The EduWiki Conference took place from May 28 to June 1, 2025, in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. The city’s weather was quite comfortable and the human atmosphere was warm. Participants came from different parts of the world: Africa, Asia, North America, Europe, and of course Latin America. About thirty people came from different parts of Colombia, the country that hosted the event.
The experiences at the event explored the intersection between the Wikimedia movement and education at all levels – from formal education to community and indigenous cases, as well as informal and activist perspectives. Several connections between AI, education and Wikimedia projects were presented.
I would like to highlight the conversation about low-connectivity areas in Colombia and what they represent for teachers and Wikimedia education activists promoting the Wikimedia environment in those areas. People from Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana shared similar challenges, and we created an opportunity to learn from each other about possible tools for addressing these issues.
My favorite workshop occurred when we had the opportunity to build with LEGO blocks in different teams. This activity made us think about the challenges we are facing in the AI era, Generation Alpha, the Wikimedia environment, and the connections between participants. We meet in groups of five to six participants,, all from Colombia. The first insight was to build individual structure seeking the opportunities or risk using artificial inteligence and Wikipedia with students or communities. After individual pieces were made, we merge all our pieces together creating a narrative convincing enough to share with parciopapants in a final pannel. In the LEGO blocks session, we built “The Gates of Hell” (Les Portes de l’Enfer), an artistic piece by Mr. Rodin. It represented the challenges we face with Wikipedia, education and Artificial Intelligence.
Later, in further meetings, we realized that these “gates of hell” could be faced if we all work together as a large network. The magic happened when we discovered that our colleagues in Africa face the same educational problems as we do in Latin America: access, representation, redistribution, and more. Building with blocks, facing similar challenges, and dancing as part of knowledge sharing were all wonderful opportunities to learn together.
We will continue these discussions at Wikimania 2025 to connect our communities with opportunities through the tools and solutions we can build together. Thus, the EduWiki Conference allowed us to connect, even with the disconnected.
Thanks for the conference to WIkimedia Colombia, the EduWIki User Group, and Wikimedia Foundation for the conference.
CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikihacedor
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