Wikidia

URL: https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/wikidia.html 

I'm a retried teacher, and one of my main passions is the creation of educational material.

I once spent $1,000 of my own money for a service from a site called Wikispaces in order to develop my idea for a free online educational resource for children. 

Wikispaces offered free wiki hosting for hobbyists, collectors, campaigners - you name it. It was very easy to use (far better than Wikipedia for making contributions), and their user support was outstanding.

I had already expended a considerable amount of time and effort on a free personal wiki there that they provided for individual creators. I spent the money for getting an advanced service that could accommodate multiple contributors and had more space. 

I had just got the enhanced service up and running when Wikispaces was bought out by an outfit called Tes. Tes acquired Wikispaces in a predatory fashion. It sold out all the Wikispaces creators by erasing their content, even preventing the content from being preserved on any internet archive before the site closed. Everyone's work was eliminated, and my own $1,000 was wasted. Tes' priority is making money rather than educating.

I'm afraid I lost heart at that moment. I had tried making contributions to the Khan Academy, and to the CK-12 initiative, but they proved to be far too restrictive.

I had a longtime dream of a global, free, quality educational service that educational content creators could contribute to. One passion of mine is teaching about evolution, and my original project covered that. Seeing the amount of money that goes into propaganda targetting children by creationist for-profit organisations, Answers in Genesis for example, makes me weep. Why is there not a similar amount of resource put in on the side of evidence and reason?

In my efforts to get my ideas off the ground, I came to realise that writing for children is a particular skill. Not everyone has the experience or the knack. What is needed is for some organisation or philanthropic individual to put some money in, to pay for a quality site and for quality contributions from suitably qualified people. 

If you think my ideas are worth promoting, please promote this by sharing, and if you have any suggestions as to who I can approach with this, I would be very grateful to receive them.