Saturday 25 October 2014

The potentials of Wikimedia and Dinosaurs

Here at Mozfest we've been discussing the potentials of using Wikimedia for children. We've looked at a few existing sites which could be linked into the project and also looked at the tools currently available within the Wikimedia community which can be used to help with the challenges associated with creating content for children.

We have looked at the possibilities for differentiation and the censoring content for age and culture suitability. We have briefly looked into the safeguarding issues linked to working with children in an online environment.

Daniel Mietchen, of the Museum für Naturkunde has talked us through the process of creating new Wikimedia platforms by submitting a proposal to the foundation and then working with the project in the incubator stage before the project finally goes live. Although, not all projects make it past each stage!

We have also looked at a few existing projects which have the potential to link into the project, such as Vikidia and Wikikids. There are also some interesting things happening with children in Sweeden. Lots to look into!

Peter Murray-Rust, of Cambridge University, shared his project where they have been collating a list of known dinosaurs from literature. We talked about the potentials of giving children random names of dinosaurs and linking them into Wikipedia articles and encouraging them to create games with their peers. For example, like football cards, they could collect the names of dinosaurs and score points for each one; if a name is a new addition, then more points could be scored!

Kentrosaurus aethiopicus from the Museum für Naturkunde

No comments:

Post a Comment