An editathon on an isolated smaller island, 1900km from Tokyo

Without knowing about grants by the Wikimedia Foundation, the outreachers in Japan used to pay for train tickets and accommodation fees on their own. The majority of them live in the wider Tokyo area. It wasn’t always that public libraries/local governments called them with the transportation expenses.

So it was very hard to outreach in the remote areas. But WMF’s grants has changed this situation. Let me show you an example. How a Rapid Fund contributed to a smaller island?　

Place: a junior high school (age 13 – 15)

Audience: 120 students + teachers

Date: 2023 July 6 Thu   13：50-14：40 + 14：50-15：40 （100mints）

The outreacher: Racco

The important things Racco wanted the students to consider were shared at the beginning:

1, Always be conscious of where the information comes from.

2, Never hurt anyone nor yourself.

3, Your edit must help someone and yourself.

The flow

1, Made 12 groups

2, Racco showed 12 themes about the village, On-na, which were prepared in advance

3, Each group searched about the theme via the internet/books.

4, When the students’ outcomes were appropriate for Wikipedia, Racco edited them in the classroom.

The setup

Teachers said in advance that students were very shy to say something in the classroom. So to make the session interactive, Racco recommended the students use the tablets, which were connected to a projector. Each tablet was shared by a few students.

In details

For beginners, Racco always first shares the importance of information literacy using examples which are familiar for the participants (in this session, customized for students ages 13 – 15), before explaining “What is Wikipedia?” :

• Quizzes: using Pokémon and others, “Why do you get knowledge?”
• Deepfake+AI→some movies of a famous person’s body with another famous person’s head
• A beautiful young girl, but the reality is a middle-aged man (you NEVER know who the person is)
• “Do you eat food on the road?”  “No”
• ”Have you checked the notice on the food package you would buy in a market?”  “Yes”
• “Do you trust something on the internet?”   “Yes…No…”
• The point of view→ Google Chrome　　z=abs(-y/sqrt(1-x*x)),x is from -1 to 1, y is from -1 to 1,z is from 0 to 1　 (Change the aspect, then you’ll get the other view)
• Time changes evaluation→fossils
• Expressions “for” misunderstanding→e.g. the amount of VitaminC on a food package
• A part-time job to click “like”
• Titles of net news (attention economy)
• How degenerates find you. Teenagers are targets for perverts.
• Even if you think you deleted it, it stays on the server.
• When you think “I don’t like it”, others also think so.
• Why artists these years hide their profile.

Wikipedia

• Access ranking of Japanese Wikipedia top 15
• Differences from Google and others
• “share knowledge”
• Open-data
• Other Wiki-projects
• What’s encyclopedia
• Who edits
• Donation→The amount of donations 2021 calendar year=The local beer company’s sales
• Trust→citations and links
• Free copies
• Many languages→your contributions could be translated into other languages

“You’re in this classroom with air-conditioning, internet-connection. Let’s think of schools without electricity. You can convey an encyclopedia to students in such an environment via Wikipedia. Equal opportunity, quality education.”

The evening of the day for 2 hours was for adults:

Place: On-na Village Information Center

Audience: 10 local people including library staff

Contents:

A few contents were the same as for students but for this group, Racco customized the contents and shared about how to objectively understand AI including ChatGPT. 

Japanese Wikipedia’s pages related to On-na Village; Some of them were without links. Some of them are unattended, on the way for a long time. (Racco picked up them in advance)

What are appropriate links?

Other people may edit what you edited.

The difference between adults and digital natives.

That concludes my diff as a report. This blog is with the permission of the outreacher and supported by JNakayama (WMF). This Rapid Fund is for 6 places including this village.

Thank all the Wikimedians, it is such an honor, and I am very happy to be here because my childhood was on another isolated smaller island,

Yumiko Shibata

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