Wikimania 2026 brought the Wikimedia community together in Paris, and EduWiki was part of the week with two sessions centred on education.
On 22 July, the panel on AI and Wikipedia in Education: Opportunities, Ethics, and Equity in Practice brought 60 educators and Wikimedia programme leaders together to discuss how artificial intelligence is already affecting teaching and learning. On 24 July, the EduWiki Hub held its first in-person workshop, where 30 participants worked in groups of five to design impactful Wikimedia education activities around real situations in the Wikimedia and Education ecosystem.
Both sessions drew from experiences people are already having in classrooms, programmes, and Wikimedia communities.
AI and Wikipedia in Education
Around 60 participants joined AI and Wikipedia in Education: Opportunities, Ethics, and Equity in Practice.
Moderated by Filip Maljković, the panel featured Jackie Bucio from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, LiAnna Davis from Wiki Education, and Luisina Ferrante from Wikimedia Argentina.
Much of the discussion focused on AI literacy and the skills students need as generative AI becomes increasingly present in education. Panelists spoke about helping learners understand how these systems work, recognise their limitations, and evaluate the information they generate.
Jackie shared how generative AI is being incorporated into university learning environments to support research and source discovery. She also spoke about interviews with students that are helping educators understand how learners interact with AI and formulate prompts.
LiAnna shared experiences from Wiki Education’s work monitoring AI-generated content on English Wikipedia. Using Pangram, a tool that helps identify AI-generated text and potential plagiarism, she discussed the challenges of AI-generated citations and the importance of checking sources carefully.
This experience has also informed how Wiki Education approaches AI with students. AI can support parts of the research process, including identifying missing perspectives, finding potential resources, and improving categorisation. Verification remains especially important when information or sources have been suggested by generative AI.
The session included practical ideas that educators can bring into learning environments. Students can fact-check AI-generated responses, compare them with Wikipedia articles, examine differences between Wikipedia language editions, and evaluate generated information using reliable sources.
Luisina spoke about the uneven adoption of AI across regions and the importance of building educators’ capacity to understand and use these tools. She also highlighted Wikipedia’s usefulness for helping students examine different perspectives, identify gaps in knowledge, and recognize bias in AI-generated information.
The audience brought their own experiences into the discussion. One participant shared that some newcomers find creating an entirely new Wikipedia article easier than improving an existing one, which led to further discussion about newcomer experiences and responsible AI use within editing workflows.
Participants also learned about Paste Check, an initiative developed by the Wikimedia Foundation Product team that helps flag pasted or AI-generated content during editing.
The session gave educators and Wikimedians room to share what they are already seeing as AI becomes part of how students research and interact with information, and to consider how Wikimedia education programmes can respond.
Watch the session recording: Recording link
Bringing the EduWiki Workshop into the room
Two days later, we hosted Using Wikimedia in Education: A Practical Workshop by the EduWiki Hub.
This was a special edition of the EduWiki Workshop series. Previous workshops had connected participants virtually from different parts of the world. At Wikimania, we held the series in person for the first time.
The session was facilitated by the EduWiki Hub team together with the Wikimedia Brasil team and focused on challenges that educators, librarians, affiliates, and community organisers encounter when developing Wikimedia education initiatives.
Participants were divided into groups and given story cards based on different educational scenarios. Four scenarios were used during the workshop, and each group had to work with the situation in front of them and develop an activity that could respond to it.
The process began with understanding the context. Groups identified the educational challenge they wanted to address and considered how Wikimedia could fit into that setting. From there, they developed an activity, thought about who would participate and what they would need, and worked through how the idea could be implemented.
The groups produced different responses to the scenarios. Ideas included translation activities, using Wikimedia Commons andWiktionary within education, and introducing secondary school students to contributing to Wikipedia.
Participants also identified some of the practical considerations that would shape their ideas, including access to trainers, internet connectivity, learning materials, partnerships, funding, outreach, and continued support.
At the end, each group presented a pitch of the solution it had developed.
Finding the right support for an idea
As part of the exercise, groups were asked to identify at least one EduWiki Hub service that could support the activity they had designed.
Some services appeared repeatedly across the room.
EduWiki Mentorship was identified by several groups as useful for accessing guidance and support while developing an initiative. Participants also highlighted EduWiki Workshops and Knowledge Showcases as opportunities to continue learning from other programmes and practitioners. Open Educational Resources (OER) were another recurring choice, particularly for groups thinking about resources that could be used or adapted within their activities.
Seeing these services emerge from the group work gave us an opportunity to understand how participants might use them in response to challenges within their own education programmes.
The pitches also gave everyone in the room a chance to hear how the same design process could produce very different activities depending on the educational context.
Find the resources of the workshop, including the session recording on our Resources page
Connecting with other Wikimedia Hubs
The EduWiki Hub’s Wikimania activities also included participation in the Wikimedia Hubs Meetup, which brought together representatives from different hubs across the movement.
The EduWiki Hub team had an opportunity to share more about the Hub’s work and its progress during its pilot period, while also learning about the approaches being taken by other hubs. The discussion provided space to exchange experiences and consider how hubs can remain connected between major Wikimedia events.
One suggestion from the meeting was to explore quarterly opportunities for hubs to connect and continue sharing experiences, rather than relying mainly on in-person gatherings at international events.
Taking the ideas beyond Wikimania
Our time at Wikimania gave us an opportunity to engage with education at different stages.
The AI panel brought experiences from education programmes into a discussion that is becoming increasingly relevant to educators and learners. The workshop put participants in charge of developing their own responses to education scenarios and thinking through what it would take to implement them.
For the EduWiki Hub, Wikimania also marked the first time our workshop series moved from Zoom into a physical room. Participants could sit around the same tables, work directly on ideas together, and share what they developed with everyone in the room.
Beyond the public sessions, the EduWiki Hub team also used the week to coordinate upcoming activities and discuss the Hub’s evaluation, during our offline team meeting.
Thank you to Wikimedia Brasil for facilitating the workshop with the EduWiki Hub team, to Filip Maljković, Jackie Bucio, LiAnna Davis, and Luisina Ferrante for the AI and education discussion, and to everyone who joined both sessions and contributed their experiences and ideas.
We left Paris with plenty to build on, including the activities participants designed during our first in-person workshop, the questions and experiences shared during the AI panel, and new connections with other Wikimedia Hubs.
Get involved!
The EduWiki Hub invites you to take part in its growing initiatives:
Join the EduWiki community
Submit your Wikimedia education story to the Education Newsroom by the 26th of every month
Follow EduWiki Hub on social media Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram
Subscribe to the Education Newsletter to have This Month in Education delivered to you: Here
Explore the Hub’s monthly Open Educational Resources documentation
Collaborate with the Hub by contacting eduwikiug@gmail.com
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