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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Seth Woodworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 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. > _______________________________________________ > Library mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library > -- Arjun Sarwal Intern at One Laptop per Child <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://laptop.org/ _______________________________________________ Library mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library
