On 13 May 2011 22:34, <wikimediaza-request@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Education opportunity in South Africa (Jessie Wild)
  2. Re: Education opportunity in South Africa (David Richfield)
  3. Re: Education opportunity in South Africa (Kieran O'Neill)
  4. Re: Education opportunity in South Africa (Kieran O'Neill)
  5. Re: Education opportunity in South Africa (Jessie Wild)


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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 10:38:23 -0700
From: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikimedia ZA] Education opportunity in South Africa
To: wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <BANLkTinZh6zK6ZhQ=C0cM5nWc-=L+BLXVw@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

Hi South Africa Chapter!

By means of and introduction, my name is Jessie Wild, and I am a Special
Projects manager for the Global Development department at WMF. I work on a
variety of projects for the WMF dealing most specifically with Wikimedia &
Education and increasing the opportunities for access to Wikipedia.

One such initiative, which I hope you are mostly all aware of, is the
Offline Wikipedia projects[1]. This is basically about penetration of the
encyclopedic materials into areas ? particularly secondary schools ? without
consistent access to the Internet. Content subsets of Wikipedia which are
small enough to fit onto a standard USB stick have been created and uploaded
onto computers in schools around the world as essentially a piece of
software. ?Wikipedia for Schools? is the most commonly distributed content
package[2].
The distribution of this material has been mostly done thus far throughout
Africa by organizations with broad reach. Wikimedian volunteers, though,
have done a tremendous amount of work to push this effort, and you may have
heard specifically of the work done by the Wikimedians in Kenya on this
front earlier this year.

I am writing to let you know about a recent email I got from Sangari SA, who
has helped contribute since 2004 Wikipedia for Schools in over 1000 schools
in South Africa. Amazing! He said the Minister of Basic Education is asking
for more information about the materials, given the great expense of the
alternatives (Microsoft Encartha and Brittanica).

I bring this up for two reasons:

  1.

  Pending endorsement from the Minister, the demand for this project could
  be really great across the ~26000 schools in SA.
  2.

  There is an updated version of Wikipedia for Schools to be released in
  about a months time

 So I am thinking and wanted to know what YOU all thought: would your
chapter be interested in getting involved with the potential distribution
and corresponding training associated with these distributions? That is,
showing teachers what the materials are like, teaching about the importance
of open education resources, giving sample classroom usages.


If this is not something anyone is interested in, that is definitely ok,
though I of course think it is a great opportunity let alone a great cause
:) If there are some individuals who would like to join the discussion
please email me and we could organize a plan for execution!


 Jessie



 [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects

[2] http://schools-wikipedia.org/

[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Kenya/Project_for_Kenyan_Schools


--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 19:47:37 +0200
From: David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Education opportunity in South Africa
To: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>
Cc: wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <BANLkTimigo0=Y5KHONSTbA3G5dWmD5yeFQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

This is exactly the kind of thing that our chapter should be working on! A
relevant, exciting, useful project that can seriously raise the profile of
Wikipedia in South Africa.

I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure all of our members would love to get
involved.

Kind regards,

David Richfield
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:27:39 -0700
From: "Kieran O'Neill" <oneillkza@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Education opportunity in South Africa
To: David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com>
Cc: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>, wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <BANLkTinN3DVP=Jj5Zo2jAMyF0KBAmvNBLA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I think we should be a little careful about how we go about this. While
Sangari appear to have taken over Inkululeko Technologies (who inherited the
TuxLab project), they appear to be strictly a commercial entity, with a
focus on proprietary software and teaching materials.

http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/

<http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/>
http://techrights.org/2010/12/29/antagonism-to-freedom-in-sa-edu/ (take this
link with a pinch of salt)

If Sangari's record on the TuxLab project is anything to go by (the website
is now defunct, with just an Apache server error showing), I'm not sure that
they carried much on from Inkululeko.

Probably it would be best to contact Hilton Theunissen (who ran Inkululeko)
and ask him what's up -- he seems to still own the .

http://co.za/cgi-bin/whois.sh?Domain=inkululeko&Enter=Enter

My main concern is that there is a fine line between engaging with a
corporation to help a community, and doing free labour for said corporation
to directly enhance its profits. I would feel much better working with a
non-profit, rather than a company trying to sell a product to the SA
government.

On 13 May 2011 10:47, David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is exactly the kind of thing that our chapter should be working on! A
> relevant, exciting, useful project that can seriously raise the profile of
> Wikipedia in South Africa.
>
> I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure all of our members would love to get
> involved.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> David Richfield
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikimediaZA mailing list
> WikimediaZA@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza
>
>
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:32:48 -0700
From: "Kieran O'Neill" <oneillkza@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Education opportunity in South Africa
To: David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com>
Cc: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>, wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <BANLkTimGcbB8TNZw3jC5Ha0wBd2stEoWmA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Of course, this is just some quick web sleuthing -- I may just be a little
paranoid. But the kind of training you're talking about seems to be a
commercial product offered by Sangari, so I would want to know a little more
about the whole situation before leaping in.

On 13 May 2011 12:27, Kieran O'Neill <oneillkza@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we should be a little careful about how we go about this. While
> Sangari appear to have taken over Inkululeko Technologies (who inherited the
> TuxLab project), they appear to be strictly a commercial entity, with a
> focus on proprietary software and teaching materials.
>
> http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/
>
> <http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/>
> http://techrights.org/2010/12/29/antagonism-to-freedom-in-sa-edu/ (take
> this link with a pinch of salt)
>
> If Sangari's record on the TuxLab project is anything to go by (the website
> is now defunct, with just an Apache server error showing), I'm not sure that
> they carried much on from Inkululeko.
>
> Probably it would be best to contact Hilton Theunissen (who ran Inkululeko)
> and ask him what's up -- he seems to still own the .
>
> http://co.za/cgi-bin/whois.sh?Domain=inkululeko&Enter=Enter
>
> My main concern is that there is a fine line between engaging with a
> corporation to help a community, and doing free labour for said corporation
> to directly enhance its profits. I would feel much better working with a
> non-profit, rather than a company trying to sell a product to the SA
> government.
>
> On 13 May 2011 10:47, David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is exactly the kind of thing that our chapter should be working on! A
>> relevant, exciting, useful project that can seriously raise the profile of
>> Wikipedia in South Africa.
>>
>> I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure all of our members would love to get
>> involved.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> David Richfield
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikimediaZA mailing list
>> WikimediaZA@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza
>>
>>
>
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:44:02 -0700
From: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Education opportunity in South Africa
To: "Kieran O'Neill" <oneillkza@gmail.com>
Cc: wikimediaza@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=+sGkpKVnK9PhE2TXkmgQtkMx9Ow@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Yes, definitely. Thanks for bringing up these important points.  I'll let
the discussion continue and weigh in more later, but just so you know Hilton
Theunissen is indeed the person I have been in contact with.

Excited to hear there is interest in general, though!

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Kieran O'Neill <oneillkza@gmail.com>wrote:

> Of course, this is just some quick web sleuthing -- I may just be a little
> paranoid. But the kind of training you're talking about seems to be a
> commercial product offered by Sangari, so I would want to know a little more
> about the whole situation before leaping in.
>
>
> On 13 May 2011 12:27, Kieran O'Neill <oneillkza@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think we should be a little careful about how we go about this. While
>> Sangari appear to have taken over Inkululeko Technologies (who inherited the
>> TuxLab project), they appear to be strictly a commercial entity, with a
>> focus on proprietary software and teaching materials.
>>
>> http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/
>>
>> <http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/projects/the-tuxlab-project/>
>> http://techrights.org/2010/12/29/antagonism-to-freedom-in-sa-edu/ (take
>> this link with a pinch of salt)
>>
>> If Sangari's record on the TuxLab project is anything to go by (the
>> website is now defunct, with just an Apache server error showing), I'm not
>> sure that they carried much on from Inkululeko.
>>
>> Probably it would be best to contact Hilton Theunissen (who ran
>> Inkululeko) and ask him what's up -- he seems to still own the .
>>
>> http://co.za/cgi-bin/whois.sh?Domain=inkululeko&Enter=Enter
>>
>> My main concern is that there is a fine line between engaging with a
>> corporation to help a community, and doing free labour for said corporation
>> to directly enhance its profits. I would feel much better working with a
>> non-profit, rather than a company trying to sell a product to the SA
>> government.
>>
>> On 13 May 2011 10:47, David Richfield <davidrichfield@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This is exactly the kind of thing that our chapter should be working on!
>>> A relevant, exciting, useful project that can seriously raise the profile of
>>> Wikipedia in South Africa.
>>>
>>> I'm speaking for myself, but I'm sure all of our members would love to
>>> get involved.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> David Richfield
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> WikimediaZA mailing list
>>> WikimediaZA@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza
>>>
>>>
>>
>


--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*
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