 Kia ora koutou katoa. Ko James Taylor, Takaingua. Hi, everybody. My name is James Taylor and I'm the Online Collections Information and Partnership Manager at Tamaki Paiangi here at Auckland War Memorial Museum. This afternoon, I'm going to talk to you about some work that we're doing trying to enhance wikipedia so that it can be useful for the new Aotearoa New Zealand History Curriculum that's just been rolled out across primary school, intermediates and secondary schools across New Zealand. So just a little bit of background. So since 2015 Auckland Museum has opened up its online collections. We currently have about a million records that are available to be reviewed online and about 400,000 open access images. And we've pushed all that data and that collection imagery out across to about 20 different partners all across the internet. So I manage that work. So we send the collection imagery out to places like wikipedia, of course, to GBIF, to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, to Flickr. Used to do Twitter, but don't do that anymore. And various other aggregators and data platforms. Two or three years ago, the museum, we've been engaged with wikipedia since that open, openly licensed material went online. But about two or three years ago, we decided that we want to get a little bit more strategic with the work that we do in the wikipedia space. So we engaged a local wikipedia and Mike Dickerson to write a strategy for us. And we've used that as the basis for, used that as the basis for some of the work that we've done. And we update our wikipedia work plan annually. And we're looking to engage with the community. We're looking to enhance data and information on wiki data and on wikipedia and also upload more content to wiki media commons as well. And we also have a Glamwiki project page to detail the work that we do. So in terms of the Atero New Zealand Histories curriculum, so this is, this curriculum is really important in the New Zealand space because it's the first time that history is actually a compulsory subject in New Zealand. Up until this year, it wasn't actually compulsory study, it wasn't compulsory subject to be studied in schools. And what's interesting is that this, this sort of has this framework that the Ministry of Education have set out. So there's these three strands and that is then given to teachers to implement in the classroom. So we don't have a, we don't have a sort of codified curriculum in New Zealand. It's quite, it's sort of open to interpretation in terms of resources. So there's three main, three main strands. One of them is the understand, which is about the big ideas and the big concepts of New Zealand history. There is a no strand, which is how this project relates to, to the work that we're doing. And that is about understanding the big ideas within local contexts. And then finally, there's a do strand, which is around thinking critically and engaging with sources and teaching those kids, teaching those skills to kids. As I mentioned, so the no part is what is critical. So within this framework, there's an expectation that schools will be teaching the students these critical thinking skills and these wider national topics within the local context. And this is an area that, since we've been working with schools in the Ministry of Education that we know that teachers are really struggling for local resources. As I said, we don't have compulsory textbooks and it's tricky because this is a social studies part of the social studies curriculum actually rather than history curriculum. So the teachers teaching New Zealand history won't necessarily be, have a history specialisation either let alone know about such in-depth details about their local areas. So we've been thinking about how, because we have already this active engagement with Wikipedia, we've been thinking for the last few years about how we can leverage Wikipedia as a resource for the new curriculum. And what we started to think about was can we leverage that no part of the curriculum, that local history and that local context part of the curriculum and marry that with the work that we're doing with Wikipedia. So one of the aims and one of the reasons for doing that is that we can make our open access and other institutions open access glam resources accessible to teachers and to students at scale on somebody else's platform that we don't necessarily have to maintain but that can also then be contributed to by the wider Wikipedia community. We also want to grow the education audience using Wikipedia. We know, well we guessed that teachers were using Wikipedia and that's the next part that I'll talk about but you know help to legitimise Wikipedia as an education resource and then over the longer term if we've got more kids using Wikipedia in class and teachers encouraging them to use Wikipedia in the class then we can potentially grow the local New Zealand editor base as well. So I mean we before we started this project we knew that Wikipedia was being used and we had an idea that Wikipedia was being used in classrooms as you can see from this image here which was from a study done by NetSafe in New Zealand in 2019. You know you have around children's use of the internet you have the typical suspects like YouTube, the Googles, Facebook and whatnot but then Wikipedia comes in pretty high on the list so obviously children are using it but we had heard anecdotally that teachers were discouraging the use of Wikipedia. So before we jumped in with a kind of bigger project around the curriculum we wanted to actually make sure that that it would be a good use of resource and good use of our time and that Wikipedia and find out basically whether or not Wikipedia was being used in the classroom in New Zealand and see if we could kind of answer some of those questions around some of the some of the anecdotal evidence that we knew about. So the research project aims so we applied for Wikimedia Foundation research funding in 2021 and the research project aims were around understanding the use of Wikipedia in New Zealand classrooms. We wanted to understand where the New Zealand school teachers would use editing and creating Wikipedia articles as a way of kind of applied learning of historical knowledge so could some of the historical thinking and critical thinking skills that were being taught in classrooms as part of this new curriculum could they be applied to the creation of Wikipedia articles. We wanted to understand whether New Zealand school teachers would be interested in programs around secondary kids editing local history pages and then we also part of the project was also around literature review around the use of of Wikipedia in secondary classrooms as you're probably aware there's quite a lot of academic studies of the use of Wikipedia in the tertiary space but when we did our initial initial literature reviews there wasn't as much wasn't as much research into secondary classrooms and certainly not in the New Zealand context. So we recruited a researcher from Victoria University of Wellington Mark Sheehan to come on board. We sent out a survey to teachers across New Zealand and also did some much more focus interviews with some of the thought leaders amongst Auckland secondary school teaching profession. As you can see there we had pretty good response to the survey across New Zealand and across the different types of schools in New Zealand and we also undertook seven more in detailed interviews. So in terms of the survey responses this was what we thought that we were going to get and this is what we'd been told that we were going to get a kind of negative reception to Wikipedia but actually the data that we got back was much different to this and it was actually really heartening for the work that we wanted to do. So the survey results are here and there's also it's not very clear but there's a link to Google data a Google looker studio that I've compiled all of the results from the survey but the first question asked around whether teachers access information for themselves over 90% of them did of course but then we also asked when was the last time that teachers accessed Wikipedia for teaching and as you can see there's something like was it 13% or 14% had used it on the day of doing the survey and then a large percentage had used it within three months so we we could kind of understand that teachers were using Wikipedia to prepare for their for their classes and then the next question and really the crucial question was around whether or not teachers allowed students to use Wikipedia to access information and as you can see this was a really surprising result and that between yes sometimes and yes often there's a like very very high percentage of the shoot of the teachers are allowing the use of Wikipedia in New Zealand classrooms now so that perception of Wikipedia has changed quite dramatically whether or not that shifted over COVID and the increasing impact of misinformation it's kind of difficult to know but it's we've got pretty solid evidence that Wikipedia is used in New Zealand classrooms and it's a legitimate resource we asked the question about whether or not Wikipedia could use be used by teachers for thinking critically about the past again generally positive research answer to answer to that question and then this is a response from one of the teachers so we had free text fields and where teachers could put comments in and this is just one of the responses where a teacher talks about you know it provides an overview of topics it has useful links there's references at the bottom that can be verified and also really crucially I think from a teaching perspective the students can go and look at the talk and the edit pages and actually see how the pages have changed and actually kind of understand the construction of knowledge so then the final piece was just around local historical resources and it became apparent to us that the local knowledge on Wikipedia wasn't as useful for teachers as the national resources for so this was the gap basically in the in Wikipedia as a resource so here's some of the findings I won't go through all of those because I'm getting a bit short on time but basically it really encouraged us to go ahead with the work that we're doing in Wikipedia Wikipedia was being used in the classroom but there were some opportunities for us so last year we applied for further funding from the wiki media foundation alliance fund where we wanted to basically enhance Auckland's suburb pages to provide resources for teachers so if a teacher was teaching about their local history in the area where the school was or where their kids where their kids are from they could go to a suburb page and get a rich, rich historical narrative and and we would enhance that and edit it we're also we've also asked for some money for some students to come in at the end of this year if there'll be a cohort of four students doing some editing will they'll be able to do a bit more work based on their cultural background and the places that they're from as well so there's four main projects well there's actually five main project phases for the work that we're doing so we're enhancing the Auckland suburb pages we are offering some training and professional development to other GLAMs if they want to do this sort of work because these sort of resources are a desperate need across the country I've mentioned the summer students that will be coming in and then also crucially we're going to be working with teacher advisers as well to ensure that the content that we're creating is useful for for their use in the classroom so this is an example of the sort of editing that Marty Blaney who's a wikipedia in residence at the Auckland Museum has been doing and this is a sort of template that we're using so this is an example of one of the first pages that he one of the first pages that he edited so this is Mangere Bridge just before he started work on it and I could fit the whole screenshot of it onto this slide and then this is what he's done since so this is what the current page looks like and obviously couldn't fit the whole thing into the slideshow so the features and what we're doing the work that we're doing is really enriching the wikipedia pages with a rich historical narrative in the past a lot of the suburb pages would be what you'd imagine they were that there was a white man that brought some land there was a railway station built there were some skills built and you know that's not particularly useful but what we've done drawing on secondary resources is adding Māori history to the pages so that's indigenous people of New Zealand we're adding sections about colonisation and land confiscation the process of how land was acquired by a pākehā by a European and also looking at post-war developments as well then what we're doing to supplement that is and to further enrich these pages is adding open image openly images from different glam institutions so you see historical maps black and white photos that sort of thing and then obviously also we've got really detailed references on the page and also links out to other relevant digitised content from different glam organisations so hopefully you know it's a great starting point for teachers to learn a little bit more as they start to prepare for their studies so in terms of the work that we've done so we started in February this year and Māori who can't be here unfortunately has done an awesome job create a huge amount of editing over 300,000 words added and nearly 1,400 images added to the pages and what it means is that now we've also been doing regional pages as well as suburb pages but it means that we have covered off 73% of the regions where students live in a just under 60% of just over 60% of the areas where students live as well but we have encountered some difficulties so obviously this post-war area has been has been difficult because of a lack of secondary material Auckland is an incredibly multicultural country significantly more significantly more multicultural city than the rest of New Zealand and we've had some difficulties telling those stories because again that those sources aren't there and those secondary material aren't there Māori history has been problematic for us as well again because of a lack of secondary sources and also because some forms of Māori traditional knowledge don't fit in within the western worldview so for example oral histories can't be included so what we've had to do is use some of the official accounts from Treaty of Waitangi reports which kind of include a lot of historical reference to tell that story a little bit more but there's a bunch of work bunch more work that we can do in that space and because of these issues what it does mean is that there has been a bias towards the wealthier and predominantly pākehā eras because that's where there has been information ridden but what we're hoping is with the summer students potentially we could come in and fill some of those gaps we've also been running meetups with the local community and we've had some struggles with that as well over time so in terms of what's next for our project well this will be running through till February next year we've got some plans for a couple of Glam professional development workshops where we'll share how this sort of work can be done by other institutions we'll be running that online and in person the summer students as I've mentioned will be coming into the museum and joining our wider summer studentship cohort we'll be meeting with teachers and just checking in with them that the work that they're doing is relevant and useful for them in the classroom at the end of the project we'll have some learning and evaluation and that we'll we'll be sharing the methodology and our learnings with the Glam institutions and we'll also be presenting this at the New Zealand Historical Association later in the year and longer term what we're hoping is that we can maintain and continue to do this work so that we can ensure that Wikipedia is and remains a trusted resource for the use of local history teaching and in classrooms in New Zealand and also by doing that hopefully to grow the local editor base as well and there's two minutes for questions if anyone's got anything actually sorry before that a big thank you first of all to the Wikimedia Foundation Alliance Fund that is paying for the work that we're doing here big shout out to some of the foundation staff that have helped us along the way particularly Jacqueline Chen and also Melissa from the education team massive thank you to the Aotearoa New Zealand user group has been incredibly supportive of the work that we've done in this space and also just want to say big thanks to Mark who did the initial research project and also to Māori who's actually the one going in and grinding way at all the editing work happy to have a chat or discuss the work that we're doing here I think it's potentially applicable in other contexts so there's my username and there's my email address as well and now we're down to two right on two minutes for questions so thank you yes thanks very much thanks very much really interesting before you did your survey you were told that wikipedia or wikis would not be very well received by teachers what were the reasons for that I think it's you know that's that sort of this that story that we've heard in the past about the fact that anybody can go in and edit wikipedia it's not written by experts how can you trust it if that's the case it's not a published book so I think some of those those sort of typical stereotypes that wikipedia has received in the past you know it was kind of compounding that I think that there's a generation potentially of older teachers that have that mindset but I think that the profession's getting younger and more tech savvy and you know wikipedia is more normalised you know to use a term amongst younger teachers as well so it may also be a generational thing if I'm honest so yeah but as I say it was sort of that was anecdotal and that was sort of offhand comments and offhand remarks and that sort of thing I know you said there were challenges relating to some of the suburbs but I think it's quite impressive that you are able to get such detail at such a local scale so I'm wondering if you have any general sort of learning advice for how to build an effective wikipedia article on such the scale where there's often very few sources yeah um so obviously we have to rely on secondary references and that does mean digging into some of the work that like local historical societies have done and I think part of that is treating some of that material that's published by the smaller societies with a bit more care one of the reasons that we're lucky one of the reasons we could do it at the museum is we have a large reference library with a lot of heritage material so we could also draw on that so there's a a source of information not just online but the published resources that we could do and you know again a shout out to Mātia he's a really experienced wikipedia editor and he has the ability to just distill you know this information to create a construct a coherent narrative and that sort of thing as well so yeah so it's about it's about being in a place that has the material being kind of picky with that material not not necessarily using all of it but also then just the individual skill um of of our wikipedia to be able to synthesize and to kind of condense that information and to to read a poor content as well thanks you said that there are fewer sources after world war two yeah have you considered recording to the elder people and upload their what they have to say to comments like audios or perios um so I mean in terms of some of that content some of that content is culturally sensitive so it can't necessarily be openly licensed and so it can't go up to commons in that form and it's something that I think the New Zealand movement needs to start thinking about you know in the in the longer term but also you know say with with the multicultural of New Zealand a multiculturalism of Auckland I should say there just hasn't a lot of that migration occurred post-world war two and there hasn't been a lot of work done in that area so yeah it's just a there's a lack of researchers and academics doing that work but as I say if we can bring in some summer student the summer scholars they may able to fill some of those gaps for us as well in terms of being able to let us know about resources that we're not aware of for instance and also thinking about how can we publish some knowledge on to say museum blogs and topic pages so that we can bring those into wikipedia articles too so yeah so we kind of chipping away a little bit at that but certainly yeah that the post-war period is a lot it's a lot lighter for the work that we're doing cool all right thank you