Well, thank you for the resonse: certainly better late than never! And in this case, though the deadline is upon us, it is fortunately not *too* late!
The work you are doing is very incredible, and we would be happy to be a part of it. I think our content would be an invaluable addition to your suite of materials provided, and we'd love to make that a reality.
Currently, the solution we can offer you is two-fold:
- Kiwix http://www.kiwix.org/: a reader of the Wiki content that can be installed on your Ubuntu system - English Wikipedia Offline Editionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WPRV: this is a set of ~45K articles which are filtered for both quality and "importance."
If this is of interest to you, we can provide you with a package bundling these and indexing them etc. This would only give you a couple weeks to test, of course, but we trust you will find it incredibly useful.
I will pass these instructions along to you in a separate email so that you can begin prototyping. Meanwhile, Hisham Mundol - the head of our India Programs, who is based in Delhi, would be happy to meet with you in person to talk through any questions regarding the project. Please do let us know what you would prefer!
Thanks and thrilled about the potential here! Jessie
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 10:25 AM, M K Yadava IFS in@amtron.in wrote:
Corrigendum: Please insert "NO" appropriately after "been" in the following sentence "There has been carry home stuff for students who are aspiring to become economists, historians, psycholo..."
Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at your own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/
Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
Dear Jessie, I am sorry for responding almost more than a week late as i had been mostly traveling and attending a series of meetings. I wish I could responded little earlier.
We distribute free computers (all based on GNU/Linux, currently on Ubuntu), and from last two years, laptops, to meritorious students of the State of Assam (India) who secure >=60% marks in the 10th standard examination. Every year about 15-20,000 systems are distributed. So far, we have distributed 92,000+ system, and this year about 19000+ students are about to get benefited.
The current year's scheme is scheduled for launch on the 23rd of September, 2011. Along with Ubuntu we bundle a host of application software and content for the benefit of the students. Mostly, so far we have ben very successful in providing rich application level content for science students. There has been carry home stuff for students who are aspiring to become economists, historians, psychologists,
anthropologists,
English literature etc.. Further, broadband penetration being poor in the remote areas of the state (a survey tells that 58% of the recipient students belong to remote areas and come from poor families), we have
been
thinking how we could provide wiki kind of content to the students
offline
on the laptops to be distributed.
We shot an email several months back, and it has generated lot of enthusiasm. However, my programme is to start from the 23rd of September, 2011. I am not sure whether, this year also we shall be able to provide some offline content. As a language, ENGLISH is okay. We can think of translation at a later date.
Pl tell us how to proceed further on the issue. We have now very little time to organize...
Yours, MK Yadava IFS, MD, AMTRON
Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at
your
own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/
Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
Hi MK Yadava -
Thanks for passing along this email!
I am the project manager for the Offline Wikipedia work. I'm very interested in supporting your efforts in content circulation, and I am eager to learn more about your project referenced below. Who are you distributing your computers to? What sort of software are you looking for? Where exactly are you hoping to distribute?
Thanks so much; I'd love to help out with this as much as possible! Jessie
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 2:26 AM, M K Yadava IFS in@amtron.in wrote:
Dear All, Sounds great! If we have sizeable content for school children from standard V-XII in humanities, science and mathematics in English alone, it will be a great service for bridging the digital divide. We shall be glad to put such a content in our PC distribution program and make it operational by middle of September, 2011.
Regards, Yours, MK Yadava
Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at your own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit http://www.openoffice.org/
Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
Thanks Manuel!
I think this will be a good group. I just put together a brief presentation with kind of the general overview of Offline and how all the pieces
fit
together, but I can go through it quickly and allow the different
pieces
to fill in the blanks throughout?
I'm attaching it in case others want to take a look. I put it
together
quickly so if there are errors please forgive me (and correct me!) :)
Jessie
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 1:45 AM, Manuel Schneider < manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch> wrote:
Hi offline folks,
we will have our Wikimedia Offline session today at 15:15 in room
Tavor
(in Beit Hecht, 1st floor)
http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Offline
The session was planned as an interactive workshop for all people interested in the offline issues. This means that YOU are invited to present your project, your ideas and ask your questions. Interesting topics are selection of content, publishing, storage,
reader
applications... and what you think is.
There will be at least three people talking today:
- Jessie Wild from Wikimedia Foundation
- Shiju Alex from Malayallam Wikipedia
- me from openZIM
See you there! If you have questions or want to coordinate in
advance
please contact me.
/Manuel
Regards Manuel Schneider
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge www.wikimedia.ch
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
-- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
-- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
Offline-l mailing list Offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l