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The Innovation Hubs in Gjilan and Lipjan in cooperation with UNICEF Innovations Lab Kosovo and the Austrian Development Cooperation in Kosovo have successfully organized and carried out another edition of PONDER/Wiki Academy workshops.
This edition of PONDER/Wiki was held online and consisted of an opening ceremony and four sessions. The opening ceremony featured greeting speeches from IPKO Foundation representatives, such as our Executive Director, Mrs.Abetare Gojani and Senior Program Manager, Mrs.Adelina Qarri, the Deputy Head of UNICEF Kosovo Office, Mrs. Larisa Bruun and the Head of Austrian Development Cooperation in Kosovo, Mrs. Sandra Horina. After the opening remarks, Mr. Albert Aliu, introduced the online platform Learning Passport, shkollat.org, which is a platform making online learning in Kosovo possible. During this opening ceremony, the students also got to meet each other for the first time before the sessions began on the following days. PONDER/Wiki Academy in Lipjan took place from the 21st till the 26th of June and from the 5th till the 9th of July in Gjilan.
The four sessions were mainly focused in critical media reading and writing, where the participants got to improve their critical thinking skills and subjective information understanding. After the participants successfully followed all of the sessions, they were divided in groups and guided by their mentors, worked on translating a Wikipedia article to Albanian on a relevant topic about education, thus increasing the availability of high-quality online content for Kosovo, contributing to a better image of our country! The super-mentors of PONDER/Wiki were: Evlina Kabashi and Vjosa Çerkini in Lipjan and Adelina Nitaj and Monika Dragusha in Gjilan.
During the first session, the youngsters learned how to distinguish fake news and how to protect themselves from it through critical thinking, reading and writing. Whereas, in the second session, the participants learned more about how images can carry different meanings and which are the best methods of reading and interpreting them. The third session was characterized by the participants creating their own fictive stories as a way of analyzing and writing articles to improve critical thinking. Lastly, the fourth and final session was focused on understanding what Wikipedia is and how to edit and create new articles using this online encyclopedia.
After the completion of all four sessions, the students, divided in teams, were given time to work on translating a wikipedia article. In Lipjan from 29 total participants, 7 articles were translated and published. Meanwhile in Gjilan were 42 participants, who after being divided into teams translated and published 6 articles in total. Based on a number of criteria, out of all of the publications, a professional jury selected the best articles as winners.
The winners and the winning articles from PONDER/Wiki in Lipjan are:
The winners and the winning articles from PONDER/Wiki in Gjilan are:
We would like to extend our appreciation to the participants for their wonderful work. Through these publications, we are contributing to the enrichment of the Albanian content on WIKIPEDIA!
Thanks to this training, our inspiring and hardworking youngsters from Lipjan and Gjilan have gained specialized knowledge that will facilitate their transition from school to job market!