My #100CommonsDays Challenge

Regular readers of this blog will know that I strongly support the use of Wikipedia (and Wikimedia generally) in teaching, and that I'm a member of Wikimedia Community Ireland. I'm still very nervous about editing, and until recently have only made very minor contributions to the online encyclopedia. It's one of my own development goals.

I am completely in awe of anybody who takes on the #100wikidays challenge - to write an article a day for 100 consecutive days. I first heard of this through our community member Rebecca O'Neill, who completed the challenge in 2015. Mourning my mother through a hundred days of Wikipedia editing is another, more recent, account of the challenge. Given that I've only written one article from scratch, I'm a long way from even contemplating the challenge.

However, earlier this year I saw that Rebecca had started the #100CommonsDays challenge - to upload an image to Wikimedia Commons every day for 100 days. I thought that sounded very much more manageable. I have contributed a small number of images before, mostly of the University, and have also been using the Commons as a gateway strategy for introducing academics to the notion of contributing content to Wikipedia.

And so, on 27th January I uploaded my first image of the challenge - an image of the diving board at Blackrock in Salthill, Galway.

Over the next 100 days, I added a new image every day. My final image of the challenge was uploaded on 6th May. They are mostly of buildings, or plaques, or statues, or places. They are all my own work, and are shared under the default Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This means that anybody is free to share or remix the images, but I (as the author) have to be attributed, and any use of the images must be shared under a similar license.

So, the images can be used to illustrate any of the articles on Wikipedia (in English or any other languages). But they can also be used for other purposes - making Wikimedia Commons a very useful resource for finding images for teaching purposes.

What did I learn from completing the #100CommonsDays challenge?

I had to be organised. While I like to take photos, not all of them are suitable for the Commons. I created a dropbox folder into which I dumped photos that might be useful. Each day, then, I had a source of images that could be uploaded.

Sharing helps. From day 1 I started to share my uploaded images with my friends and family on Facebook. This meant that if I missed a day, somebody would know! It helped to keep me on track, and also elicited some questions from friends about the Commons. So - another teaching opportunity!

I had to do my research. There's no point uploading an image if I can't remember exactly what it is of! Sometimes, I had taken a photo of a monument, but couldn't remember what monument it was. I just had a vague recollection of where I had been. Sometimes google maps was quite useful to do some detective work.

Categories matter. I quickly found out that the category structure is how files are organised and found on the Commons. Every file (image) should be associated with a category. Categories form hierarchies, and a file should be associated with the most specific category in the hierarchy. It will then also be associated with all parent categories. It took a number of edits of the categories of my files (mostly by bots) for me to figure this out!

Look for gaps. There's no point in adding yet another photo of the Empire State Building - somebody, with a better camera, has been there before me. Instead I had to do a little investigation before adding an image, to make sure the subject wasn't already well covered.

You can't upload just anything. I was careful to only contribute images that I had taken myself, and that meet copyright requirements, and that are suitable for the Commons (i.e. not my holiday snaps). Anything else may be speedily deleted!

I am still a new user. Having completed the challenge, and made some contributions previously, I now have 139 contributions - but I'm still classified as a new user and my uploads are actively monitored. A new user is anybody with fewer than 150 edits on Commons. Nearly there!

Uploading from a smartphone is a hassle. From the mobile site, although you can login, there is no option to upload an image. You have to force your browser to switch to the desktop version. There are rumours of an app, but if it still exists, it is not available on the  app store in Ireland, at least.

Would I do it again?

Possibly, but not for a little while. I want to focus on my Wikipedia editing and build up to another article there.

LIT's #ictedu 2016 - "Students as Co-Creators"

On Saturday the 23rd of April I attended the #ictedu conference at Limerick Institute of Technology, Tipperary for the first time.  I had booked the conference before, but it had always fallen at such a stressful time in the secondary school year that by the time that Saturday rolled around, I didn't have enough steam left in me.  This year left me with a bit more freedom to attend, so naturally I signed up.

A sunny April morning in Thurles

The conference theme hinged upon the student as co-creator and attendees stemmed from across the sectors.  I knew many faces on a professional basis and from CESI events, so it was useful to be at a more intimate conference where there was time to catch up properly. 

The event began with a keynote by Steve Wheeler from Plymouth University.  I've seen Steve give a keynote before and followed him for a long time online, so I was excited to hear him again as I've found his work to be both insightful and practical.  His presentation, "Digital Learning Futures: Learners as co-creators of knowledge", set the tone for the entire conference.  Steve steered clear over the over-used and disproved "digital native" theory in order to focus on the digital visitor and resident:

There are no digital natives, it's a more complex paradigm involving residents and visitors. #ictedu @timbuckteeth pic.twitter.com/SeFv2RpPof

— Katie Molloy (@hey_km) April 23, 2016

 Steve also highlighted the benefits of using rhizomatic tools like Wikipedia in order to foster the concept of community and creativity in students, and even hone their digital literacy skills.

@timbuckteeth praising #Wikipedia as a rhizomatic learning tool. Utilise - don't disparage. #ictedu @sharonlflynn pic.twitter.com/PMoxSmBox6

— Katie Molloy (@hey_km) April 23, 2016

Steve Wheeler discussing "desire lines"

As always, Steve highlighted the intrinsic nature of students to pave their own path toward learning and the necessity for us to give them the freedom, and tools, to do so. In this slide, he illustrates the concept of "desire lines" and how it applies to the student experience.

Dr. Barry Ryan assesses the digital skills present
and acquired throughout the project

The next presentation relevant to this blog came from Dr. Barry Ryan from DIT. His presentation, "Doing it for themselves (and others): Students producing reusable learning resources for peers and community partners" followed the trajectory of his plan to implement a video project in his second year Biochemistry module in lieu of the traditional essay.  The aim was not only to engage the students, but also to use the created content to teach each other and a community partner.  The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive, and they also indicated that they learned some digital skills along the way. Students became researchers of the content, peer reviewers and ultimately creators.  Students were happy to engage more effectively with the content and learn throughout the process.  During a shoot, a group of students somehow crossed paths with Brendan Gleeson on a movie set, and he actually shot some footage for them.  However, his digital skills were left to be desired as the focus was blurry throughout the scene!


The capstone talk, "Stepping in. Stepping out. Standing back. The student as co-creator", came from NUI Galway's own Mary Carty, the Executive Director of the new new Blackstone Launchpad here on campus. I look forward to getting to know Mary, not only because we are just across the concourse from each other, but also because of her impassioned speech about her previous project, the Outbox Incubator. The project is available to young women interested in STEM and its tagline is: "6 weeks, 45 girls at a time, all under 1 roof". Mary spoke with vigor about how the project raised opportunities for the girls that participated, but changed their outlook as women in STEM. Mary believes that ideas can turn into realities.  I have no doubt that Mary's passion will resonate with young people at NUI Galway.

Mary Carty speaking about Outbox Incubator and Blackstone Launchpad

Having known the organizers of this conference for some time, I feel like my attendance was well overdue.  I thoroughly enjoyed the day and I was able to take away some very positive conversations with like minded people. Many thanks to Pamela O'Brien, Conor Galvin and Bernie Goldbach for a wonderful conference.

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NUI Galway on Wikimedia Commons

The Quad by Malbe554

Just over a week ago I had a workshop for academic staff (on the PG Diploma in Academic Practice module in Learning Technologies) where we discussed the use of wikis in teaching and learning. As well as demonstrating how Blackboard wikis work and might be used to support collaborative group work, I also tried out a Wikipedia familiarisation session, in the style of Martin Poulter. This was based mostly on the talk I gave at EdTech earlier this year, on Academic Writing and Wikipedia.

The purpose of the Wikipedia familiarisation session is to highlight certain academic qualities of Wikimedia articles - the quality scale, citation guidelines, peer review, authorship, collaboration. I also talked about some of Wikipedia's sister projects, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, that can be used to enhance teaching and learning activities, such as Wikiversity, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikimedia Commons.

To add a practical element, without a full-blown editing session, I asked each person in the group to take one or more pictures (using a smartphone or other device) of the place where he/she works, and to create a wikipedia account in advance of our workshop. During the workshop, then, each person uploaded a new media file to Wikimedia Commons, which was later tagged with National University of Ireland, Galway.

This had the advantage of each person creating an account and making a real contribution to Wikimedia Commons. Moreover, the collection of images of NUI Galway has been expanded and enhanced.

Some of the newly uploaded images are below. As you can see, they have all been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

Old Civil Engineering Building
By Theorydave (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Office View of the Quadrangle
By Kardoy1 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Earth and Ocean Science, NUIG
By TiernanHenry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Áras de Brún
By Niallmadden (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Aras Moyola
By Mary R Mulry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Learning at #cesicon 2015

I wasn't sure which identity to bring with me to #cesicon, the annual conference of CESI (Computers in Education Society of Ireland). Billed as an event for those who are interested in integrating technology into their teaching and learning, it seems aimed mostly at first and second level education. Since my professional experience is embedded firmly in higher education, I wasn't sure what benefit the event would be for me.

The free stickers went down well

In my new found interest in all things Wikimedia, however, I wanted to support the Wikimedia Community Ireland group who were presenting in a session called Wikipedia for Education. And so, I signed up as part of An Lucht Vicí. With my new (purple) avatar on twitter, I can no longer hide easily at events, and so I brought along my "me" identity as well.

The one identity that I tried to leave behind was the parent of two children in secondary school. My experience is that parents and teachers don't mix, unless it's at highly structured parent-teacher meetings, organised by the school.

I had a great day, which was full of learning. I was very impressed by the crowds of professionals that attended, mostly primary and secondary teachers, giving up their Saturday to learn and share. I was very impressed by the young people from St Brendan's National School, who were there to sell copies of their newsletter, the Eyrecourt Examiner, and even offered subscriptions and advertising space. It was great to finally meet some twitter friends such as @donenda and @simonmlewis.

And I learned too - more than I expected. Gareth Callan (@gar_callan), from Coláiste Bhaile Chláir, gave a wonderful presentation about flipping the (second level) classroom. To be honest, I wasn't even sure that this was possible at second level in Ireland, but I'm convinced after Gar's talk. After a workshop with Mary Jo Bell (@7MJB) and Ciara Brennan (@PrimEdTeacher), I'm now creating and sharing videos with Vine, and made my first Animoto creation.

The Plenary Panel Discussion was excellent, particularly the young lady who spoke so eloquently about the disconnect between the technology she uses at home and the technology used at school. She asked a simple, but obvious, question: why don't teachers ask their students about what tech they use and might like to use as part of their learning?

By the end of the day, I was tired, but buzzing, especially after John Davitt's very entertaining keynote (talking sheep included). I had come to the realisation that we all have something to learn from each other and it might be no harm to step outside our boundaries occasionally.

But a week later, and as the parent in me reflected, I have a huge sense of regret about the event. My regret is about the teachers who were not there. It's almost 30 years since I did my Leaving Cert (yes, I am that old) and the learning experience of young people at secondary school has not changed significantly since then. I was particularly saddened by a statement over the weekend from one of the teachers' unions, that teachers NOT attend certain CPD opportunities.

Sometimes it's hard to balance multiple identities! Thanks to everyone at #cesicon for your enthusiasm and dedication.

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Academic Writing and Wikipedia

Yesterday, the Times Higher had an article called Wikipedia should be 'better integrated' into teaching, based largely on a study carried out in Australia, but largely ignoring a lot of the work being done by the Wikipedia Education community in the UK and, to a lesser extent, in Ireland.

Last November I wrote about the EduWiki 2014 event which was exactly on this topic. While integrating Wikipedia into teaching isn't widespread, there are a number of people who are doing this, and have been for a number of years.

Our first Wikimedia event at NUIG was in November 2014, when we organised an Editathon on Vicipéid (the Irish language wikipedia) and Wikipedia. This involved MA students taking Irish translation modules, with a view to providing authentic translation opportunities. The event was very successful, and you can see Oliver Moran from Wikimedia Community Ireland talking about it in the video below.




Following the success of that first event, we are now planning further Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) projects. The next one will be in collaboration with the Academic Writing Centre at NUI Galway. Through this workshop/editathon we hope to stress the importance of research and referencing when creating or editing  Wikipedia articles, and link this to the skills required when doing academic writing for assessment or publication. Because the event will take place within the library, students will have resources immediately on hand, as well as the support of library staff.

I'll let you know how that goes!

With thanks to the Learning Technology Team in CELT (Blaneth, Fiona, Grainne and Labhaoise) for the filming and editing required to produce the video.

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Editathon on Vicipéid and Wikipedia

An Editathon on Vicipéid (the Irish-language wikipedia) and Wikipedia is being organised on Friday, November 7 from 09:00 to 13:00 in the computer lab in the S Block, NUI Galway. This collaboration was initally proposed by members of the Wikimedia Ireland Community and three of their members (Shannon Eichelberger, Eugene Eichelberger and Oliver Moran) have kindly offered to supervise the training and support of participants.

The aim is to highlight the value of An Vicipéid/Wikipedia as a learning resource and to improve its quality by encouraging Irish traslation students to participate in the event. The event’s theme is The National Monuments of Ireland. This was chosen on account of the Wikimedia Ireland Community’s previous collaboration with the international photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments.

Members of staff from Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge will also be present during the event both to support students and participate themselves. Training and support will be provided throughout the morning and certificates recognising their participation will be presented to all students. Refreshments will be available during the event.

There are 20 workstations in the lab and therefore 20 official places at the event. 8 places are being reserved for MA students taking Irish translation modules. The remaining 12 places are available to other students or interested members of staff.

Schedule:
09:00 – 09:15 Welcoming Address from Dónall Ó Braonáin, Príomhfheidhmeannach an Acadaimh
09:15 – 10:15 Initial Training
10:15 – 10:30 Tea/Coffee in Room 106, Áras na Gaeilge
10:30 – 13:00 Editing your choice of page on the theme of The National Monuments of Ireland
Please note: If you have appointments/classes during the morning, please call in for any part of the Editathon - even if you miss the training (support will be available throughout the morning)

Preparation
1.    To assist in the smooth running of the Editathon, you are asked to reserve a place by ordering a ticket (Ticéad MA for MA students or Ticéad Mac Léinn/Ball Foirne for all other participants)

Please note: As places are limited, you are encouraged to bring your own laptop and connect via WiFi. In this case, there is no need to order a ticket – please just show up when you can.

2.    You are also asked to create a Vicipéid/Wikipedia account in advance at http://ga.wikipedia.org and if possible, choose a national monument that you wish to work on and register your interest at
o    here  (Gaeilge)
o    or here  (English)

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Wikipedia Belongs in Education

St Leonard's Hall

The EduWiki 2014 event was held on Friday 31st October in the stunning St Leonard's Hall at the University of Edinburgh. Ever since I heard Toni Sant (Education Organiser with wikimedia UK) speak at the International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference (see previous post), which led me to join the Wikimedia Ireland Community working group, I have been fascinated at the potential of using Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) to support student development in higher education. So, I was thrilled to be at the one day event in Edinburgh to find out more about the Wikimedia UK education projects.

This was always going to be a different crowd from my usual conference network, and there wasn't much tweeting in advance of the event, so I was a little nervous when I turned up at the social event on the evening before the conference. I needn't have worried, the small group that had gathered were as welcoming as could be, including a nacho-eating dog, and several wikipedians. A collection of tweets from the conference and the lead-up was captured using storify by Brian Kelly, who spoke at the event.

Floor Koudijs: Why Wikipedia is great for students

The event itself was opened the next morning by Peter McColl, Rector at the University of Edinburgh, and followed by a presentation from Floor Koudijs from the Wikipedia Education Program at the Wikimedia Foundation.  Her message was a simple one: Wikipedia belongs in Education. Using Wikipedia in the classroom, students will start as readers, but they are future contributors. There followed some discussion about academic staff attitudes to Wikipedia, where it is often not seen as a valid resource. But even academics will use it as a starting point for research, so the suggestion was: instead of fighting it, why not embrace it?

Wikimedia in Education

During the morning, we heard from a number of interesting speakers, including Wikimedians in Residence at various UK institutions including JISC, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the National Library of Scotland. Of particular interest to me was a presentation from Marc Haynes, former Wikipedian in Residence at Coleg Cymraeg, Wales, which enables teaching through Welsh in the universities in Wales. Marc described his role: working with academics across Welsh universities, training them in wiki editing, sourcing content that could be shared under a suitable Creative Commons licence, and building up content on the Welsh Wicipedia. Since NUIG has a particular responsibility to the Irish language, there would seem to be opportunities to do something similar for Vicipéid, the Irish language wiki. 

Also of immediate interst to me was a very accessible presentation from Martin Poulter, former Wikimedia ambassador at JISC. Martin spoke about his approach to academic staff development around using Wikipedia in education: a Wikipedia comprehension exercise. Rather than starting with how to edit, he demonstrated an approach which highlights academic qualities of Wikimedia articles - the quality scale, citation guidelines, peer review, authorship, collaboration, cultural differences and opportunities for translation projects. Coming at this from the angle of supporting academic integrity, rather than a focus on the technology, is a fantastic approach and one that I hope to use in the future. 

A presentation from Greg Singh, lecturer at the University of Stirling, showed Wikimedia projects in action. I was particularly impressed by the WikiBooks project Digital Media and Culture Yearbook 2014, where students worked in 12 groups of 6, to collaboratively produce an open publication. Marks were awarded for content, understanding and engagement. Student feedback was almost all overwhelmingly positive (11 out of 12 groups).

Beginners Workshop for New Campus Ambassadors and Educators

Instructor Basics

In the afternoon I attended the workshop delivered by Toni Sant and Martin Poulter  for people who are getting started, or thinking of getting started, with Wikipedia in their own institutions. The first part of this was based on the excellent Instructor Basics: How to Use Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool publication. Based on 5 key policies (free content, reliable sources, neutral point of view, notability, good faith), we were led to consider different types of student assignments that can be used to help achieve various learning outcomes. 

Rather than create a new Wikipedia article, which could be quickly removed due to lack of "notability", we were encouraged to think about: translating an article (useful for building up content on Vicipéid, for example); copy editing to improve the grammar or readability of an article; uploading illustrations to Wikimedia Commons on a particular topic or theme; adding new content to an existing article; using Wikidata as the basis of an assignment. Wikipedia also has a number of sister projects that could be used as the basis of students work: Commons, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wiktionary...

At all times, the importance of interacting with the existing Wikimedia community was stressed, through writing messages on a user's talk page or on an article's talk page. This allows a student to practice skills in collaboration, not just with their classmates, but with a whole world of volunteer editors. 

Of course, students are likely to make mistakes when it comes to Wikipedia etiquette and although we were assured that the majority of Wikipedians will be supportive of fledgling editors, there are also stories of less than helpful behaviours. To support students and educators, we were introduced to the Wikipedia Education Extension which allows educators to register their institution and courses, and within this, identify clearly which articles students may be working on.

There is an impressive amount of online training for educators and for students, and my next step is to become a Campus Ambassador so that I can start to roll out projects at NUI, Galway.

WikiProject Ireland/NUIG National Monuments Editathon Nov 2014 

As a first step, I'm really excited that we are hosting our first An Vicipéid/Wikipedia Editathon this Friday!

Organised by Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, CELT and the Wikimedia Ireland Community, the aim is to highlight the value of An Vicipéid/Wikipedia as a learning resource and to improve its quality by encouraging Irish traslation students to participate in the event. The event’s theme is The National Monuments of Ireland. This was chosen on account of the Wikimedia Ireland Community’s previous collaboration with the international photography competition Wiki Loves Monuments.

For more information see the event invitation.

No doubt you'll be hearing more about Wikipedia projects at NUIG soon!

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