[OLPC library] Animals and Health

[Arjun Sarwal]

Seth

I remember you once mentioning that we need a lot of specific projects
and areas that volunteers can contribute, before we start actively
recruiting volunteers. I think we have a lot of areas for volunteers
to get involved, one of them being Animal Health. Does this seem like
a good time to start active recruitment of volunteers for Health
projects. Im sure the Health Jam would automatically do this too...

Perhaps have a discussion on this on the next conference call ?

Arjun

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Chris Leonard
<cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seth,
>
>  I welcome any input, on or off-list and thanks for the encouragement.
>  I'm reasonably tech-savvy for someone trained as a molecular
>  biologist, but I must admit being a wiki-newbie, so I would certainly
>  encourage you or anyone else to jump right in and edit the Animal
>  health pages for content, structure or style.
>
>  I've started by trying to articulate the idea and it's potential and
>  the result is admittedly too wordy and a little bit
>  stream-of-consciousness.  I've made some further edits along the lines
>  of your suggestion.  If it will make it easier for others to jump in
>  and make contributions to this effort, I'm entirely in favor of any
>  edits that the list would like to make to the wiki.  There is far too
>  much for one person to do, particularly this volunteer.  I was
>  intrigued by Javier's mention of a large agriculture-related library
>  relevant to the Andean region and it would be great if some of that
>  material could be incorporated into the Animal health content
>  development effort.
>
>  While I'm writing to the list, I'd like to mention that I've been
>  struggling a bit with a concept that is not really laid out on the
>  OLPC wiki to any great extent.  While Localization and Internalization
>  are concepts that are clearly spelled out, they are focused on
>  language and re-use of code and content.  There is a somewhat related
>  concept (let's call it Regionalization) that I have not seen not
>  clearly discussed on the OLPC wiki.  While a univeral and localized
>  core of content in humanities and primary school subjects (math,
>  geography, etc.) can be expected to be valuable without regard to the
>  original language or homeland of the author/developer; certain types
>  of health-specific content (in particular, locally relevant public
>  health messages) will only be of value if developed with a specific
>  region's challenges in mind, thus Regionalization.
>
>  For example, hand-washing, clean water, proper food handling
>  practices, and even mosquito netting and/or eradication are in essence
>  universally useful and important public health messages to deliver;
>  but knowing that kissing bugs transmit Chagas disease is really only
>  directly relevant to people in South America (Triatoma infestans) or
>  Central America ((Rhodnius prolixus) and knowing that black flies
>  (Simulium damnosum) transmit river blindness is only meaningful in
>  Africa.  These latter are examples of content that needs to be
>  regionally-focused (and ideally labeled as such) so that it can be
>  easily found and retrieved by local educators or organized for a push
>  into a localized school-server-based repository.
>
>  I touch on this idea a little bit on the Animal health page when I
>  mention "special localization" issues, but I think it may have a
>  larger scope as an issue (at least in the context of public health
>  messages) and I'd welcome discussion of how best to address this in
>  the content development process (create new categories or other
>  metadata tagging?).
>
>  Another observation is that although I have noticed that many ideas on
>  the health portions of the wiki fall under the umbrella of public
>  health and a number of the contributors have public health
>  backgrounds, the term "public health" is not explicitly mentioned as
>  an area of focus.
>
>  Chris Leonard
>  cjlhomaddress at gmail.com
>
>
>  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>  From: Seth Woodworth <seth at isforinsects.com>
>  Date: Mar 10, 2008 9:49 AM
>  Subject: Re: [Health] Animals and Health
>
>
>  Allow me to reply to this on-list.
>
>  I think that this is a great idea, and a logical extension to our
>  current projects.  I've made it a sub-section under content on the
>  main page.
>
>  I suggest that you work on putting an overview at [[animal health[[
>  that is shorter and provides an overview to your sub pages.
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>



-- 
Arjun Sarwal
Intern at One Laptop per Child
<arjun at laptop.org>
http://laptop.org/