Wikikids is the most mature and complex of my side projects. Founded together with my wife Ella, Wikikids is a long running project – over 4 years – with multiple people invested into it.
Wikikids is a wikipedia-like website, targeted towards children aged 8-12, where the children write the content themselves.
Being an educator, Ella saw her students struggling with researching their homework online, with most websites not written in children level language. When she started discussing with her students about writing, she quickly learned that their writing skills were quite lacking – they were used to writing short messages on their mobiles, not deep comprehensive texts.
And so, the idea of creating a wikipedia website for children came to life. We started with a simple proof-of-concept which was successful. Over the years, Ella joined the Israeli Education Ministry’s EdStart program which guided her on the business side of things, introduced her to the startups world and gave her a lot of exposure.
Today, Wikikids is used by many schools in Israel, with over 180 teachers and hundreds of students that wrote more than 1400 pages.
Features
Wikikids has multiple audiences, with young students being both consumers and producers. Teachers and educators all have their own set of dedicated features.
Everyone
- Easy search and navigation
- Tags for subject-grouping
Students
- Simplfied WYSIWYG Editor
- Child-safe images
- Gamification with points and leaderboards
- Templates for writing guidance
Teachers
- Monitor and follow students
- Advanced permissions
Tools and Platforms
Wikikids is currently hosted in Azure as a WebApp with an Azure SQL Server next to it. It is developed in C# using ASP.Net MVC – originally based on the Roadkill source, it went far and wide from it. We’re using Mailchimp for our newsletters and system emails, while our blog uses WordPress and is hosted in BlueHost.
