Literacy Bridge Talking Book Wiki
JScarantino
The inspiring webinar that Cliff gave this past weekend gave me some
ideas I thought I would throw out there to get the discussion going. I
proposed building a wiki for the Talking Book that would have multiple
purposes including evaluation, program development, and technical
documentation. Some examples of what could be included in the wiki are
are below.
1) Talking Book Content: The goal being improved and localized Talking
Book content for each community using the Talking Book. Quality and
localized content is important for the Talking Book to be relevant. A
wiki could show various branches of content that is being used with
local examples: agricultural education in Ghana, financial literacy in
Uganda, etc. This section of the wiki could include "lessons learned"
under each branch of content and room for pedagogy folks to chime in
with educational improvements. (This wiki section could possibly be
integrated into #2 below for simplification.)
2) Talking Book Projects (by geography): A wiki could better
communicate country demographics on illiteracy and how the Talking
Book is being used in specific communities. This would be a perfect
place to occasionally step out to get the "bird's eye" view of what is
happening on a larger scale and what kind of trends are taking shape
and how Literacy Bridge is working to improve literacy. This would
also be very beneficial for researchers who are studying illiteracy
and the effects of the Talking Book and need specific demographic
statistics. (Could also hold localized Talking Book content. See #1
above.)
3) Talking Book Technical Specs: Having technical specs online in a
wiki format could hold big potential for future engineering
improvements to the device itself on both a hardware and software
level. The Google group is a great start, but what if other engineers
and programmers were able to contribute more freely to make the
Talking Book cheaper and more efficient through technical diagrams and
open source code in a wiki format?
I am sure other people can come up with more examples and improve on
those listed above. (I was just thinking out loud.) The point I would
want to highlight through all of these examples of using a wiki would
be openness, participation, and documentation on all levels so each
project of the Talking Book is an improvement over the last project.
Managing a wiki takes some work, but having such a platform could open
the door to a wide variety of folks from education professionals
focusing on pedagogy to electrical engineers to PhD researchers and
even local Talking Book partners.
Such a wiki could be built using MediaWiki or a variety of other wiki
software freely available and virtually little to no cost to host. I
look forward to your feedback on this idea. (I have CC'd the
Technology Committee group with this message, so let's see if this
works as hoped.)
-Josef
Patrick Cusack
Hi Josef,
Going forward we should do all our posting via the Google Groups tool. That
allows people to choose how they receive this information. Agreed?
I like your idea, but it is a lot to take on, so be sure you have the
resources or a group of assistants before taking it on.
From my experience one of the toughest things about volunteering is to scope
realistically how much you can do, while still doing your day job. When you
create ambitious but excellent plans such as below, it's important to think
about how you will resource yourself to make it happen. People can place
much importance on such a tool and if it grows bigger than you, you may over
stretch yourself.
For the recipients of Talking Book and its contents I would say that the
main thing to do is to take baby steps before taking giant strides.
With baby steps you can complete tasks and comfortably meet expectations.
Giant strides are great, but if we fail in these it can deflate you and the
overall volunteer team.
The success of Literacy Bridge will be a long slow journey, but that is
good! I think it was Bill Gates that said "the world will change less in 1
year and far more in 3 years than we ever expected".
I want to hear what the Literacy Bridge team have done already and then
let's build on that, rather than start on a potential tangent. Once we know
where they are at, we can understand how best to help them be successful.
Dig in for a long journey but think of the potential for this tool!
Essentially it brings the teacher to the field and that teacher does not
require malaria shots, a salary, food and shelter - all it needs are a
couple of batteries!
Africa for example, has been locked in a cycle where 5% of the population
have elite status due to having a full education. That 5% controls the other
95% of the population.
Better to get a basic education for everyone than an elite education for a
few.
A true democratization of education.
Patrick
Josef Scarantino
Thanks for your feedback. I posted my discussion to the Google Groups
Technology Committee and CC'd the Program Committee. Subscribers to
those groups can choose how they receive the posts, whether
individually or in digest format. Let me know if this is not the
correct way to correspond.
I definitely agree, we need to take baby steps to move forward.
However, I don't believe pursuing a wiki at this stage is going in a
"tangent" or in any way overly ambitious. I brought the idea up to
Cliff during the webinar last weekend and he was very enthusiastic
about it.
Another benefit of beginning a wiki at this stage is that you don't
need a large amount of resources to get it started. A wiki takes time
to build up with information and is much easier to start at the
beginning rather than when projects have completed and information
might have been lost or become dated. It is also important to notate
"lessons learned" early in the process and this can be done through
the wiki very easily. Once a wiki is started, anyone can contribute
when they have time, so it is not resource heavy.
I would be curious to see what some of the core contributors to the
Talking Book have to suggest.
-Josef