Wikidata:WikidataCon 2017/Notes/Wikidata & Education: Using Wikidata as an Educational Platform
Title: Wikidata & Education: Using Wikidata as an Educational Platform
Speaker(s) edit
Name or username: Shani Evenstein
Abstract edit
Wikidata facilitates a variety of learning opportunities and "potential applications across all areas of sciences, technology and cultures"(Vrandečić & Krötzsch, 2014). It offers humanity a way to cope with the data and information overload that characterize the digital age, and allows users to interact with data and information in a more meaningful way that was not technically possible before. As one of the largest semantic knowledge bases in existence, Wikidata helps to change the interactions between humans and knowledge, and facilitate new learning opportunities for users across all disciplines. However, celebrating only its 5th anniversary, Wikidata is still a very young project, and the global Wiki community, as well as the academic and research communities, are yet to explore its potential as a learning and teaching tool. What are some of the current uses of WD in the classroom? What are some of the advantages and challenges while trying to implement it into the curriculum? And what are some future ideas to go about this process? The purpose of this Round Table is to explore practical and fun ways of bringing Wikidata into the classroom, while having a global discussion about -
- Current uses of WD in the classroom
- The advantages of using WD not only for learning, but also as a way to develop critical thinking and 21st century skills
- The challenges the Wikidatans and Educators have met so far and how they have been handled
- Brainstorm about future possibilities of bringing the magic of Wikidata to new generations of learners
The Round Table will host Wikidatans and Educators who are currently using Wikidata as a learning platform, and will encourage a live discussion with participants of this session.
Collaborative notes of the session edit
- What this session isn't
- teaching WD skillls
- What this session is
- teaching *with* WD
- Specific assignments in class
- specific skills / literacies that students need: data literacy
- How to get started
- our experiences teaching with DW so far
- does / don'ts
- queries that work regardless of where you are
- visualization
Typs of assignments: working in small groups - 20 min
- Programming/UX / design / visualization
- Humanities / social studies / Gender studies
- An easy subject is Gender Studies. "Female french engineers". How we define french (citizenship, place of birth...); engineer is more difficult, what kinds are included (different logics by language). Good example for subclasses. Female is easily defined with gender. You can have a breakdown on subclasses.
- You can also learn that architects are a subclass of engineers in arabic, as you see how it is organized in different Wikipedias.
- You can use this kind of demography studies in time or place, so you can track historical events through data.
- Bias studies: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Genero_oreka. You can track jobs in any given Wikipedia vs the total, and also jobs by gender in each Wikipedia. Understanding why this happens.
- life sciences medicine
these students can actually use Wikidata to collect knowledge, as done here: https://figshare.com/articles/Volatile_Organic_Compounds_A_Detailed_Account_of_Identity_Origin_Activity_and_Pathways/3466805 or about a disease as
here: https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/topic/Q202864
add labels & descriptions to items
presenting results: 15 min
wrapping us: 5 min.
- Engagement areas
Topics - coverage, bias, domains of knowledge
Methods - database mechanics, api, query
Ontology - modeling relationships
Visualization - display and discovery, storytelling
Usability and interaction - ux design, Making games
add more thematic areas?
- What data literacies must students acquire?
provenance of data sets and bias
references, notability, verifiability
confirmation bias
formulating hypotheses and research questions
workflows
ADD MORE
semantic web literacies
- Examples
Andrew - Union College query and visualization of its downfall
Asaf - You CAN teach SPARQL and Wikidata query well
Shani - classroom?
Ideas from Lydia keynote
Game design - use Wikidata to make more game like interfaces
magnus has spec’ed but will not build mix n match 2
Have class create everything is connected examples
https://tools.wmflabs.org/everythingisconnected/index.html
Gender gap on Wikidata explorer - gender studies
Explore different decades and break down why some ranges have different proportions
Note-taker(s):
This is the Etherpad for note-taking of this session.
Please document the session so that others can understand what happened in the session
Resource page on Wikidata edit
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Teaching_with_Wikidata
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikidataCommunity/
Programming, User interface, Design, Visualizations group edit
Recommended properties based on an input
Create a google form of questions that can take inputs based on a particular theme and export it to a spreadsheet for validation/upload
Alternatively an app that does the same
Do form validation based on constraints
Ability to send data by SMS ton contribute to WD
Campaigns to contribute data about their locality - weather/rainfall, species
high resolution data that can be processed en mass to refine into more reliable data colleced on village via school children (see https://schoolwiki.in )
Mobile interface to contribute has simple gestures: swipe to select the right option
20 questions quiz packages on themes
Telegram bots
Use audio channels to contribute: speech to text,
Translation of texts and labels once they are visualized. Students want to know where this "automatic generated data" comes from and how they can have in their own language.
Tool that asks students abouth the languages they speak and invites them to add labels and descriptions to items related to the course
Humanities and social studies edit
An example is Gender Studies. "Female french engineers". How we define french (citizenship, place of birth...); engineer is more difficult, what kinds are included (different logics by language). Good example for subclasses.
Female is easily defined with gender. You can have a breakdown on subclasses.
You can also learn that architects are a subclass of engineers in arabic, as you see how it is organized in different Wikipedias.
You can use this kind of demography studies in time or place, so you can track historical events through data.
Example: witch trials as signals of social anxiety, search for scapegoats: compare timeline against epidemics, population dips
Changes in artistic output due to social conditions, e.g. marriage law change affects early romantic novels. Compare timelines/ countries
Bias studies: https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Genero_oreka. You can track jobs in any given Wikipedia vs the total, and also jobs by gender in each Wikipedia. Understanding why this happens.
Life science, medicine, biology edit
these students can actually use Wikidata to collect knowledge, as done here: https://figshare.com/articles/Volatile_Organic_Compounds_A_Detailed_Account_of_Identity_Origin_Activity_and_Pathways/3466805
add labels & descriptions to items
run the example queries in your area and check the results for quality
write some new example queries
find unsourced statements on items of particular classes, and add a suitable reference for that statement
review property proposals in your area