Last week Wikimania 2006, the international Wikimedia conference, was held in Cambridge. Two topics (advise) attracted my attention: Wikiversity and the 100 Dollar Laptop.
Wikiversity (in German): another content project? “The goal is to create a community of people who support each other in their educational endeavours.” I’ve seen so many content projects, but they never really worked. I, as a teacher, use lots of content from the World Wide Web, but I rarely ever use an education content portal or anything like Scholar.Google.
If I wanted to offer or use content or courses from the internet for my students, I made the decision myself as to what resources I would use and where I would get them from. The content I used for one class, I often could not use for another class… even if I was teaching the same topic and even if the kids were of the same age.
What I’d use today, I couldn’t always use tomorrow. And of course, there are some “best of” collected in my favourites. Sometimes I have to create content myself, but I am sure, none of my colleagues could ever use it… it’s too tailored, too individual.
But maybe Wikiversity will be successful. If you read the paragraph: What can I do? You will notice that, you can do here whatever you want. There are no limits of creativity, no fixed structures…. And maybe, that will be the formula for success: Let’s hope so.
Besides: when I was “googling” wikiversity, I found this.
Long long time ago… last November (time is running so fast!) I was in Tunisia at the World Summit of the Information Society and Nicholas Negroponte “proudly presented” the 100$ Laptop. I really felt enthusiastic about this from the outset. A Laptop for every child in the world! Great!!
25.07.2006: India is not interested. 01.08.2006: Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand are interested.
But then I asked myself: Where does the content, all these children in Africa, in Asia are looking for, come from? Is it really a good idea to distribute this tool and mainly American, European ideas and information and content all over the world?
But now Wikipedia goes “100 $ Laptop”. So let us hope, that
people all over the world with different cultures and different languages will “fill” Wikipedia.
Thomas gave me sugar 
And why am I writing in English?? Because I want everybody to understand my text. And my message is: All the articles in Wikipedia, published in the different languages, should also be translated into English. But they should be found at /by “Wikipedia.int” and not org….. so that we can see the difference between original English and translated articles and we can use our “international English” (like mine)… without any fear of not writing in English as perfectly and with the scope, to make our “local message” be understood all over the world.
( thx Leanne! )
