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Campaign Raises Funds To Send Wikipedia Readers To Kids Without Internet

Posted by timothy on from the billions-of-words dept.

Eloquence writes "Remember the WikiReader? It was pitched as a device that would contain the text of the entire English Wikipedia, and run on two AAA batteries for months. Unfortunately it was sold to the wrong audience: people who already have smartphones, tablets and laptops. At a cost of $20 per device, Aislinn Dewey and Victor Grigas (who works for Wikimedia) are trying to raise funds to buy up the company's inventory and ship WikiReaders to kids in places without Internet connectivity."

6 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. $10 instead of $20 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    They're $10 on Amazon (instead of $20) - can I ship some directly to them? There seem to be a bunch for that price:

    http://goo.gl/XfHfX

  2. Re:.. and why .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Source code is available here:
    https://github.com/wikireader

  3. Re:Same kids by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

    And who are also likely illiterate... problems problems.

    Very unlikely. Most electronic assembly is done in China or Vietnam, both of which have 95% literacy rates.

  4. Re:Not a bad idea but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hi! when we contacted the manufacturer, he said that any language version thats already available for the WikiReader will be able to be pre-installed, There's several available: http://dev.thewikireader.com/language-packs/ he was interested in putting effort into getting any other languages needed as well, including one developed by the UK specifically for classroom education: http://schools-wikipedia.org/

  5. Re:Same kids by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why do people on slashdot feel the need to make points about things of which they have no information?

    Here is some information: List of Countries by Literacy Rate

    By default the list is sorted in alphabetical order, but you can click on the headers to sort by literacy rate, or by gender-specific literacy rate. Although illiteracy is correlated with poverty, it is even more strongly correlated with religion: Ten of the bottom ten are Muslim. Much of this is because they don't educate many of their girls.

  6. $10 on Amazon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W