I attended the LD4 (Linked Data For…) conference in Boston, MA at Harvard Medical Center. I was lucky enough to sit on the program committee which helped plan this event. This was the second LD4 conference — a Mellon-funded initiative to increase linked data use and production in libraries. There were many engaging sessions with … Continued
Prague Hackathon improves tools for users worldwide
This past week, Wiki Education’s technical team attended the 2019 Wikimedia Hackathon where the Program & Events Dashboard was featured as a prominent area of focus. While there, Sage Ross & I were able to meet with Czech users, network with other developers working on Wikipedia projects, and build a number of features for both our global tool and … Continued
Collaborating with others in the Wikimedia movement
A few weeks ago, I was honored to travel to Europe where I participated in two conferences related to the broader Wikimedia movement: The Wikimedia Summit in Berlin and the Wikimedia + Education Conference in Donostia. Wiki Education is one of the largest organizations in the Wikimedia movement in terms of both budget and number … Continued
Wikipedia Day: a year in review
Every year on January 15, we celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday. It takes thousands all around the world to make Wikipedia the resource that it is; Wikipedia Day is a great time to recognize all that hard work and successful collaboration. It’s also a day to speak to the importance of freely available knowledge and to continue conversations about … Continued
WikiCite offers inspiration for future Wikidata projects
At the end of November, I attended the 2018 edition of WikiCite, an annual gathering of librarians, Wikimedians, and others in the open knowledge space dedicated to creating an open repository of bibliographic data. While this was the third edition of WikiCite, it was the first that anyone from Wiki Education had attended, and it was … Continued
Practical solutions for supporting open science
At the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting this year, scientists gathering from all around the world were asked to ponder one question. What does science stand for? AGU proposed their own answer to be discussed over the course of the meeting: science stands for inclusion, creativity, and thinking bigger. Director of Partnerships Jami Mathewson and … Continued
A November to remember
We hear time and again that people understand the importance of having well referenced information on Wikipedia. But most simply don’t know how to do something about it. “I did this at an edit-a-thon recently,” one conference attendee said, “and I loved it! How can I do more?” In November, I traveled to three academic … Continued
How to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of women and marginalized American communities
Wikipedia, like much of history and historical scholarship, is missing information related to women and marginalized American communities. This weekend, Wiki Education is attending both the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and the American Studies Association (ASA) annual meetings in Atlanta to empower scholars to help us fill these content gaps. NWSA and ASA share missions to disseminate research … Continued
Why Wikipedia is “Communication at Play”
This week, Wiki Education staff will be attending the 104th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association. While we’ve been working with NCA members to improve Wikipedia since our organization was founded in 2014, it wasn’t until 2017 that we finalized our partnership. Through this agreement, NCA encourages its members to participate in Wiki Education’s programs, … Continued