Global Open Initiative/Initiatives
Global Open Initiative
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GOI Foundation OER Network[edit]
The GOI Foundation OER Network (GOIFON) is a platform that provides anyone the opportunity to release open educational resources into the public domain. It was established in March 2019 by Global Open Initiative with seed funding from Southern Connecticut State University and Known.
GOIFON is a social stream and shared platform for open educational resources that incorporates blogging and analytic tools, enabling users to track knowledge growth across the community.
IIAB Digital Library[edit]
As part of a collaborative effort to make the worlds free knowledge easily accessible to everyone regardless of the limitation of internet connectivity, GOI Foundation partnered with Wiki Project Med Foundation to assemble and freely distribute Internet-In-A-Box (IIAB) Raspberry Pi 3 hotspot devices in Sub-saharan Africa. As is the situation in many communities in the Global South, the IIAB hotspot device comes as an intervention to facilitate the sharing of electronic resources suited for learning environments that encounter one or more of the following challenges:
- Lacks Internet access totally
- Lacks sufficient internet access (or, has limited internet access)
- Has Internet access, but wants to provide faster transfer of media files
- Users are likely to access content using smartphones than using the desktop
- Lacks electricity totally
- Has electricity but experiences erratic electric power outages
Content including Wikipedia slices, videos and PDFs may be added to the IIAB Digital Library so that users (up to 32 different client devices) within a couple hundred meters of the hotspot can easily access (and download) learning material with no need for internet connection.
A single device per institution may be requested for free. After an assessment by our team however, the requester shall pay for the cost of shipping or the equivalent of $40 if they need an extra unit. Since demand is high and GOI Foundation only relies on donations, distribution is by first-come-first-serve basis.
IIAB hotspot device may be requested at bit.ly/request_IIAB
Political Data[edit]
The Political Data project has a simple high level objective; that every politician must have a
- Wikipedia article
- Wikidata item, and a
- Wikimedia Commons image
More broadly, by way of organising in person edit-a-thons and online competitions/challenges, this project aims at adding past and present government office holders to Wikimedia projects. Whereby each politician shall have a
- Wikipedia entry in at least one language. The entry shall be a well-formed Start class article, or better (i.e. over 1,500 characters of readable prose)
- Wikidata entry with at least one statement with property position held (P39) along with its relevant qualifiers.
- Each politician shall have a Wikimedia Commons entry. The Wikimedia Commons file shall be an image of themself.
Members of the 7th Parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana[edit]
A series of in-person edit-a-thons facilitated under the WikiProject Ghana, Parliament of Ghana working group and organised in collaboration with Madina Institute of Science and Technology is adding all 275 Members of the 7th Parliament of the 4th Republic of Ghana to Wikipedia and Wikidata according to the objectives above, from February 23 to May 25 of 2019.
Improving Local Language Wikipedias[edit]
While the use of indigenous languages are on the decline, GOI Foundation is passionate about the prospects of Wikimedia projects serving the purpose of language preservation platforms that anyone could edit. Interventions currently undertaken include:
- Incubating languages that do not yet exist on Wikipedia
- Expanding existing languages that are currently experiencing dwindling levels of participation
- Recruiting expert local languages writers to become volunteers
Dagbani language Wikipedia[edit]
Dagbani is one of the major languages spoken in Ghana. During the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, WikiProject Medicine Healthcare Translation Task Force and Translators Without Borders worked with local communities on the ground to translate basic healthcare information from simplified English Wikipedia articles into indigenous languages. The Dagbani translations were led by User:Masssly and User:Puumaya 10. The collaboration saw the translation of nearly a dozen simple health-related articles into Dagbani. The Dagbani Wikipedia, borne from this initiative, currently contains hundreds of articles related to other areas including history and geography.
Twi Translatathon[edit]
As of August 2018, the Twi Wikipedia had only 607 articles (mostly stubs) and less than 10 users who made 5+ edits per month. This statistics is getting worse as more of the existing pages are being targeted for deletion because of poor content. An approved grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is intended to rescue the Twi Wikipedia from closing. Three translathathons are to be organised from March to May of 2019 to
- Create at least 50 articles on the Twi Wikipedia (or Translate from English Wikipedia to Twi Wikipedia)
- Recruit new editors to the Twi Wikipedia
- Create a mentorship program to engage the new editors beyond the March-May events
- Create an avenue to publicize local language Wikipedias in Ghana
- Lay the groundworks to improve other African indigenous language Wikipedias