On 15 August, Wikimedia Ukraine held its 2026 online conference for the Wikimedia education community, bringing together teachers, university lecturers, Wikimedia contributors, education professionals, and community organizers from across Ukraine.
More than 200 people registered for the conference, with around 60 participants online simultaneously during the day. The programme featured 22 speakers and more than seven hours of presentations, practical cases, and discussions.
Holding a long synchronous online event in Ukraine is still not something we can take for granted. Russia’s ongoing war continues to affect everyday life, including the stability of electricity and internet access. We did experience some connectivity problems during the conference, but speakers, organizers, and participants adapted — and we managed to complete the full programme.
A strong international dimension ran through the conference. Anton Protsiuk from Wikimedia Ukraine spoke about the international Wikimedia education community, opportunities for Ukrainian educators to connect with global initiatives, and practical ways to become more involved internationally. Halyna Kachurovska shared her experience from Wikimania 2026 in Paris, including Ukrainian education work presented there, ideas she brought back from the conference, and opportunities for further international cooperation.
Another important international development discussed during the conference was Vikidia. Iryna Buchnieva introduced participants to the free encyclopedia designed primarily for younger audiences and its educational potential. Ukraine is now preparing to join Vikidia with a Ukrainian-language project, which could create another accessible entry point into free knowledge for school students and educators.
Three cases we especially want to highlight
A separate practical block focused on tracking and assessing student contributions to Wikimedia projects. Dmytro Vlasenko showed how he organizes university Wikipedia assignments using prepared article lists, contribution histories, watchlists, and step-by-step review of students’ work. Yevhenii Shybetskyi shared his experience of working with school students and demonstrated how he uses the standard User contributions page, dedicated user categories, and XTools to monitor activity. Kazymyr Vozhnyi focused on assessment in the age of generative AI and, using the ZUNU WikiStudio and the “Chronicle of Courage” project as examples, showed how assignments can be designed around real research, source verification, and work with local archives rather than simply producing text.
Olha Loboda presented an example of integrating several Wikimedia projects into a new “Drama and Theatre” course for students in grades 5–6. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikiquote help address the shortage of teaching materials for the course while also creating opportunities to work critically with information. Her case demonstrated how Wikimedia resources can become part of the curriculum itself and support media literacy, critical thinking, and academic integrity rather than being used only as additional reference materials.
One of the most experimental sessions came from Mykhailo Hryhoriev, who combined Wikipedia, AI, and music. He demonstrated how verified facts from Wikipedia can be transformed into an educational song with the help of AI tools and then developed into a student challenge or educational flashmob. It was a playful example, but also a useful demonstration of how generative AI can be incorporated into learning while keeping fact-checking and reliable sources at the centre of the process.
AI appeared in almost every conversation
Although the programme concluded with a dedicated discussion led by Anton Protsiuk on how Wikipedia’s role in education is changing in the age of AI, artificial intelligence was mentioned in almost every presentation throughout the day, not only in the final session.
Speakers repeatedly returned to questions educators are already facing: What happens when students use AI to produce assignments? How can AI-generated information be verified? How can educators distinguish between useful assistance and uncritical reliance on generated content? When is an AI tool useful, and when is it better to go directly to Wikipedia — or to the sources behind a Wikipedia article?
Maia Lazorenko, for example, showed how students can compare Wikipedia materials with AI-generated answers in geographical research and then use references and article histories to verify information.
One of the broader ideas that emerged throughout the conference was that Wikipedia and AI do not have to be competitors. Wikipedia makes it possible to see sources, follow an article’s revision history, and understand that knowledge is created, discussed, corrected, and updated by people. These skills become even more important as generative AI becomes part of everyday education and information seeking.
The rest of the programme demonstrated just how broad the use of Wikimedia projects in education can be. Speakers shared practical experience of using Wikipedia for media and information literacy, history and civic education, geography, English-language learning, interdisciplinary activities, research skills, critical thinking, and academic integrity.
Other sessions explored Wikimedia Commons as a source of openly licensed educational materials, Wikisource in university courses, local Wikimedia initiatives, cooperation with teacher professional development centres, and ways to involve school students in Wikimedia projects. Speakers also discussed article histories, source verification, work with freely licensed images, student research, and different ways of integrating Wikimedia projects into regular teaching rather than treating them as one-off activities.
For Wikimedia Ukraine, one of the most valuable outcomes of the conference was precisely this diversity. There is no single model for “Wikipedia in education”. One educator might use article histories to teach media literacy; another might work with primary sources on Wikisource; another may integrate Wikimedia resources into a school curriculum; and someone else may experiment with Wikipedia and AI.
What connects these approaches is the idea that students can be more than passive consumers of information. They can learn how knowledge is created, check sources, identify gaps and errors, contribute improvements, and participate in the wider free-knowledge ecosystem.
We are very grateful to all 22 speakers who shared their experience and to the 200+ people who registered for the conference. We also appreciate everyone who spent this very full online day with us — asking questions, sharing ideas, discussing education and free knowledge, and staying connected despite the occasional internet difficulties that come with organizing events in Ukraine during wartime.
▶️ Watch the full conference recording on YouTube: YouTube recording link
More information about Wikimedia Ukraine’s education activities, learning opportunities, and resources is available on our Education Portal:
https://w.wiki/9hGc
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