[Olpc-open] A Wikipedia for Children.

[Samuel Klein]

Hi Barry, this looks like an excellent candidate to merge with Vikidia.
Have you worked with them or their community of children and teachers?

https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Warmly, SJ

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Barry Desborough <
barry.desborough at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello, I’m Barry Desborough, a retired teacher who taught in English
> primary and secondary schools.
>
> I have been trying, on and off, to get an idea off the ground. It is for a
> free, online, child-oriented encyclopedia. I have tried approaching
> Wikipedia itself, the Khan Academy and the California CK-12 initiative, and
> I have paid for and started to develop a  Wikispaces site "Wikidia dot net"
> to show how the idea works. Unfortunately, I was not able to rustle up
> enough contributors to be able to justify continuing to pay for the site,
> and for various reasons, the other sites are not a good match for the
> project idea.
>
> What’s a child-oriented encyclopedia? It’s an encyclopedia that a child,
> on their own, may go to and navigate for themselves, to find
> age-appropriate educational content of interest to them. Pages should be
> brief, and as simple as possible for conveying the information. The pages
> should also be suitable for directed learners, and usable as teaching
> material by educators. Wikipedia content, as is used by the OLPC Digital
> Library, is not generated with the needs of children in mind. I have an old
> prototype of the idea still on the net at
> https://wikids.wikispaces.com/Index+1 which should give the general idea.
>
> I am looking for a new home for this project, and it occurred to me that
> the OLPC might be able to host it, and encourage other contributions of
> suitable content, either from educators, or from children themselves,
> wiki-style. Generating content for it should provide a great motivational
> incentive for classes of pupils! There’s constructivism for you! All it
> would need would be a separate searchable wiki on the OLPC website. I would
> be happy to spend the rest of my retirement generating, curating and
> moderating content for such a wiki, and I would be willing to contribute a
> substantial (for me) sum in order to help get the thing started and keep it
> going.
>
> With the cost and producing and distributing textbooks is so high, and in
> a world where teachers are unavailable or too expensive but cheap internet
> technology is becoming ever more accessible, I believe far more attention
> should be paid to providing accessible, high quality, appropriately pitched
> educational content.
>
> Is there anyone on the list with the authority to pick this up, or has
> contacts with such people?
>
> What are your thoughts on the idea?
>
> Regards
>
> Barry
>
>
>
>
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>
>


-- 
Samuel Klein          @metasj          w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
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