Hi All,<br>
<br>
I&#39;m an IT engineer-turned-educator based in Pune and have been working on distributing Wikipedia for 
Schools Offline Edition here. Have implemented successfully at one school only so far
 and then got working on getting more softwares and trying to get around 
installation problems that I experienced at the second school. <br>
<br>
But I was able to spread awareness about it pretty well. I&#39;ve delivered 
talks at two colleges (SICSR in Pune and NERIST in Itanagar, on other 
side of India) that were having wikipedia tracks in their annual 
technical events and have had a good response. We got a mention of the 
project in a national newspaper. I&#39;ve shared the 2.8 GB Wikipedia for 
Schools portable package (made by Kiwix) with lots of people already (you&#39;ll find them on a map link below)<br>
<br>
I&#39;d like to enroll myself, if possible, to go to campuses in Pune and 
interact with people to spread awareness about Wikipedia for Schools and
 free educational software, once the Campus Ambassador program starts 
creating opportunities. I now also know basics of editing Wikipedia 
thanks to the interaction with the community and attending the sessions 
so can take that also. I&#39;ve added my contacts to 
<a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Volunteer_Page">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Volunteer_Page</a><br>
<br>Regarding Wikipedia for Schools : If you&#39;re in India, this is useful:<br>
Here&#39;s a wiki-page I&#39;ve set up to try to co-ordinate a volunteer-based drive to spread: <br>
<a href="http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition">http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition</a><br>
(short URL: <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/WFSOE">http://www.tinyurl.com/WFSOE</a>)<br>
<br>
I need wikipedians to take what&#39;s useful on this page and copy it to a 
wikimedia wiki (I wasn&#39;t aware of any of this at the time, when I 
started, only saw wikipedia is for strictly encyclopedic content so went
 to wikia.)<br>
<br>
And here&#39;s a wiki-map I&#39;ve set up so we can track schools and more 
importantly volunteers in India who can be contacted by schools and 
organizations. (Jessie created one too, but I&#39;d started this first :P 
and this one is the rough draft type that everyone can add to, and we 
can then move concrete data from this map to Jessie&#39;s where only I and 
some others have editing access)<br>
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/WFSOEIndiamap">http://tinyurl.com/WFSOEIndiamap</a><br>
<br>About Teach for India:<br>After working in the IT sector for 2.5 years, I&#39;m now joining &quot;Teach 
for India&quot; - a 2-yr fellowship program where I&#39;ll be a full-time teacher
 at an under-resourced school in Pune. The idea is to take best 
practices in education to places that need them, it&#39;s very similar to 
&quot;Teach for America&quot; and started in 2009. I&#39;ll be part of a 400+ fellows cohort and when our 
training ends this June, probably everyone will have a copy of Wikipedia
 for Schools along with other educational content (so send me the links!) and we&#39;ll be spreading out across schools in Pune, Mumbai 
and Delhi. So here we&#39;ll have a network of internet and 
computer-literate individuals ready to implement education projects at 
the ground level. One big limitation is lack of internet connectivity 
and up-to-date hardware ; the latter creates problems when you want to 
install educational software or operating systems.<br>
<br>Further developments on Wikipedia for Schools:<br>I used the portable version created by Kiwix.org as it&#39;s better on size. I&#39;ve been in touch with the developers on bugs and feature requests and have enrolled as a beta tester for the new versions.<br>

The 2008/09 edition of Wikipedia for Schools is very good, but also limited in that it has only 5500+ articles (contrast with Wikipedia en latest selection that has 45000+) and many times topics we need aren&#39;t there. I got introduced to one person who was working on article selection but lost that email somewhere. It would be great if we could set up a place to check out all present articles in their respective categories and pool in ones that are needed. With the OpenZim format being able to do good compression, there is now space for many more articles in Wikipedia for Schools. Please share any link if there is a wiki page somewhere where this is being done, or please guide me on how to set one up.<br>

<br>I got Okawix and downloaded Simple Wikipedia package for offline - it&#39;s got many articles in simpler language and can be very useful for lower-age children. But it&#39;s uncensored and so unusable. Is it possible to start a simple wikipedia project to collect the for-schools articles, or better yet just filter out inappropriate ones?<br>

<br>Just sharing what I have at present, I&#39;m sorry if it&#39;s disorganized, do get in touch if you find anything useful!<br><br><br>Cheers,<br><font color="#888888"><font style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" color="#888888"><font size="4">Nikhil Sheth<br>


</font>+91-966-583-1250<br>
Pune, India<br><a href="http://www.teachforindia.org/" target="_blank">Teach For India</a> Fellow, 2011-13<br><a href="http://www.nikhilsheth.tk/" target="_blank">www.nikhilsheth.tk</a><br>Find me on: <a href="http://twitter.com/nikhiljs" target="_blank">Twitter</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/nikjs" target="_blank">Facebook</a> | <a href="http://in.linkedin.com/in/nikhiljs" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> | <a href="http://www.google.com/profiles/nikhil.js" target="_blank">Google </a>| <a href="http://www.rangde.org/investor/nikhilsheth" target="_blank">RangDe</a> | <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/nikjs" target="_blank">Youtube </a><br>


Join me on: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138497769525636" target="_blank">Pune Documentary Club</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-do-it-Pune/103857326346659" target="_blank">Let&#39;s Do it Pune</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toastmasters-in-Pune/148767611833746" target="_blank">Toastmasters in Pune</a></font>
| <a href="http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition" target="_blank">Wikipedia For Schools project</a></font>
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