By lots of luck and some pre-planning I am in London for the two day Future of Education workshop being run as a Wikimania 2014 Fringe event.

After finding the way to the Barbican, and then inside it to the Frobisher Rooms, the day opens with LiAnna’s welcome and blanket game and getting sorted with brilliant wireless (which means the hashtag #wikimania should be worth following). It is good to get an overview of Wikimania 10 from the organisers even though I know I can’t be part of the actual event – in person at least.

Some highlights of the program today

Floor Koudijs gives a global overview of the Wikipedia Education Program.

Toni Sant, University of Hull, Wikimedia UK Education Organiser and organiser of this event, talks about WM-UK activities and references his paper at a recent conference on academic integrity in which he deconstructs the Turnitin whitepaper: What’s wrong with Wikipedia? This seems to be a great way into conversations with academics about sources which can be followed up with the video: Wikipedia editing basics: Plagiarism and copyright violation.

A session of lighting talks after morning tea highlight the great range of things happening across education from Scottish primary schools through to U3A. Fabian Tompsett, Wikimania organiser’s session entitled How open is open? is presented using Wikiversity.

It is fantastic to meet so many people who share my interests (and to learn about others not present who I should follow up with).

• Tim Hunt, Open University – who  I have been following in twitter for many years
• Marc Haynes, Wikipedian working on Welsh language Wikipedia projects
• Andy Mabbett, ORCID and voice recording of live subjects
• Charles Matthews, Moodle developer WMUK
• Stevie Benton, WM UK Moodle

The dangerous part of workshops like this are that they generate ideas for what needs doing locally, and over the weekend I collate a long list of ideas for Wikimedia Australia.

Wikimedia Ambassador program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Education_program/Ambassadors

• develop a database of ambassadors
• consider badges, service recognition
• find existing Australian Wikipedia editors who are academics, librarians and higher education students and approach these as starter group

Education Outreach activities

• Encourage the establishment of student societies of editors on campus and in secondary schools
• Establish connections with professional associations and societies. Coordinate Wikimedians to present at their workshops and conferences. Fund editors with knowledge in related areas to attend society conferences and presentations and provide reports of related editing areas
• Researcher support – workshops/training
• International networking – support members to attend other association events

Wiki*edians in Residence
Check out reports from Martin Poulter, Wikimedia Ambassador at JISC.

Consider establishing the role of Wikimedia Australia Education Organiser. Get Toni’s role description as a starting point and
consider working in partnership with WMUK for education projects given our similar structures and existing networks.

Promote use of identifiers for Australian editors and subjects with both VIAF and ORCID. Easy instructions on how to add ORCID to Wikimedia user page.

Promote Wiki voice for Australians.
Twitter hashtag is #WikiVIP

I finish my Barbican day with another meal at the Food Court and foyer concerts of Mozart and Haydn’s first symphonies while waiting for the feature of the night: the Academy of Ancient Music’s Concert The Last Symphonies: Mozart No. 41, Haydn No. 102 and Beethoven No. 9 – all wonderfully performed.