User:Antanana/Wiki Loves X & Education

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Documenting educational activities and/or ideas around Wikimedia photo contests (Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Loves Folklore etc), especially for schools.

Wiki Loves Monuments Italy

During Wiki Loves Monuments Italy in 2023 there was a special contest for participating schools in Apulia, one of the regions. Two schools took part -- Liceo Battaglini di Taranto (a scientific high school with a general curriculum) and Istituto Gorjux-Tridente-Vivante di Bari (a vocational class for graphics). The results are documented here: Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 in Italy/Apulia#Sezione_scuole.

There was a photo walk of Wiki Loves Apulia in Taranto organised for the pupils Liceo Battaglini (Category:Wiki_Loves_Puglia_photo_walks_2023), in a form of a guided tour, so the pupils were able to also receive information about the town, while they were taking pictures. The registration was done via a form for collecting usernames of the pupils, and their pictures were shown in a gallery (User:Ferdi2005/Battaglini, User:Ferdi2005/Gorjoux) separately for their respective special juries (their teacher and other jury members) to evaluate the works.

There was a prize ceremony for both the winners of Wiki Loves Puglia and the school contest winners. Wiki Loves Puglia has been organised since 2019, but a special contest for schools was organised for the first time in 2023.

Students' works were also presented at the photo exhibitions -- there was one panel with their works. There are plans to continue in 2024, still working on defining the partner schools. The organisers think that having a special award / contest helps to get students involved in Wiki Loves Monuments contest, as it is unlikely they would do that otherwise. The quality of the works might not be the best, and it is better not to work with whole classes, but rather concentrate on a few very motivated students.

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  A winning photo from Liceo Battaglini di Taranto
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  Wiki Loves Puglia 2023 award ceremony. Winners from Battaglini
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  A winning photo from Istituto Gorjux-Tridente-Vivante di Bari

Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine

During Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine in 2017 there was a special award for pupils of the Kyiv schools in the system of Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to take and upload pictures of the monuments. There was a special page for their pre-registration, so their pictures can be evaluated separately (and their identity can be confirmed with their teachers). There were 4 workshops organised for the interested pupils, explaining how to upload pictures, criteria etc. There was a separate awards ceremony for the kids, giving out souvenirs and certificates of participation. The quality of the pictures was not high, and it was difficult to explain some complicated legal issues like lack of "freedom of panorama".

The idea was to continue working with the schools afterwards, and engage their pupils in the Wikipedia writing contests (МАНівці пишуть Вікіпедію), but this was not a very successful experiment, as there are challenges around involving schoolchildren in writing encyclopaedia, especially notability criteria. Still efforts to work with the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine continued .

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  Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 KMAN Awards
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  One of the winning photos

Other adjacent educational projects

Brazil

An education program for communications students at Faculdade Cásper Líbero included an activity to document monuments in São Paulo: Education loves Monuments: A Brazilian Tale. Students were encouraged to also improve content on Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons (like adding geocoordinates, inscriptions etc). To follow the contributions a Listeria-generated page was used: São Paulo monument log. Outreach Dashboard reports: 2016, 2017, 2018-1, and 2018-2.

The important consideration was also for students to learn more about their city, and think about the monuments the city decided to catalogue and preserve. Some questions asked by students in the course of the program were: "Why are there almost no women depicted in monuments and sculptures? Why are there almost no African Brazilians in monuments and sculptures? Why are there monuments and sculptures of slave owners and military dictators? Why don't we just put them down?".

Rwanda

Pupils are being encouraged to join writing articles and photo contests via Wiki clubs at GS Gishari and GS Ruhunda high schools. Event page for Wikivibrance, and the contributions are tracked via the Outreach Dashboard. Teacher and student best contributors are awarded.

Uruguay

• A project Click to the school (Event:Click_a_la_escuela, October 2023) was organised around Heritage Day. Wikimedistas de Uruguay had organised a few trainings for teachers, and this project was a continuation for them to apply the knowledge gained in practice. Participants were submitting photos of their schools, using the open dataset of all the Uruguayan schools, Wikimedistas de Uruguay uploaded to Wikidata. There were two categories of awards: for the most images uploaded by department and best three photographs at national level (Event:Click a la escuela/Premios).

• A contest Foto.Física (Event:Foto.Física 2024, from April 22 to June 28, 2024) was co-organised by Wikimedistas de Uruguay with the Society of Physics of Uruguay (La Sociedad Uruguaya de Física). The goal of the project was to promote science via photography, and aimed at collecting pictures of physical phenomena, natural or staged especially for the competition. The contest itself has been organised by the Society for the past few years, but this was the first time Wikimedia Commons was used as the platform (Campaign:Foto.Física_2024). As a potential improvement for the next time -- the category system needs more work (this time there were separate categories for "natural" and "staged" physical phenomena). There was also a workshop organised.

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  Banner for Click a la_escuela 2023
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  A winning picture of Click a la escuela 2023
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  Poster for Foto.Física 2024

Notable additional resources

• EduWiki Knowledge Showcase: Children and Wikimedia Projects (video): a discussion on complexities surrounding children's engagement with Wikimedia projects and education