Welcome to my page!
Who am I
Hello, Wikiverse! My name is Shani Evenstein, I live in Israel and I'm an educator, researcher and free-knowledge advocate. As of August 2019, I'm a member of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and currently serve as the Vice Chair of the Board.
I worked for a decade as an EdTech Innovation Strategist at the the NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University (TAU), where I focused on Curriculum Development, E-learning Strategies and Medical Education. I'm also a lecturer at TAU, and lead 2 Wiki-related academic courses on campus that I've created, designed and lead since 2013. In 2022 I have also started to teach at the School of Business & Management.
I am currently a PhD candidate at the School of Education at TAU, focusing on how Semantic Web technologies, more specifically Wikidata, are changing teaching and learning processes. As of October 2019, I'm an selected to be an Azrieli Foundation Fellow for my PhD research in Education. As of 2022, I am also a Visiting Fellow at the Digital Humanities Research Hub at School of Advanced Study - University of London.
I have a B.A. in English Lit and French Culture, Faculty of Humanities, TAU, and an M.A. in Education, focusing on Technology & Learning.
Am also deeply involved with Project Ben-Yehuda, which is the Hebrew equivalent of Project Gutenberg.
On my free time (which as you can imagine is almost non-existent), I enjoy learning to play the harp, which is the 6th musical instrument I've learned to play, and have recently also bought an autoharp, which is by far the easiest instrument I learned to play and is just a lot of fun.
But most important of all -- I am the (proud) mother of Lyra, who I happily raise with my husband, Vadim.
What I'm doing in the wiki-world
My main focus contributing to our movement has always been Wiki outreach, on both the local and global levels.
After attending Wikimania Haifa, I joined the Hebrew Wikipedia community and became a member of en:Wikimedia Israel. Since joining, I've served as WM-IL's National GLAM Projects Coordinator, leading collaborations with the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel and the Israeli Cartoon and Caricature Museum (to name a few). I've also been been a WM-IL board member for about 2 years. On Jan 2014 I resigned both roles to focus on my M.A. My thesis focused on a new course model I've developed for implementing Wikipedia into the curriculum. I keep being involved with the chapter and supports GLAM-Wiki, EDU-Wiki, WikiWomen & Wikidata initiatives, as well as serve as a He-Wiki Admin.
Internationally, I've been involved in Wikipedia & Education, Wikipedia & Medicine, GLAM-Wiki (including initiating a collaboration with TED), Wikipedia & Libraries, WikiWomen & Wikidata. I am also a victim of the "100 Wikidays", (though I failed miserably).
I lecture about Wikipedia and its sister projects frequently, lead various workshops teaching Wiki-literacy and wiki-editing for newcomers, and support fellow faculty in adding Wikipedia-related assignments into their curriculum. In recent years, I've become especially interested in Wikidata. I am conducting my PhD about the new learning opportunities it enables and have opened the first academic course in the world that features Wikidata, called "From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, from Wikipedia to Wikidata".
Special Wiki-Milestones and Official Wiki-Roles
- On October 2013 I opened the Wiki-Med course at the Tel-Aviv University[1]. This is a for-credit elective course, the first course of its kind, which gives Med students academic credit for editing Wikipedia and its sister projects. So far, my students wrote about 10% of medical-related articles in Hebrew that have gained over 6 million page views.
- On October 2015, I opened a second for-credit course at Tel Aviv University called "Wikipedia: Skills for Consuming and Producing Knowledge". The course focused on contributing to Wikipedia and was available to all undergraduate students on campus from every discipline.
- On September 2017, a new Wiki-Med elective was launched at the NY/American Medical Program at Sackler School of Medicine, where American & Canadian Med students learned to contribute medical-related information to En-Wiki.
- On October 2018, I've opened a new for-credit course at TAU called "From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, from Wikipedia to Wikidata". This is the first academic course in the world to feature Wikidata and is available to every undergraduate student at TAU.
- I am a Founding member of the Wikipedia Library User Group.
- I am Founding member of the Wikipedia Education Collaborative since its conception, and during 2017 have initiated and worked towards this group becoming an official affiliate called "The Wikipedia & Education User Group". Between October 2018 - August 2018 I served as this User Group's Chairperson.
- I've been a board member of the WikiProject Medicine Foundation since January 2017. Between August 2017 - August 2019 I've served as a Chairperson, and led the group to be recognized as a Thematic Organization, Wikimedia Medicine.
- I served as Chair of the Program Committee for the GLAMWiki Conference 2018.
- I served as a Space Leader for both the Education Space and the Health Space during Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm.
- As of August 2019, I serve as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees. In 2021 I became Vice Chair. It's a lot of work, but I am thankful for the opportunity to serve the movement that has literally changed my life.
Contact info
Please feel free to reach out to me with anything relating to my role at the BoT via this email: shani
wikimedia.org, or through my official BoT username: user:Shani (WMF). For other issues relating to my volunteer work at the Wikimedia movement, such as outreach, please feel free to leave a message via this username.