Appropedia
Appropedia is a website for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development, with a particular focus on appropriate technology. Appropedia is a wiki-based website like Wikipedia, a website where a large number of participants are allowed to create and modify the content directly from their web browsers. Appropedia is a site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. It is an open website for users to co-create sustainable solutions, questions, and information; it serves as a resource area for other organizations.[1]
Appropedia is being used by a number of nonprofit organizations and individuals working in the sustainable development space because it simplifies the administration of collaboratively organizing information, project examples, best practices, and “how tos”. Examples of organizations using this wiki are Demotech[2] and the Full Belly Project.[3] It has been expanding rapidly as other organizations utilize its information transfer and collaboration capabilities.
Currently, Appropedia houses more than 14,000 articles, which exemplifies the appropriate technology movement started by E. F. Schumacher in the book Small is Beautiful [4] is gaining some traction.
History
After years of other online and offline sustainable collaboration projects, Lonny Grafman started Appropedia in April 2006 with a focus on appropriate technology, defined very broadly. He was assisted by Aaron Antrim and Gabriel Krause in the decision to use the MediaWiki engine for Appropedia.
A note left on another site[5] led Curt Beckmann to join Appropedia, bringing energy, new ideas and different perspectives. Like-minded people and organizations were happy to give permission to use their material (see below).
Contact with WikiGreen in December 2006[6] led to a quick decision to join forces. It was decided to use the name Appropedia. This merger led to a large increase in content, including permission from various publications, and some content from CD3WD (CDs for the 3rd World).[7]
Since then Appropedia has made connections with more people and organizations:
- International Rivers Network gave permission for several pages worth of content.
- Practical Action gave permission for over 100 articles
- Demotech, an organization in the Netherlands has built many, pages.
- A long-running discussion with Village Earth led to their wiki merging in March 2007.[8] This was the original wiki on appropriate technology.
- Discussions with Architecture for Humanity, who have set up the Open Architecture Network. Their website serves a different purpose to Appropedia, and the exact form of collaboration is still to be decided, but we have agreed to support each others' efforts.
- Sustainapedia, a planned website by a group of people with a similar vision and much ambition, led by Ryan Legg, and Jim Harris of Cleantech.[9] The Sustainapedia and Appropedia teams quickly agreed to join forces, and are now working out the details.
- The How To Live Wiki, the site of Vinay Gupta, known for the Hexayurt autonomous building, merged much of its material into Appropedia in March 2007, and Vinay joined the Appropedia team.
- The Sgoals wiki, focused on sustainable business practices, joined shortly after Howtolivewiki.
- Students for Global Sustainability Wiki merged in January 2008.
- CCAT, the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology, partnered with Appropedia to move their project pages to Appropedia in April 2008.
Use as source
An increasing number of papers and books are beginning to use information generated via Appropedia as source material. For example:
- Kreye, Melissa M. "Metal accumulation in gill epithelium and liver tissue in steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) reared in reclaimed wastewater", Thesis (M.S.)--Humboldt State University, Natural Resources: Wastewater Utilization Program, 2008.
- Urmila Balasubramaniyam, Llionel S. Zisengwe, Niccoló Meriggi, Eric Buysman, Biogas production in climates with long cold winters, Wageningen, May 2008.
- James A. West and Margaret L. West, "Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web", Jossey-Bass (December 15, 2008).
This could be an indication that wiki-derived information is beginning to provide reliable data for the intellectual sphere.
Use as pedagogical tool
Appropedia is increasingly being used to improve the pedagogy of service learning.[10] This is being done in language education [11][12][13] and in engineering education[14][15]
See also
References
- ^ Joshua M. Pearce, Lonny Grafman, Thomas Colledge, and Ryan Legg, “Leveraging Information Technology, Social Entrepreneurship and Global Collaboration for Just Sustainable Development” Proceedings of the 12th Annual National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Conference, pp. 201- 210, 2008. Full text:[1]
- ^ Demotech, Design for self reliance
- ^ http://www.fullbellyproject.org/
- ^ Schumacher, E. F.; Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered : 25 Years Later...With Commentaries. Hartley & Marks Publishers ISBN 0-88179-169-5
- ^ http://ewb-international.org/ASTdatabases.htm
- ^ http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Chriswaterguy&oldid=10789#Wikigreen
- ^ http://www.cd3wd.com/
- ^ Village Earth. 2007. Village Earth joins the Appropedia wiki community. Appropriate Technology Project Blog. [2]
- ^ http://cleantech.com
- ^ J. M. Pearce, L. Grafman, T. Colledge, and R. Legg, “Leveraging Information Technology, Social Entrepreneurship and Global Collaboration for Just Sustainable Development” Proceedings of the 12th Annual National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Conference, pp. 201- 210, 2008.
- ^ E. ter Horst and J. M. Pearce, “Foreign Languages and the Environment: A Collaborative Instructional Project”, The Language Educator, pp. 52-56, October, 2008.
- ^ J. M. Pearce and E. ter Horst “Appropedia and Sustainable Development for Improved Service Learning”, Proceedings of Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 2008.
- ^ Joshua M. Pearce and Eleanor ter Horst, “Overcoming Language Challenges of Open Source Appropriate Technology for Sustainable Development in Africa”, Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa, 11(3) pp.230-245, 2010.
- ^ Joshua M. Pearce, “Appropedia as a Tool for Service Learning in Sustainable Development”, Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 3(1), pp.45-53, 2009. Q-Space pre-print
- ^ S. Murphy and N. Saleh, "Information literacy in CEAB’s accreditation criteria: the hidden attribute", In Proceedings of The Sixth International Conference on Innovation and Practices in Engineering Design and Engineering Education, 2009. Hamilton, ON July 27–29, 2009.
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