Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009

Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009 and the timetable was held on the 22 November in Tokyo, Bld 2 School of Engineering The University of Tokyo access map here

Abstract of the talk to be presented from 16:00-16:30 by Nadia El Borai

The Case for WikiEducator in Japanese
Abstract

WikiEducator is Wiki training with facilitator support. “Payment” is done by giving one page of content. There are many people who would like to be involved but do not know how to start. I signed up for a course in February 2008. I would get daily instructions and could ask questions and got help from the facilitators as well as fellow learners. One also learns from questions of other participants. I would like to encourage this method to be introduced in Japanese. First some bilingual Japanese could translate the WikiEducator tutorials and register for an online course themselves to learn how to become facilitators.

Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me, and I'll understand.

This is the WikiEducator motto and it has helped me by learning how to make a wiki this in turn has enable me to contribute to Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiEducator

Content of the talk
| The Case for WikiEducator in Japanese uploaded on slideshare.

Report of the meeting
The meeting started with a little delay as there were many attendants and many were standing.

| Jay Walsh gave a very comprehensive talk in English. There were 2 screens one with the power point content in English and the other with the Japanese translation.

The next presenter talked in Japanese about dictionaries, encyclopedias, wikipedia and his own wish of starting a thesaurus. I realised then that whenever I was teaching English to Japanese people, I had to spend a long time explaining what a thesaurus is and how to use it. Now it became clear to me why the concept was not known. There is no Japanese thesaurus.

Personal comments
Attended a workshop in which a Wiki could be downloaded from a | USB flash drive.

It was interesting to talk to wikipedians from many nationalities and backgrounds. It was interesting to meet two Arabic speakers, a Turkish and a Chinese wikipedian, as well as a British University Professor with his Japanese students, encouraging them to investigate the use of wikipedia. Was happy to get together again with those who had attended Wikimania 2008 in Alexandria and the meeting after that in Tokyo.

Media
It seems that there was good coverage from the media.| NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation showed a section on their evening 9 o'clock news four days after the meeting on the 26th of November 2009.