Succesfull WikiWomen Bootcamp in Donostia

Learning & education Minority languages

4 August 2022

From the 27th to the 30th of June, high school teachers and education workers from Fryslân, Ireland and the Basque country traveled to the Basque country for Wikipedia trainings and meetings for the WikiWomen project. During this week, our partners from Euskal Wikilarien Kultura Elkartea and Wikimedia Community taught the teachers and education workers all about Wikipedia. For instance, how it works and how it can be used in high school lessons. Wikipedia is being used more and more as a teaching method in schools, for example to teach about finding and using sources and about copyright. In our increasingly digitalized world full of fake news, that skill becomes more and more relevant.

Besides the Wikipedia trainings, all WikiWomen partners met to discuss the next steps in the three-year project. Together with the participants of the Wikipedia trainings, the first concrete ideas about the final goal of the project came into being: developing the teaching materials for high schools in which Wikipedia is used to teach digital skills, social engagement and language skills in the minority language, and in which there is a focus on biographies about women.

The next transnational meeting will take place in 2023, in Monaghan, Ireland. By then, the first version of the teaching materials will be created and piloted in Frisian, Irish and Basque high schools and teachers and pupils will come along on an exchange. The exchange will consist of a sort of ‘Wikithons’, in which the pupils from the different countries come into contact and work on their Wikipedia texts together. Afterwards, the materials will be developed and improved further.