Friday, April 11, 2008

Wikimedia. Excellent!


This article was late because I was not in a good health condition. I went through the Wikimedia projects. Amazing! that is the only word I have after I visited some of the wikimedi projects such wiktionary, wikiquote, wikibooks, wikisource, wikinews etc. I had never visited the other wikimedia projects except wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). So for me it's amazing. I found wiktinary very helpful for determining difficult English words. I found a good reference for teaching and learning ESL in the wikibooks since they have the English book in simple English. In the wiki source I found the translation of Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. In wiki media commons i found quite alot graphics under the creative common licence which can be used for teaching aide. Surprisingly, I could find the page about species in the wikispecies which is translated in one of the native languages in our country "Sundanese".
In the future, I hope wikimedia will cover the other area of information and knowledge. And I start believing that it will definitely happened as all the wiki community has a commitment to freely share all the knowledge to others.
OER is the movement of provide a free online resources for education. I believe the wikimedia is the resource for education as well as a place to share what we have learnt to others. An information, a picture or a piece of knowledge will trigger of another information, pictures or knowledge done by other people. It looks like a snow ball for me. It is getting bigger and bigger because many more people involved in the wikimedia.
Since everyone has an access on editing and uploading information in the wikimedia projects, will the wikimedia be bias. Bias in the sense that the world of information and knowledge will be dominated by several group of people who master the computer technology only. Will the information and knowledge be misleading? Because one day, I had an input from the parents who were concern on the correctness of the information available in the wikimedia, especially the wikipedia, since the parents knew that the wikimedia a collaborative work of many people. It would be interesting if we could share the opinion on this questions. But it doesn't mean the idea of having wikimedia is not correct but this is the only way of making it more useful for the society.

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