Draft contribution for Mediawiki's Whygive blog

Turning the digital divide into digital dividends[edit]

Wikipedia is the most significant social phenomenon of our time. The free knowledge community now have the tools and processes to collaborate on a global scale in developing educational materials as a social good. Recent technology developments will enable us to widen access to education for every person on our planet, especially for our learners who do not have access to the Internet. In this way we can throw a wide bridge across the digital divide. Sadly, the majority of educational materials are locked behind copyright. Your donation will help us change this situation so that we can achieve universal access to education for all using free content and open networks!

Notwithstanding the phenomenal growth in free content in recent years and the significant advances we have made with wiki technology we still have a long way to go before we will achieve universal access to education.

There is something fundamentally wrong with our world considering that the majority of our children will not be going to school. Consider, for example, that in Sub-Saharan Africa, 76% of the children in the age group for the last three years of high school will not have the privilege of attending school. We do not have enough money to train the teachers or build the classrooms needed to achieve universal secondary education.

However, the free knowledge community combined with innovative advances in wiki technology will make a difference. We are aiming to develop free education resources for all educational levels and sectors in support of national curricula all over the world by 2015. Your donation will help us in making a real difference in the lives of children all over the world.

We will achieve our objectives because the Wikipedia approach in providing free access to the sum of all human knowledge is unique for two significant reasons:

Digital knowledge is infinity scalable and will not suffer the tragedy of the commons.

This means that your investment in time or money in supporting the work of the free knowledge community will be available for prosperity. Digital knowledge is a rare commodity - it grows when we share it. If you give me some of your knowledge, you still have it for yourself to use! Sharing knowledge is not a new phenomenon. Since the beginning of time, when educators engage with their learners, they do so with the intent and purpose of sharing knowledge freely. This means that educational ecosystems evolve from the Mediawiki projects in ways that facilitate growth and widen distribution channels in education for development. Consider for example, the WikiEducator initiative of the Commonwealth of Learning. The Commonwealth of Learning is an international agency set up by the Commonwealth heads of government. We are literally standing on the shoulders of the Wikipedia giant and building on existing content of the Wikimedia foundation projects to widen access to education around the world.

Free software facilitates collaboration and innovation for next generation education in the developing world

Wikipedia is powered by Mediawiki -- a free software wiki technology. The use of free software enables different organisations to collaborate on developing the technology refinements we need to expand access to education. For example, free software has enabled a non-profit international agency like the Commonwealth of Learning to collaborate with Wikia Inc. (a for-profit company), to co-fund the development of LiquidThreads. LiquidThreads is a novel threaded discussion tool for Mediawiki which makes it easier for educators to communicate with each other while developing free content the wiki way. The code is released as free software and is available for all Mediawiki sites to use.

COL is also working closely with the Mediawiki Foundation in developing technologies that will enable Wikipedians and WikiEducators to produce customised print-based materials for use in educational settings. This will revolutionise access to free content in the developing world, most notably for learners who do not have access to the internet.

Inspired by a Native American proverb:

Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may not remember, involve me, and I'll understand,

we will commence with the Learning4Content project which will take the wiki model to a new level in education. With generous funding support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and core budget allocations from the Commonwealth of Learning, this will be the largest capacity building initiative in wiki editing skills for developing free educational content in the history of our planet. It's a smart project because educators will receive free training in return for developing one lesson of free content.

We will be working closely with the Wikipedia community in the following ways:

Engaging Wikipedians to assist with facilitating training workshops
Adding value to Wikipedia articles by helping teachers to refine and improve Wikipedia content
Transforming Wikipedia articles into educational lessons that can be used in classrooms around the world.
Providing educators with the skills to translate materials into local languages.

As a Commonwealth agency our work is restricted to the Commonwealth member states and we will only be able to train 3000 teachers. However, your donations will be able to expand capacity building initiatives like this to all nations in the world because the Wikimedia foundation will be able to use all our training materials which are released as free content.

Lets work together in achieving a free education curriculum for all levels and sectors in support of national curricula by 2015. Your contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation will make a difference.

Wayne Mackintosh PhD
Education Specialist, eLearning & ICT Policy, Commonwealth of Learning
Advisory Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
Founder of the WikiEducator project