I talked about this in a recent post to my learning.now blog. Here's a snippet:
For some rural communities in the developing world, Internet access will be intermittent at best, so it would be possible to develop some kind of “wikisync” tool that would sync the laptops with the latest Wikipedia, just like you would sync your mobile phone with your computer’s address book. But this leads to another problem: as more and more educators encourage students to become Wikipedians themselves, how will the Wikipedia community dynamic be affected by these intermittent updates? For example, let’s say a group of kids in a rural Nigerian community update a batch of entries as part of a class project. They don’t have consistent Internet access, so they make a series of edits locally. Meanwhile, those same Wikipedia entries are probably evolving online, as other Wikipedians enter them. To complicate matters further, another group of students in Massachusetts work to edit the same entries, but aren’t allowed to participate in the discussions for those entries because of the school’s concern over online predators. How will the different versions of the same entry be reconciled when the students’ entries are updated? Will the online Wikipedians feel slighted when the students’ content suddenly overrides their content without building consensus? Wikipedia, when it’s at its best, works well because a community of people come together around an entry and use their collective knowledge to craft it. It’s the interplay that takes place between these people that leads to a consensus document - a consensus that remains a work-in-progress, but a consensus nonetheless. Would having students that lack regular Internet access editing Wikipedia entries offline make it impossible to achieve that consensus? full text: http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2006/08/will_wikimaniacs_change_educat.html andy David P. Dillard wrote: > > > The problem with having copies on a computer hard drive of the Wikipedia > or any other electronic book is that this is then a static copy of that > tool. The whole idea of the Wikipedia and of a Wiki in general is that > anyone in the audience of that Wiki can modify, rewrite or improve the > content already there. There may be hundreds of changes to the Wikipedia > daily. A static copy of this tool rather than accessing the Wikipedia on > the web would become an outdated copy in very short order, unless a > mechanism is going to exist to connect to the Wikipedia website to have > the content revised online. > > > > Sincerely, > David Dillard > Temple University > (215) 204 - 4584 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Net-Gold > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold> > <http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html> > General Internet & Print Resources > <http://library.temple.edu/articles/subject_guides/general.jsp> > <http://www.learningis4everyone.org/> > <http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html> > Digital Divide Network > <http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/jwne> > Educator-Gold > <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Educator-Gold/> > > > > On Sun, 6 Aug 2006, Andy Carvin wrote: > > >>Well, that's the long-term plan of Wikipedia.... >> >>ac >> >>Subbiah Arunachalam wrote: >> >>>Why should we not have a free copy of Wikipedia in all low-cost >>>computers meant for individuals, schools and other public access centres >>>in the rural areas of developing countries? >>> >>>Arun >>> >>> >>>----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Carvin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>To: "The Digital Divide Network discussion group" >>><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 7:31 PM >>>Subject: [DDN] Jimmy Wales announces Wikipedia/$100 laptop alliance, >>>Wikiversity, Wikiwyg >>> >>> >>> >>>>Today at the second annual Wikimania conference, Wikipedia founder >>>>Jimmy Wales announced that MIT's $100 laptops will all include a copy >>>>of Wikipedia. He also announced the launch of Wikiversity, an online >>>>community for generating learning materials, and Wikiwyg, a >>>>easy-to-use interface for editing Wikipedia, developed in conjunction >>>>with SocialText. >>>> >>>>More here: >>>> >>>>http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/08/jimmy_wales_announce.html >>>> >>>>-- >>>>------------------------------ >>>>Andy Carvin >>>>acarvin (at) edc . org >>>>andycarvin (at) yahoo . com >>>> >>>>http://www.andycarvin.com >>>>http://www.digitaldivide.net >>>>http://www.pbs.org/learningnow > > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE > in the body of the message. > -- ------------------------------ Andy Carvin acarvin (at) edc . org andycarvin (at) yahoo . com http://www.andycarvin.com http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.pbs.org/learningnow ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
