[Wikimedia Education] Wikikids/Vikidia Re: Wikimini, the Children's
Hi, Message du 18/04/13 20:04 De : Jean-Marc Gailis A : Wikimedia Education Copie à : Objet : Re: [Wikimedia Education] Wikimini, the Children's Encyclopedia has reached 10 000 articles (word cloud inside) Hi!I think it can be interesting for all to join this project to Wikimedia, to promote it and make versions for other languages than french. Well, let's work on the proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids However it is about Vikidia, which content is more developed. ( http://fr.vikidia.org ) Article are longer as on Wikimini, but still children readers on the Livre d'or (guestbook) often ask for more content http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or 2013/4/18 Erlan Vega It looks really interesting. I went straight to Spanish version but a pass is required. Are there plans to open other languages? Great job so far!! Vikidia in spanish in opened right now, and it once had a good (but small) contributors group. http://es.vikidia.org/ Its content is still here, and it needs a new community. The adoption as a sister project could help, you can drop your name on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids#People_interested to support it, Wikimedia France just decided to do so. :-) Mathias Damour Une messagerie gratuite, garantie à vie et des services en plus, ça vous tente ? Je crée ma boîte mail www.laposte.net ___ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
Re: [Wikimedia Education] Wikikids/Vikidia
Salut Mathias, Thank you for sharing your vision of such a project and taking the time to collect information about it. I've added a description of the *Wikimini* encyclopedia. Here is a copy: *Wikimini.org http://wikimini.org* (License: CC-BY-SA 3.0): currently in French*, started in *October 2008*, *10180 articles* in April 2013, anonymous contributions not allowed** * is working on new language versions ** collecting and publishing the IP addresses of participating schools and children (without parental permission) has been considered a problem by the people who designed the project As it is the case in the two projects described above (Wikikids.nl and ZUM-Grundschulwiki), *Wikimini* is an online encyclopedia where *almost all of the content is being written by children and teenagers* (~8 to 15 years old in the case of Wikimini). 10-15% of its articles are being created or developed in the context of class/school projects (see an original example covered by the press here *(in French)*http://stock.wikimini.org/w/images/5/50/2012-07-25-La-Liberte.jpg), while the rest is being edited by other contributors outside any formal teaching context (see one of their young contributors interviewed at home by the national FrenchTVhttp://stock.wikimini.org/w/images/6/6d/2009-10-16-Journal_France_2.wmv). Adults are welcomed to participate and have a dedicated portal. Basically they can be seen as helpers. They help in: organizing the content; following the recent changes; checking and proof-reading the articles; making text understandable when it is not; adding pictures and videos; providing encouragement and advices to new contributors; etc. (More details here *(in French)* http://fr.wikimini.org/wiki/Aide:Adultes). It should be noted that moderation and administration tasks are shared between both adults and children. Ultimately, the children remain the main actors and builders of the project and their contributions are not overwhelmed by massive adult inputs. This is a central scope of Wikimini and probably one of the most important factors regarding its success and the large-scale participation of children of all abilities (not only those excelling at school and with a high self-esteem). The conceptual design of Wikimini began in *Switzerland* in 2008, within a small group of primary education teachers and students in educational sciences from the universities of Fribourg (CH) and Mons (BE). Actually, the initial aim was not to bring the project into reality, but only to imagine a successful way of building such a wiki. Laurent Jauquier, a Swiss teacher currently living in *Brazil*, and who was at the origin of the idea, took the lead and decided to transform it into reality. He launched Wikimini in French in October 2008. The project has been growing fast ever since and has received a warm welcome from children, educational and media professionals around the French-speaking parts of the world. In 2011 it has even been invited, nominated and finally awarded as the “*Best French site / content for children*” in a contest organized by the European Commission (more info herehttp://fr.wikimini.org/wiki/Spécial:AWCforum/st/id234/Wikimini.org_:_Meilleur_site_pouhtml). More recently, Wikimini has received the financial support from Wikimedia CH to improve its technical infrastructure, develop a common repository of shared media files suitable for children (something like ''Commons''), implement the technical requirements to support the development of other language versions and finally relieve the (non-technician) founder of the most highly technical workloads. It has been expressed on different occasions that Wikimini wants to collaborate/exchange with similar wikis and that motivated persons would be welcomed to coordinate and represent new versions of Wikimini in their own language. Please feel free to contact me to discuss more about this. Kind regards Laurent http://wikimini.org 2013/4/6 Everton Zanella Alvarenga t...@wikimedia.org Hi, Mathias. I've sent your e-mail to the Brazilian volunteers. If someone if interested, I hope they will contact you. Tom On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, I have updated and better again the proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids It refers in particular to the 2010 /Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content/. I added : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Review_of_current_existing_wikis_akin_to_Wikikids and I may write a /*Wikikids/Questions and answers http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikikids/Questions_and_answersaction=editredlink=1*/ to anserw the questions and concerns this proposal can raise. One next step it certainly to draw up a project plan/potential schedule/roadmap for a migration to WMF hosting and for the first months... And to have your remarks on the proposal ! -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making
Re: [Wikimedia Education] Wikikids/Vikidia
Hi, Mathias. I've sent your e-mail to the Brazilian volunteers. If someone if interested, I hope they will contact you. Tom On Sat, Apr 6, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Mathias Damour mathias.dam...@laposte.net wrote: Hi, I have updated and better again the proposal: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids It refers in particular to the 2010 /Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content/. I added : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Review_of_current_existing_wikis_akin_to_Wikikids and I may write a /*Wikikids/Questions and answers http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikikids/Questions_and_answersaction=editredlink=1*/ to anserw the questions and concerns this proposal can raise. One next step it certainly to draw up a project plan/potential schedule/roadmap for a migration to WMF hosting and for the first months... And to have your remarks on the proposal ! -- Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom) A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ___ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
[Wikimedia Education] WikiKids - Vikidia: encyclopedia for children
Hi all, I subscribed to that mailing list since its beginning, but didn't get involved in it yet. I've just checked about all the previous messages ;-) I am a French wikipedian, and would like to tell you about a pretty old project: a wiki encyclopedia designed for children. It seems that this list mainly focus on Wikipedia-editing in higher education and to a lesser extent, offline content from Wikipedia for children, with the Wikipedia for Schools selection. However, I noticed this message: Le 20/04/2011 03:31, Nikhil Sheth a écrit : The 2008/09 edition of Wikipedia for Schools is very good, but also limited in that it has only 5500+ articles (contrast with Wikipedia en latest selection that has 45000+) and many times topics we need aren't there. (...) I got Okawix and downloaded Simple Wikipedia package for offline - it's got many articles in simpler language and can be very useful for lower-age children. But it's uncensored and so unusable. Is it possible to start a simple wikipedia project to collect the for-schools articles, or better yet just filter out inappropriate ones? The idea of a equivalent of Wikipedia for children was discussed in particular in 2005-2006 on this page : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids Although it had no continuation as a Wikimedia project, wikis with such a feature were launched first in Dutch: WikiKids http://wikikids.wiki.kennisnet.nl/Hoofdpagina; in french a few month later: Vikidia http://fr.vikidia.org/ (article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikidia) and then in Spanish Vikidia in spanish http://es.vikidia.org/. I opened Vikidia. WikiKids and Vikidia in French are doing well and are quite alike in size and activity, whereas Vikidia in Spanish doesn't make it so well. On Vikidia in French, we currently have a guest-book opened, and the comments left on it http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Livre_d%27or/Automne_2011 are quite encouraging. Children say they appreciate the article to be more readable for them than on Wikipedia, their main reserve being that some article are not developed enough, or that there isn't articles on every subject they would like to know about... They clearly expect (and claim) some substantial content, though it has to be easier than the wikipedia's content. We have yet a bit more than 10 000 articles in Vikidia in French, and about 220 000 unique visitors a month. This Wikikids question was mentioned again in the Wikimedia scope one year ago there: meta:2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content: Part Two#Recommendations: Controversial Text http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Two#Recommendations:_Controversial_Text: /Because of the considerations outlined above, our recommendations surrounding text in WMF projects are the following: It is recommended: (...) 3. That, however, the Foundation investigate the creation of a WikiJunior version of the Wikipedias, aimed at children under the age of 12, either as a stand-alone project or in partnership with existing and appropriate educational institutions. Explanations: (...) Recommendations 2 and 3 (...) Much more successful, in our opinion, is a project specifically targeted to children, and to the quite different needs of children in different age groups. Some projects of this nature have already been begun in the WikiJunior section of WikiBooks,[3] but it is our feeling that the scope of such a venture might necessitate the formation of partnerships with institutions who have experience and resources already devoted to this area./ ...to which I had this response on meta:User talk:Sj http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Sjoldid=2959503#Wikikids.2FVikidia. Another feature of WikiKids/Vikidia is of course that it let children be involved in building the content, and does not only aim to produce and offer content for children, for the same benefits that you can find in Wikipedia-editing workshops for students. There is both some school projects and volunteer children editing on Vikidia along with teenagers, students and adult writers. My question is of course: */why is there no equivalent in English yet ?/* ;-) (And if you are Spanish speaker or if you know people that would be interested in it, please tell them about http://es.vikidia.org ; I would be glad that there is new people involved in it, or even take it in charge.) Greetings, -- Mathias Damour [[User:Astirmays]] onfr:wp http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays,en:wp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Astirmays andVikidia http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays 49 rue Carnot 74000 Annecy France 00 (33)4 57 09 10 56 00 (33)6 27 13 65 51 mathias.dam...@laposte.net ___ Education mailing list Education@lists.wikimedia.org
