On 19 February 2014 23:31, Mathias Damour
<mathias.damour(a)laposte.net> wrote:
Hi,
Since I was able and glad to come in EduWiki 2013 in Cardiff, to make a
presentation about the Wikikids proposal :
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2013/Abstracts#Wikikids_-_…
we have gone forward and we are about to launch Vikidia in English on the
28th of February.
It's already open with restricted access, and the early editors mainly come
from the other Vikidias and from WikiKids.nl.
Nevertheless, I would be glad that Wikimedia UK or some of it's member gets
involved and supports this project, (Wikimedia France does), provided that
if it makes its way properly, it can have a great impact for our goals.
If you want to have a look, it's
http://en.vikidia.org and the codes are
"vikidia" and "aidikiv"
We have set up most of the basic/frame pages and we better them before
launching the wiki.
Here they are :
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Talk/2014/8
Here is a scratch communiqué/launching message :
May you be interested in this project and spread, advice or help it ?
*****************************************************
A Vikidia opens today, let's built a children wiki encyclopedia in English !
Vikidia is the equivalent of Wikipedia for children: an online encyclopedic
project, for 8-13 year-old readers, open to contributors of any age. It was
launched in November 2006 in French, then in Spanish, Italian, Russian and
now English. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for
children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in
building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning,
except the age range.
Such wikis have proven their sustainability, relevance and success, the two
biggest ones this model being Vikidia in French and WikiKids.nl in Dutch,
with respectively 16000 and 14000 articles and hundreds of thousand readers
every month.
Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and
the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject.
However, the level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for
children or even other people on some subjects and they may read it for lack
of a better resource.
There is some television programs for children, some books, some movies for
children and even some newspapers and magazines. It would be unsound to
consider that they couldn't make a great use of a children encyclopedia.
Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more
readable content for them. They tell it on the French Vikidia guestbook, on
which the main remarks are that they like it and that they would like to
find more articles and more content in most articles. It is not designed
only for children but for everybody who want a simple explanation on a
subject. That mean that the content must be suitable for 8-13 years old
children, based on the general perception of what is or not considered as
possibly offensive for this age range. That also mean that we take each
subject seriously in order to build a quality and substantial documentary
resource.
To offer to some children and teenagers to take part in such a resource and
to be active in the building process is also obviously a matter of
empowerment. The mere possibility to add something may also change one
child's motivation for the content as a reader.
Everybody is invited to edit Vikidia without age restrictions. There are no
mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages.
Vikidia both needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers
to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia. Young people can
also be involved within educational activities organised by schools. They
may gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a
resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the
goal is still to create content an the "knowledge resource" benefit of such
a project: school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's
rules and content objectives.
- Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality
and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain
stability in the functioning of the wiki,
- children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles,
let appear works on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their
aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely take their
share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks,
- older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can have the
chance to do it here, and to make a good work. The advantage is both the
amount of work they can bring, and what this work can bring to them, like
for the younger ones and like any Wikipedia editor.
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:For_children_or_by_children%3F
Vikidia representatives used to work on a proposal to be adopted within a
multilingual Wikikids project. They no longer ask for it and decided to
remain it independent from the Wikimedia Foundation and now to open a
Vikidia in English.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikids/Vikidia%27s_withdrawal_of_the_adop…
Vikidia is handled by the Association Vikidia, located in France, a
non-profit-organization. The servers are hosted by Tuxfamily, a
non-profit-organization that host free softwares and free content projects.
Vikidia is free according to the principle of Free Knowledge. The general
license used is CC-BY-SA.
Vikidia especially implements and complies with the articles 12, 13 and 17
of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
http://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Vikidia:Relation_to_the_Rights_of_the_Child
--
Mathias Damour
49 rue Carnot
F-74000 Annecy
00 33 (0)4 57 09 10 56
00 33 (0)6 27 13 65 51
mathias.damour(a)laposte.net
http://fr.vikidia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Astirmays
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