Wikis for children

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Educational Wikis Created and Written by and for Children

It's not easy to know how often a child will have access to an Internet connection, so a wiki may not always be available. But, when available, a wiki provides knowledge, writing, and wiki-creation opportunities (in several languages). Wikipedia has proven the value of wikis and the success of community sharing. To make sure that we continue to spread the technology freely, we need to post not only content, but content about how to create and build wikis, wiki pages, and wiki communities. Several such experiences are documented in Dutch ([1] and in French ([2]). Both projects are independent, but do keep in touch with each other.

These two wikis are quite successful. Volunteers have written over 800 articles in 8 months for the Dutch wiki, and just as many for the French wiki. It is becoming a true international project, with both wikis contributing to the growth of free encyclopedic data in multiple languages. Best of all, these wikis are dedicated to promoting childrens' learning and improving the educational opportunities to learn Writing skills and appreciation.

Current projects

Wiki for Kids [3] Share the knowledge globally. Teachers and students can contribute information suitable for children ages 5-18.

The wikikids idea was proposed as a Wikimedia Foundation project here: Wikikids on meta.wikimedia.org but the three projects listed previously are independent of the Wikimedia Foundation project. The Dutch and French project currently collaborate and welcome any help with additional projects, such as it.vikidia.org, pl.vikidia.org, and so on.

Secondary school

See also