Wikimedia UK yn penodi Rheolwr i Gymru / Wikimedia UK appoints Wales Manager

Image is a portrait of Robin Owain
Robin Owain, Rheolwr Cymru / Wales Manager

To view this post in English please scroll down the page.

Pleser o’r mwyaf yw cyhoeddi penodiad Robin Owain, ein Rheolwr cyntaf yng Nghymru.

Dechreuodd Robin ar y gwaith heddiw, a bydd yn arwain y prosiect Llwybrau Byw! Bydd hefyd yn arwain ein hymgais i ehangu’r Wicipedia Cymraeg a’r Wikipedia Saesneg yng Nghymru.

Bydd ei swydd yn para am 12 mis. Dywedodd Robin: “Mae mynd i fewn – i ganol y gweithgareddau – gan ddangos i werin Cymru be allant wneud yn rhoi byz anhygoel i mi: gall bawb fod yn awdur, yn gyhoeddwr ac yn addysgwr drwy gyfrwng Wicipedia, a rhoi yn ôl rhywbeth gwerthfawr iawn i gymdeithas.

“Mae bod yn rhan o Wikimedia UK a Wici Cymru (dau griw bendigedig) yn sylfaen gadarn yn fy ngwaith o gerdded y Llwybrau Byw.”

Dywedodd Jon Davies, Prif Weithredwr Wikimedia UK, “Mae penodiad Robin fel ein Rheolwr yng Nghymru yn rhan hanfodol o’n strategath ”outreach”. Wicipedia Cymraeg ydy’r wefan Gymraeg fwyaf boblogaidd yn y byd ac rydym yn ymfalchio ein bod yn medru cefnogi’r Gymrag.”

“Er gwaetha’r ffaith fy mod yn hanner Cymro fy hun, mae fy ngwybodaeth o’r Gymraeg yn fach, ond dw i’n falch iawn fy mod yn medru cynorthwyo i’w bywiogi fel hyn, er mor fychan yw’r cyfraniad hwnnw.”

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Wikimedia UK and Wici Cymru are delighted to announce the appointment of Robin Owain as our very first Wales Manager.

Robin will be taking a lead on our Llwybrau Byw – Living Paths Project. He will also be leading our efforts to expand both Wicipedia Cymraeg and the English language Wikipedia in Wales.

Robin began work yesterday and his post will run for 12 months. Robin said: “Getting in there – into the thick of it – to show ordinary people what they can do gives me a buzz: everyone can be a writer, a publisher, a teacher and give something good back, through Wikipedia, to society.

“Being part of Wikimedia UK and Wici Cymru (two wonderful groups of people!) is the granite foundation on which I walk the living paths.”

Jon Davies, Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, said: “Robin’s appointment as our Wales Manager is a vital part of our outreach strategy. Wicipedia Cymraeg is the world’s most popular Welsh language website and we are proud to support the Welsh language.

“Despite being half-Welsh my knowledge of the Welsh language is far too limited. I am pleased to be doing my small bit to help it thrive.”

Jisc and Wikimedia UK to bridge between academia and Wikipedia

Dr Martin Poulter
Dr Martin Poulter

Jisc and Wikimedia UK are collaborating on a project to bring the academic world and Wikipedia closer together. This will create opportunities for researchers, educators, and the general public to contribute to the world’s freely available knowledge.

Jisc, the UK education charity championing the use of digital technology in education and research, is supporting this initiative so that the widest possible audience will benefit from the world-leading projects that it supports. These include open educational resources, online repositories of research, and collections such as the 19th century newspapers archive and Manuscripts Online, which holds British written and early printed materials from 1000 to 1500AD.

Wikimedia UK is the national charity supporting Wikipedia and its sister projects such as Wiktionary and Wikiversity. It works with professionals in universities, museums, libraries, and other institutions to improve the knowledge that those projects make freely available. It is investing in this project to involve more of these experts in improving Wikimedia projects for everyone’s benefit. This project is part of the charity’s wider commitment to higher education, shown through efforts such as their annual EduWiki conference and participation in the global Wikipedia Education Program. The charity recently appointed its first Education Co-ordinator in order to gain greater focus on higher education.

This is a national project, based at the University of Bristol. It will train experts in their workplaces and also run “editathon” events which will be open to the public. Dr Martin Poulter, who is a Wikipedia editor as well as a professional creator of educational materials in the University, will be an ambassador between the two communities. This will include working with Jisc’s communities to identify specific topics for development.

Peter Findlay, Jisc programme manager said: “We at Jisc are delighted to be working in partnership with Wikimedia UK to allow people to take full advantage of Wikipedia’s sophisticated open publishing systems. Our communities have worked hard to develop academic rigour but equally Wikimedia’s community has developed a rigorous approach to publishing crowd-sourced knowledge; it makes perfect sense for us to join forces for the advancement of teaching, learning and research.”

Jon Davies, Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, said: “I’m pleased that we are working with Jisc on the Wikimedia Ambassador project. Both the academic and Wikimedia communities are committed to the pursuit and sharing of knowledge. Bringing the two communities together can help demystify Wikipedia to people who work in higher education, and at the same time create and improve Wikimedia content by encouraging more experts to edit.”

The project is jointly funded by Wikimedia UK and Jisc and will run for around nine months.

Interested in British black music? Join our editathon!

Grime performer Dizzee Rascal
Grime performer Dizzee Rascal

We’ve linked up with BritishBlackMusic.com / Black Music Congress (BBM/BMC) to host a Wikipedia editing workshop on the afternoon of Sunday 30 June at our London office. The event coincides with British Black Music Month.

This free workshop will explore some of the British black music histories online and work on editing and adding information to Wikipedia, including biographies on some vintage and current acts, and organisations.

If you are particularly interested in British black music or African British history this editathon will enable you to learn how to use Wikipedia’s editing function and understand the protocols of being an editor.

You do not have to be an experienced writer or techie – all you need is an interest and passion in the topic. Representatives from Wikimedia UK and BBM/BMC will be on hand to show you how the site works and answer your questions. There will also be books, magazines, and online resources to help you start documenting British black music or African British history on Wikipedia.

While the session is free, pre-booking is essential and can be done here and directions to the Wikimedia UK office can be found here

British Library to make Europeana WWI collection available at workshop

First World War recruitment poster
First World War recruitment poster

The British Library is further demonstrating its commitment to open knowledge later this month as it hosts a First World War-themed editathon on 29 June.

What will make this session so useful is the Library is making some of its material from the Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project publicly available. These collections, for the most part, are not yet online but a substantial number will be made available the day before the event.

Many of these sources are extremely hard to find. They include many out of print books, official and unofficial trench journals, maps and photographs.

Spaces remain available for this free event and you’re most welcome to attend what should be a very interesting day. You can find more information and register your attendance here.

Royal Opera House to host an editathon

The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London
The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London

As Wembley is to football and CERN is to particle physics, so the Royal Opera House in London is to ballet. Home to both The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, the opera house is located in London’s Covent Garden. So it’s with great excitement that Wikimedia UK is supporting a ballet-themed editathon at this world-famous venue on Saturday 22 June.

The focus of the event is Sir Frederick Ashton, The Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer and one of the most prominent figures in 20th century ballet. The Wikipedia article about him exists in 14 languages but is somewhat neglected, while only around 15% of his ballets have articles at all.

The Royal Opera House will be sharing lots of books and other materials to use as sources and there are still some places available at the event.

The editathon is being organised by Rose Vickridge of the Royal Opera House and Andrew Gray, an experienced Wikimedian.

You can learn more, and sign up for the event, here.

“One is most amused” – Queen Victoria’s Journals editathon

Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria

This post was written by Liz McCarthy, Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford

‘This book, Mamma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales in it.’ So began the young Victoria in 1832, beginning a lifelong habit – and providing fodder for researchers around the world.

As Communications and Social Media Officer for the Bodleian Libraries , it was my job to find ways to get the word out and help our audiences engage with the Queen Victoria’s Journals project. The project, a collaborative effort between the Bodleian Libraries, the Royal Archives and information  company ProQuest, has made Queen Victoria’s diaries available online.

The Bodleian Libraries communications team had already begun to consider how we might create stronger links with the Wikipedia community – we’ve been chatting to Wikipedians in Residence and working with local editors to improve collection-related content. Engaging with the Wikipedia community seemed like a great way to put the Journals material to use as well as to help us develop relationships with Wikipedians in the area, and we decided to run a Queen Victoria’s Journals editathon to coincide with the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birthday on 24 May.

The project’s timing meant that we had a very short window in which to organise an event, but we went ahead. We quickly pulled together some promotional material and got curators lined up for the day, then spent about two and half weeks promoting the event. The help of Wikimedia UK was crucial in getting the word out and making sure everything was set up correctly, but we also advertised within the University and to various Victorian research groups.

We ended up with 14 participants (5 virtual, using IRC to ask questions) as well as curators and staff who came by to answer questions and facilitate. We were lucky enough to have Wikimedia trainers Charles Matthews and Doug Taylor join us, and they provided one-to-one support to the new editors – including the Director of Records for the Royal Household, who was roped into making his first ever edit! Our curators began with a quick intro to Queen Victoria’s journals and the Journals website, and then we dived right in.

The day was a success in terms of articles edited (38, including 3 new ones); Wikipedia is now the 2nd-highest referring site to the Journals website. It was also a relaxed opportunity to engage with the Wikipedia community and to introduce new ways of exploring our collections to those who know most about them. We look forward to hosting another event in the autumn – next time, with kids!

Wici Cymru & Wikimedia UK – Rheolwr Cymru / Wales Manager

Please see further down the page for this notice in English

Mae Wici Cymru a Wikimedia UK yn chwilio am Reolwr i Gymru i ddatblygu’r Wicipedia Cymraeg a Saesneg yng Nghymru drwy ysbrydoli a hyfforddi golygyddion newydd drwy gynllun y prosiect Llwybrau Byw!

Dylai’r Rheolwr fod yn brofiadol mewn: golygu prosiectau Wicimedia (Cymraeg a Saesneg), cefnogi ein gwirfoddolwyr, rheoli personél, gweithio o fewn cyllideb a chyflawni targedau mewn pryd. Bydd y gwaith yn cynnwys penodi a chefnogi hyfforddwyr a threfnu a chynnal sesiynau hyfforddi ledled Cymru.

Mae medru siarad Gymraeg a Saesneg yn rhugl yn hanfodol.

Mae’r swydd am 12 mis a bydd yr ymgeisydd llwyddiannus yn cael ei secondio i Wici Cymru a fydd yn goruchwylio’r gwaith (ar y cyd gyda WMUK, y cyflogwr) a Llywodraeth Cymru fel cyd-noddwr.

Mae’r swydd hefyd yn amodol ar ganllawiau a chytundebau WMUK ac am 4.5 diwrnod yr wythnos. Ffurflen Gais a chwaneg o wybodaeth oddi wrth:

Jon Davies: jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk  ac ar wefan http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Llwybrau_Byw_-_Living_Paths_Project_Recruitment

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Wici Cymru and Wikimedia UK are looking for a Wales Manager to develop the Wicipedia Cymraeg and English Wikipedia in Wales through encouraging and training new editors via our Llwybrau Byw – Living Paths Project.

The Manager must have experience of:

  • Editing Wikimedia projects (both English and Welsh), supporting volunteers, managing personnel, working within a budget, and delivering outcomes in time.
  • The work will involve appointing and supporting trainers, and organising and delivering training sessions throughout Wales.

Fluency in both the Welsh and English language is essential.

The post is for 12 months and the successful applicant will be seconded to Wici Cymru who will oversee the work, jointly with WMUK, the employer, and the Welsh Government as financial partner.

The post is subject to Wikimedia UK’s guidelines and contracts and is for 4.5 days per week. Further information / application forms are available from Jon Davies at jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk and at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Llwybrau_Byw_-_Living_Paths_Project_Recruitment

 

WMUK Conference – Mediawiki for OER and Learning Analytics

The below was originally published by Simon Knight. You can read the original here.

On Saturday I spoke in Lincoln at the WikimediaUK Conference on Mediawiki for OER and Learning Analytics – slides (with audio) here, video (I think) available on the conference link some time later this week.

I’d met a group of the people last year at EduWiki 2012 (and my thoughts at: EduWiki 2012), and my talk built a lot on the work I did at Cambridge on the ORBIT project – creating a platform for OER on interactive teaching particularly in STEM subject, as well as more recent work related to my PhD.  In particular I was talking about some stuff I’ve covered in blogs on:

I was particularly happy to hear talks from education organiser Toni Sant, WMUK Associate (and a big contributor to education outreach) Martin Poulter, and communications organiser (and someone I’ve talked to a bit about Digital Disruption‘s work) Stevie Benton.

I’ve put some thoughts below on particular aspects of the event, in the long run I think there are some interesting questions around how wikimedia meets its targets (and what those are), one thing I was thinking about yesterday was whether we need to start thinking about the mediawiki platform as a classroom tool in the same way as google has pushed google docs – it’s a good way to encourage brand affiliation, and familiarise people with your tools (and get them off microsoft’s – who of course do exactly the same thing).  It may be that tools like mediawiki – particularly given that they are open source, very flexible, and allow a lot of interesting pedagogic and analytic things to happen, might be particularly amenable to the sort of ‘technology for pedagogy‘ things I talked about not so long ago.

Lincoln Cathedral

Learning Analytics for Learning Wikipedia

There are interesting times ahead with the development of a wikimedia VLE for training, and the wikipedia adventure (also for training).  One thing I was keen to suggest was that if VLE training modules had learning outcomes that could be operationalised into activities within a wiki (either a training environment on the VLE or linked to wikipedia contributions themselves) then we could engage in some learning analytics on that data, and perhaps even develop a badging system.  That’d be cool because, for example, we might see what sorts of pages a user interacts with – perhaps primarily ‘commons’, or maybe ‘articles’ in the main wikipedia, etc. – and what sorts of activities they’re doing (minor edits, updating references, adding media, etc.) and build on that resource knowledge and user knowledge to make suggestions for further training, areas of strength, areas of weakness.  The primary target for this sort of thing is noobs, but if we want genuinely user contributed stuff I think engaging more experienced wikipedians as users is crucial too.  But if they come in and think “oh, well I can do this and that” or try modules and find they’re bored, the fatigue dropout will be high.  So much the better if people could be “pre-accredited” not from completing the modules on the VLE, but by checking the learning outcomes for particular modules (granularity will matter) against their user contributions.  This might also encourage more experienced users to learn new skills (for example, I’m a competent contributor, but I know nothing about templates – perhaps I should learn), and could flag some things where people think they have the skill, but their editing suggests they might actually be missing something.

Learning Analytics for Learning in Wikipedia

Of course, I’m also interested in how we can develop learning analytics for learning in wikipedia (or, at least, mediawiki environments) and I’m starting to think about how we could set up some experimental environments to teach some critical evaluation skills, and explore people’s epistemic commitments in both mediawiki and more structured (e.g. EvidenceHub) environments.  More  on that another time though! Exciting times ahead.

Wikimedia UK announces election of new Board members

Wikimedia UK is pleased to report the election of four trustees to the Board of the charity by its membership. The election took place at yesterday’s Annual General Meeting in Lincoln.

Saad Choudri was previously co-opted to the Board of Wikimedia UK in September 2012. He has taken a very active role and and has been involved in projects such as Wikimania 2014 and continues to work on the transfer of QRpedia to the charity. Saad works as a lawyer in the video games industry.

Greyham Dawes was co-opted to the Board of Wikimedia UK in February 2013, replacing John Byrne as Honorary Treasurer. He has worked hard to make sure the charity’s accounts are ready for submission to the Charity Commission and Companies House. Greyham is a chartered accountant and has extensive experience of charitable governance.

Michael Maggs will be serving on the Board for the first time. He is a bureaucrat on Wikimedia Commons and is currently a key member of the Wiki Loves Monuments steering group. Michael worked as a patent attorney for many years until his recent retirement.

Alastair McCapra will also be serving on the Board for the first time. He has previous experience of governance, having served as a trustee of Birkbeck College. He also sits on the Finance Committee of the Construction Industry Council. Alastair is currently the Chief Executive of the Landscape Institute.

All successful candidates have been elected by our members to serve terms of two years. You can read the candidates’ election statements here and their answers to pre-election questions here

Wikimedia UK congratulates the successful candidates and looks forward to their contributions to our charity. The charity also wishes to place on record its thanks to those candidates who were unsuccessful and hopes they will continue to be active in our movement.

Finally, and importantly, the trustees and staff of Wikimedia UK wish to say a heartfelt thank you to Doug Taylor, who decided not to stand for re-election. Doug has made an outstanding contribution to our charity as a trustee over the last year. We are sure he will continue to make excellent contributions as a volunteer.

Volunteers’ Week – a letter from our Chief Executive

An image of an ice cream with the message
Thank you!

This post was written by Jon Davies, Wikimedia UK Chief Executive

1-7 June is Volunteers’ Week in the UK  What better time to remind everyone that Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, are written and edited entirely by volunteers?

For over 12 years a vast group of people of all backgrounds, ages, opinions and personal interests have come together to create these enormous repositories of freely available knowledge, sharing it for no other reason than that they feel it is a worthwhile thing to do. And they continue to do so.

Wikimedia UK takes this opportunity to offer a huge thank you to everyone who volunteers their time, energy and knowledge to furthering free knowledge for all. Whether you fix typos, edit content, write articles, share images, teach people to edit, work with GLAM and education institutions or make the occasional cup of tea – thank you for making Wikimedia projects possible. In this vein I asked some of my colleagues how they felt about working with Wikimedia volunteers.

Daria Cybulska, Programme Manager, is impressed by the way volunteers are so keen to share the skills needed to edit Wikipedia. “I have supported many Wikipedia training events over the past year,” she said. “During the training I usually find myself focusing on organisation, and being anxious to give people exactly the right information and understanding of the encyclopaedia. But the true heart of these events are Wikimedia volunteers, trainers who give people the joy of seeing their first edit going live, and the empowerment to share what they know with others.

“The volunteers are wonderfully motivated to teach others the art of editing Wikipedia, and we would not be able to run the events without them.”

Stevie Benton, Communications Organiser, pointed out the stories that Wikimedia projects generate. “My job is all about storytelling,” he said. “The biggest story of all is how an encyclopaedia that is available in around 300 languages, with over 26 million articles, can be the result of volunteer collaboration. And it’s still growing. There isn’t praise enough for the gift these volunteers have given to the world. To be able to help share what they do is a great privilege.”

Jonathan Cardy, GLAM organiser admires the diligence of Wikimedians. “I’ve been astonished at the attention to detail that you see when you crowdsource the creation of an encyclopaedia,” he said. “When I talk to Wikipedia editors, these are people who are incredibly committed to getting things right, whether it is photoshopping tilted photographs or eradicating particular ungrammatical phrases from Wikipedia.”

If YOU want to become a member of this wonderful community get in touch with us and we will help get you started. You will be very welcome.