Notes from Millie D

A couple of things came across my inbox today that I thought I would pass along and discuss with anyone interested.

Wikipedia CD-In a joint project from Wikipedia and SOS Children provide 2011 articles and more than 8000 images that are centered around helping children become more aware of the world around them.  The target audience for the CD are children between 8-15.  The articles are handpicked from Wikipedia, tidied up, checked for plausibility and suitability, and put in a form for a CD.  The CD is platform and browser neutral (the power of Web 2.0).

The impact here is great for children and classrooms.  Imagine being able to give a child a starting  point (notice not a final destinition) in researching topics when the Internet may not be available for whatever reason.  From a tech integration point, what a powerful way of introducing the power of Wikipedia in the classroom.  The downside of the CD is that the information is dated but at least it is a starting point to the 800,000+ articles on the wiki.

2020 Vision-  Next year’s Kindgarten class will graduate in 2020 and Karl Fisch decided to take the bull by the horns and project technology and the classroom with a commencement address in May 2020.  An interesting concept and I applaud the effort. 

This got me thinking about a couple of things with that class.  One, there are going to be a lot of 20-20 parallels done that those students will grow frustrated with the label.  Two, it could be an interesting discussion point in getting some real meaningful change in the classroom.  This could be the hook for David Warlick in getting the new literacy going.

Today was a day that made me think which is always good.  Hopefully you had something good to ponder…

technorati tags:warlick, literacy, 21stcentury, wikipedia

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