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Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
WikipediA:
Empowering individuals and communities
Digital World Africa 2006 ConferenceICTs for Education and Development
12 - 13 september 2006
Florence Nibart [email protected]
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
Empowerment
Collaboration, sharing, mutuality
Strengthening the power of others rather than decreasing it
Being able to act on issues we define as important
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
Wikipedia’s radical idea
Imagine a world in which every singleperson is given free access to thesum of all human knowledge.
www.wikipedia.org
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
Imagine a bookshelf…
Wikipedia,The encyclopedia
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
1st lever: learning from others
+ Free as in free beer (“gratis”)
- Requires internet access
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
Few hits from Africa, Eastern Europe…
From Wikimedia projects access hits stats (summer 2005)
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
2nd lever: nurturing a critical mind
Neutrality of Point of View
• Readers are from diverse political, religious,cultural backgrounds
• Content represent all significant views fairlyand without bias.
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
3rd lever: reduce, re-use and recycle
Rights• Use the information without limitation• Distribute it in as many copies as desired• Modify it, reduce or add to it
Duties• All derivative work is to be kept free• The source must be mentionned
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
4th lever: teaching others
MediaWiki: a plateform for collaborative editing
• Requires a computer and aninternet connection
• Allows users to add or editcontent
• Scalable and multilingual
Mediawiki logo
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
Countries editing the english Wikipedia
From Wikimedia projects access hits stats (summer 2006)
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
5th lever: preserving linguistic diversity
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
• English: 1 400 000 articles (http://en.wikipedia.org)
Some Nigeria languages Wikipedias
• Yoruba: 55 articles (http://yo.wikipedia.org)
• Hausa: 14 articles (http://ha.wikipedia.org)
• Igbo: 11 articles (http://ig.wikipedia.org)
Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard
“Everyone loses if one language is lost
because then a nation and
culture lose their
memory, and so does
the complex tapestry
from which the world is
woven and which makes
the world an exciting place.”
Vigdis FinnbogadottirUNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages