"I learn with you" is better than "I learn alone"

Germany, France, USA, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador

The Way Of The Community:
   - share, when you have
   - ask, when you don't

Virtual communities and sharing of information is something vital to the success of any deployment size. One of the primary tools we use for that is email lists.  Lists exchange of information at a faster rate than wikis or blogs, are highly compatible with all sort of computers or software, new or old, and are quite inexpensive compared to any other form of communication, for example international phone calls. Easy to set up, too, and important to appoint someone responsible to "develop the community" that will follow up with encouraging everybody to sign up - or at least sign up everybody by default.

Email lists are mostly seen as for grownups at this stage, though it is exciting to imagine how they could offer real solutions for kids also, since safety is easier to implement than with other alternatives, in addition to all other advantages indicated above.For our example we chose something that shows not only how a problem was dealt with by the community, but also was fun.

Translation work is a prime example where an international community can show its best side: people can help, if they simply know the language and its use locally, so they can contribute even if they are not "experts"; Experts and trained linguists (if available), hopefully will refrain from being too hard on other people's attempt at figuring out a day-to-day issue, and thus might even learn a thing or two.

An email "thread" or sequence might have several messages as people around the world try to contribute, in this case 23 in the "Support Gang" list, a team of volunteers that serves as the core of those who help great people like you to achieve great things with the "little bits of sky". You're welcome to join! wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC:Support_gang. 10 more messages ran on the Sur list http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2009-August/thread.html#4250

All this shows a few things you should be aware of: sometimes you need self discipline to decide what conversation you will follow, which ones you will put in your trash bin - they can add to a lot of emails!  Not all conversations are "world changing", though many, such as this one, keep on going for a while as people follow ideas, and can eventually get people to build up important concepts, together.  As happened in this case, Sur followed several other similar matters, concluding (so far) with very deep and well built sharing on the differences between constructionism and constructivism, concepts quite central to a lot of the educational impact of the Sugar Activities, differences I must admit I was not aware of.

The thread started thus, from California, United States:

Hi Support Gangers,
Here is a new question for you... from me.  Is wiki male or female?  How about the XO?
I often get to answer RT tickets in Spanish and have wondered whether I should write "nuestro wiki"(m) or "nuestra wiki"(f). Similarly, "el XO" (m) or "la XO" (f).  I know it is a minor detail, but we might want to find out what is the correct usage. How about it sj?  Anyone else?
For now, I'll use the masculine, but it would be nice to know the conventions for this. Someone has probably already done it for "wiki", but maybe not for "XO".
Caryl

One of the last "Gang" emails had this content:
(colors added here to make it easy to follow who said what)

Bert Freudenberg wrote:   (Central Germany)

On 28.08.2009, at 08:54, Bastien wrote:  (France)

> Yamandu Ploskonka writes:  (Texas, United States)
an interesting insight: it's "la wiki", because of "wikipedia",
>> since in Castillian
>> "enciclopedia" is a girl (nena)

> French people are not so consistent, as we use "La" for "La Wikipedia"
> and "Le" for "Le wiki (ou un wiki)".

Interesting. In German, "Wikipedia" is feminine too even though "Wiki" is masculine. But we do not actually say "die Wikipedia" but treat it as a proper name, so it's just "Wikipedia".

>> (yes, I know that wikipedia is a derivative from wiki, but then ...)

> (Or maybe WikiPedia is more derivated from encyclopedia than from
> wiki,
> which might explain french inconsistencie...)

Same reasoning I guess. - Bert -

and a bit of the last exchange in Sur:

"Un wiki, o una wiki, es un sitio (Uruguay)
web cuyas páginas web pueden ser ...."
texto extraído de http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki ,
siempre es bueno leer las fuentes originales.
Un saludo

El 26 de agosto de 2009 14:09, Sebastian Silva (Peru)
> En realidad como alguien señalaba, no hay una regla.
> He recordado que yo solía decir "el wiki" (por el sistema wiki),
> hasta que lo escuché reiteradas veces en femenino y ahora me
> suena mejor.
> Según Dr Google (Como alguien ya señaló):
> aproximadamente 13,500 de "nuestro wiki"
> aproximadamente 40,300 de "nuestra wiki"
> Saludos
> El 26 de agosto de 2009 11:58, Daniel Ajoy<da.ajoy> escribió:</da.ajoy> (Ecuador)
> >> hmmmm para mi lo de wiki como femenino no vielne por LA wikipedia,,,
> >> viene de ser unA (página) wiki. no les parece?
> > > no.