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 <[email protected]> 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 < > [email protected]> 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 >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Olpc-open mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open >> >> > > > -- > Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266 > -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
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