[Olpc-open] A Wikipedia for Children.

[Samuel Klein]

Ah, I see you have a user account there.  How do you see the two projects
differing?   SJ

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 9:32 PM, Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:

> 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
>



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