Blogs from WikiToLearn

Hi everybody,

I’m Sofia, a 22 years old physics student of Milano-Bicocca university. With this article I want to open my heart to you and narrate my deepest feeling about the project I’m taking part in.

Since I was a child I’ve felt not only the desire but also the strong need of changing the world in which I’m living. I saw and I see an overwhelming tendency to commercialize everything, a spreading philosophical point of view which look at things according to their practical usefulness, often forgetting the existence in some things of an unselfish beauty whose pursuit can make us better people and fulfil our hungry souls.

Knowledge is just this. A thing of unselfish beauty in the world. Something that elevates us. An object of love.

There’s nothing bad about looking at the practical usefulness of knowledge and research if you always keep in mind that their essence is not their usefulness but their beauty and their ability of feeding us, make us grow, get us to love.

That’s why I’m taking part into WikiToLearn project, whose guideline is “Knowledge only grows if shared”. It’s my way of rebelling against the commercialization of knowledge. My role in this project is mainly as an editor: I write and correct pages and help new users to get familiar with wiki language. Writing lots of pages can be demanding but the satisfaction is inexpressible: you make something that people from all over the world can take advantage of,can edit and improve. You see your work get better and better thanks to the help of other students until a complete book is available. And in the end you’re happy like a child in front of his LEGO building made with the help of his friends.

Taking part into WikiToLearn project is also teaching me how to work in group and I think it’s making me a better student than I was, since trying to be clear in the presentation of a topic implies reading the same topic on different books and develop your own explanation version.

What about the upcoming sprint? I’m really excited about it! It’ll give me the opportunity to meet the participants I’ve never met and to make a full-immersion in the work on the project, with the possibility of discussing face- to -face with the others ( and not only through telegram channels) and thus allowing us to organize better.

Hello everybody,

My name is Riccardo Gilardi, I’m a first year student of physics in Milano Bicocca University.
I first learnt about WikiToLearn at the beginning of this academic, when Riccardo Iaconelli came to my class and made a speech about it.

At first I was doubtful about the usefulness and efficacy of the website. For example, I feared it wouldn’t be a turstworthy source for researches, or that it would collide with its many “competitors”.

A few months later, I started editing some pages for the Linear Algebra course, and all my doubts immediately vanished. I understood the importance and usefulness of reading other people’s works, and writing my own. I also appreciated their feedback system, which create connection among the editors and also teachers. This way, it is possible to create contents that are actually useful for students.

This project taught me a lot about the intelligent use of formulaes in writing for math or physics courses. It also improved my skills in taking notes and writing contents meant to be read by someone else.

I’m going to take part to the Sprint at CERN that will be held the next week, where I’ll try to write as much as I can to complete the book of Linear Algebra, both in Italian and English.

Obviously, I would be glad to give my contribute to any other project or subject.

This is a great opportunity for me, and I’m proud of it. I hope I will have a great time in Geneve.

During the next week I’m going to take as many photos as possible, to show our work environment on this blog.

Thanks to KDE., CERN, University of Milano-Bicocca and everyone in WikiToLearn.

Hi everyone! My name is Matteo Bonanomi and I’m a physics student at Milano-Bicocca University.
The reason why I’m writing here is very simple: I’m going to take part to the Wikitolearn Sprint (7-13 March) @CERN. Actually I am very excited by this opportunity, and also very thankful to CERN and KDE for the opportunity they are giving us.
Sprint is a huge event: lot of people, working on the same open-source project, working togheter! Getting in touch with several people, coming from different places around the world: can you imagine something better to develope great ideas for such an amazing project?!

I’m taking part to it as an editor, meaning that I have to work on the content of the site. Our aim is pretty well defined: “knowledge only grows if shared”; and since we do expect this site to be full of high-quality scientific content, everybody has to work with accuracy and dedication. Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet a good part of the UniMIB group and, let me tell you, everybody here is extremely excited about Wikitolearn Sprint: stay tuned, a revolution for the spread of online (opensource) scientific knowledge is going on! 🙂

Bye all,
Matteo Bonanomi

Hi everyone! My name is Lodovico Filippo Ravizza and i’m a developer of the best revolutionary opensource project : Wikitolearn ! First of all, I must thank to my brothers Riccardo Iaconelli, Vincenzo Eduardo Padulano, Davide Valsecchi and Luca Toma for letting me come into this project and I’m proud about that! Now I’m working on the Physic’s topic because I’m studying it in Milan at University of Bicocca. Now thanks to KDE for helping us in this project, also with their sponsorship in our sprint at CERN next week !!! We are changing the idea of free notes, free arguments for University and how you can use it and develop it … We are changing the future guys !
Follow us for every news about Wikitolearn !
Bye all 🙂

Lodovico

Hello there,

My name is Vincenzo Eduardo Padulano, I’m a student in physics at Milano-Bicocca University. All my life I’ve been curious about the universe, the unexplored and the unknown. Above all, my interest was in finding new ways of improving our species’ adaptive skills against what is yet to come, and there’s no better way than uniting  our efforts against it. No wonder then, that when I was contacted by Riccardo Iaconelli in late September 2015, I swiftly join the project WikiToLearn.

Wikiwhat?

Briefly, WikiToLearn is a website that aims to create an online library where everybody in the world should be able to acquire every kind of knowledge, and help to improve the existing one. in fact, the motto of the project is “knowledge only grows when shared”: this means that not only everyone can learn from the content of the site, but furthermore everybody is crucial to its upgrading!

What I did for it

So that’s how it went: I had a collegue of mine who was already working inside the project and asked me to join them, I accepted the invitation and as soon as I got in contact with the rest of “the crew”, I felt like at home. You can’t imagine how good it can feel not only doing the things that you like, but with such enjoyable people like the ones inside this project!

My first steps were mainly taking some time to learn the structure of the website and the basics of LaTex, a simple way to write mathematical symbols and functions. In a couple days I was already at full speed, writing pages and pages of content, mainly mathematics, but still it was fun and I felt appreciated for my work.

How it surprised me

As time went by, I saw  more and more people joining our team, I can’t keep the numbers but I can feel the difference between September and now! And with Riccardo going from town to town spreading the project and receiving contacts and affiliations from different organisations, it was really clear that this project was just gonna keep growing.

And so it was! In fact in less than two weeks we are going to be hosted by CERN and sponsored by KDE e.V., that kindly offered us the possibility to develop our project in an advanced enviroment where most of the staff will be able to work in close contact. This is truly a great opportunity that I couldn’t see coming, but that was more than appreciated!

Expectations

Indeed I ventured on a journey that both inspires and challenges me, an Unearthly one you might say. I invite everybody to do like me, at least to try it, to be aware of the power that we have as humans when we stick together and to do everything possible to achieve this power

Thanks again to KDE e.V., CERN, and University of Milano-Bicocca.

CERN Sprint 2016 – WikiToLearn