On 01/20/2011 07:35 PM, Nikhil Sheth wrote:
Taking it to the logical next step, I've created a
wiki page for this
campaign:
http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition
I have sign up.
I will do my best to incorporate all your advice
there; requesting you
to jump in as well!
All are requested to gather here and collaborate! (including mumbai and
pune wikipedia lists here as well). Urging the volunteers who obtain the
wikipedia for schools dump to enlist themselves here, and we'll be
listing the schools that we empower - one by one!
I'm proud to mention that a school I'm volunteering in Pune, where some
Teach For India fellows are teaching, is the first "empowered" school,
where I've installed Wikipedia for Schools in the computer lab and the
office! It's an under-resourced school but now the kids there have
access to a wealth of knowledge! And you should see them in action!
I'm sure this was a great reward for your work. I never have had this
chance!
Why I created the page in wikia : In Wikipedia, when I
went to create a
new page, it clearly said the content ought to be encyclopedic in nature
- whereas THIS is more of a movement and recruitment page. So to be on
the safe side I went to the education wikia where things are a little
sparse ;). I've worked with wikia in
toastmasters.wikia.com
<http://toastmasters.wikia.com> and am comfortable with it. If anyone
can establish a good location on wikipedia itself, which doesn't get
deleted later, and migrate everything there, it'll be great! There are
lots of external links on this so need to be careful.
Further plans (if you guys can help!):
1. A proliferation meetup where a lot of us can get together and copy
the dump to our laptop/netbook/USB drive. 1 goes to 20... and we can
scale up the project like crazy.
Would be great, I'm interested in any simple Ideas/Solutions to build
something like a small digital kiosk where people could easily choose
what they want to get on their USB stick. The wireless version,
something like a WIFI Spot with only one Web Site could also be interesting.
2. To tie up with DVD distributors and bulk-produce,
provided the costs
are as low as humanly possible. Maybe Wikimedia India could maintain a
stock?
I see you have BIG projects, so just an idea: what about something like
shipit.wikimedia.in with a similar principle as
shipit.ubuntu.com. This
would be certainly a logistical and financial challenge... but could be
really efficient.
An other good way to spread content fastly and for not too much money is
to make a deal with a magazin which will be sell with the DVD... but
someone has to take the publishing responsability.
(Seemingly Impossible) Requests:
1. Can anybody add a link to versions of Kiwix that work on non-Windows
OS's like Linux, Apple, Android? My focus is on Android, for future
mobile perspective...
Kiwix does not work on Android currently, but we should have soon an
other ZIM reader which will be able to run on Android.
It's also on the roadmap of Kiwix to be ported to Android, but this
shouldn't happen this year.
Otherwise Kiwix is available for MacOSX and GNU/Linux, all the necessary
details are on the Kiwix Web site Welcome page.
2. Can we get a version of this that doesn't have
Image files? Then the
size will be much lesser. Of course, that's less attractive, but I'm
looking for an opportunity to take this to mobile devices. How can we
edit a .ZIM file?
This should be possible with a little bit work.
Regards
Emmanuel