@goifoundation Needing to go synchronous lo-fi during our @wikipedia and #IndieWeb remote meetings

Accra, under lockdown. East Haddam, same.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has lead to the cancellation of events across the globe. This Saturday we tried to hold a @wikipedia and @wikidata edit-a-thon as a remote event.

We failed....I mean learned.

We gave Hangotus a try and Zoom. Even without video, just using audio, network congestion ground us to a screeching halt.

We had to give up and will spend this week suggesting and exploring a lo-fi synchronous approach.

Our Plan

We have to meet as a team but here are the ideas I will share

We will create learning activities and sessions on our wiki. These will have tutorials but also some embedded social activities and collaborative learning tasks.

Then we will use an etherpad for our live collaborative document editing. People do not think of Google Docs as being resource intensive, but compared to a page on a wiki, plus an etherpad, we will ensure that even spotty connections will connect.

People still want to do video. Any videos like kickoff or screencast will get recorded locally. We will hope to make these available for download ahead of time. We will record only in 720p to keep the videos smaller. We will also make torrents available and encourage people to download and seed the files ahead of time.

I used to use Mumble to attend some vitural homebrew website clubs in the EU. Really small data footprint for audio chat...Set up might be difficult for some...may give it a whirl.

If not we just use the chat feature available in Etherpad.

Finally we will encourage people to share what they learned about Wikipedia and Wikidata from their personal websites. Many people in the program have attended two Global Open Initiative Foundation Events and qualified for a website.

Think Small Matters

The current crisis and the collapse of network availability confirms our commitment to lo-fi tools like wikis and HTML. We can gather in person and engage in remote online learning without the bells and whistles of the latest video chat platform. The mode does not matter. Focus on the learning.

Same holds true in the US. We can see the inequity of the web playing out across our country. Rural areas ignored by telecoms and government. People of color, concentrated in unconnected urban centers of poverty.

Our networks are getting overrun. As educators we have a responsibility to protect our global resources. Ask yourself, "Do I need that video or could I teach to the same goal with a couple web pages"