Content workflow

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Idea

Some examples of ideas are...

• Wouldn't it be great if there was an open resource to teach children how to do X?
• I loved this book as a kid... I wish something like it was available to kids in other countries.
• I made this thing - I wonder if it's useful to other students for learning?

Finding and Entering Content

Going on a content hunt

Gather your picks and shovels

1. Open your favorite browser window (or several).

1. Open your favorite text editor as a scratch pad, you'll want to copy/paste links from the browser and make notes.

Simply relying on browser history or bookmarking is probably not the best strategy, you'll want to capture your findings and get them recorded on the wiki at the end of your search. Editing directly into a wiki page is also less-than-ideal as you don't want to get distracted by formating and the like while the hunt is on.

1. If you are doing this collaboratively (in real-time) you'll probably want to open an IRC chat session on a suitable channel.

Focused content hunt

You've got an idea of what sort of content you want to find.

Searching with your favorite search engine on carefully chosen terms is likely to return a lot of links, and you can't necessarily visit them all. One good strategy is to use this search to find super-nodes from which to do more focused browsing. For health and science content: government agencies/ministries, NGO's, patient and research advocacy groups and universities are all likely to have produced suitable content or gathered together links to high-quality content. Furthermore, as these are all generally non-profit organizations, the chances of finding content that is (or can be) made available under suitable licensing terms are substantially improved.

Surprise content discovery

Sometimes when you are looking for one thing, you stumble across something else entirely. Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Open a fresh text window and paste the link with some notes on topic, copyright, that will allow you (or someone else) pick up that thread. If you working collabaratively with a group on a focused content hunt, it's best not to get distracted by another topic, no matter how rich a vein of content you've found; but don't lose track of it either. It could become the starting point of a new focused content hunt you launch later on, or you can drop it onto an appropriate wiki page for someone else to follow up.

Entering Content into the OLPC Wiki

For any other work to be done, content must have some sort of a home at the wiki. This 'Content-Page' should contain some standard basic information about the work including format, language and most importantly a URL or current location of said content.

Vetting of Content

Depending on how much information was recorded by the content's finder and initial logger to the wiki, additional information will likely need to be recorded.

License

One of the most important pieces of information would be the current license status of the work. Content for OLPC must be in some acceptable form of Open-Content license like Creative Commons or the GFDL. Content that has an unknown status, or is of unacceptable license should a special tag and/or place on the wiki.

A team should be formed for tracking down of copyright information on content, correct attribution, and in some cases, opening discussions with the copyright holder on releasing the content into an acceptable license.

Creation

Useful tools

• plaintext editors
• inkscape
• wiki

Adaptation

How to transform existing works into something new, and how to make your work something other people will transform.

Deployment

How to get your stuff actually tested with real kids in a classroom.

Feedback

How to get it, encourage it, and react to it.