Hi, I'm Martin Walker, and I am heavily involved with the Wikipedia 1.0 Team, which organises offline releases on the English Wikipedia. What you're planning sounds great!
I'm currently working on Version 0.8, our next test release, which is a general adult selection - not designed for schools, though they could use it. We are using this release to test new software that selects the "safest" revisionID of each article, so we can avoid vandalised versions.
http://schools-wikipedia.org/ is indeed the main English Wikipedia offline selection for schools. They have volunteers that carefully check every page. This excellent initiative is organised by User:BozMo on the English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BozMo BozMo is currently preparing an updated schools selection, it should be released fairly soon. He is starting to use the same revisionID selection software.
Another useful contact is User:Wizzy, who has worked on taking Kiwix collections to schools in South Africa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wizzy http://blog.wizzy.com/post/Kiwix-install-at-Kwena-Malapo-school-Johannesberg
Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
All the best, Martin
Martin A. Walker Department of Chemistry SUNY College at Potsdam Potsdam, NY 13676 USA +1 (315) 267-2271
Barry Newstead wrote:
The one I know of is http://schools-wikipedia.org/. I'm copying Martin Walker into the thread, as he has done work on article selection for offline.
Best, Barry
On 10/01/2010 07:36 AM, Abbas Mahmoud wrote:
Hi Barry,
Does the foundation have a school-edition offline Wikipedia? Or has any of the existing chapters ever come up with one that's exclusive for schools?
~Abbas.
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 07:02:00 -0700 From: bnewstead@wikimedia.org To: wikimediake@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Kenya] Wikimedia Kenya Framework
FYI - I have Kiwix's offline English Wikipedia running on my Ubuntu machine right now. It works perfectly. The main challenge is that it takes a lot of time to download (huge file) and then index. Once it is on the computer though, it works great! One interim solution is to put the files on some USBs and mail them out. The Foundation staff is starting to look into solutions that will allow us to provide computer vendors (such as Camara) to preload it.
Cheers, Barry
On 09/30/2010 11:37 PM, Wangai Mwangi wrote:
An offline wikipedia, thats so cool. Count me in,am so excited. The framework is ok. Another meeting wld be fine.......
On 9/29/10, Alexander Wafulaxelawafs@yahoo.com wrote:
Hi guys,
I've used Kiwix before, it's one of the various softwares around
that reads
zim files. Linux os has become vital hence most opensource
software such as
Kiwix are offered in for this platform so hopefuly, we won't have installation issues.
As for visiting schools with computers, I beleive thd ICT board
can assist
with this. They have records for such schools hence we can use
them to
narrow down on the school's we'll visit. They are really open
towards such
initiatives so hopefully, they'll share this info.
So far, the framework sounds great.
Cheers Alex
On Tue Sep 28th, 2010 11:22 PM PDT Abbas Mahmoud wrote:
Hi folks,
Its quite unfortunate that last weeks meeting didn't happen.
Anyway, what I
wanted us to discuss was for us to propose a framework in the
way we'll
approach whatever we want to do.
For instance:
We were to start by experimenting with the offline Wikipedia. So,
my
suggestion is that each one of us be designated a region in
Kenya within
which he/she shall concentrate on. An appropriate basis of will be designating team members with the regions from which they come
from. Like,
say, if I come from Coast or Mombasa, I'll basically go to
Mombasa and
assess the schools that have computers there. After knowing how
many
schools we'll approach, we will then prepare our framework:
timeline,
budget, methodology, etc.
Actually, most public schools in Kenya have bought computers
from Camara
(and Irish non-profit organisation that distributes computers in
African
schools at a subsidised cost). These computers use the Linux (or
is it
Ubuntu??) operating system as opposed to many private schools
whose
computers are Windows-installed. So ofcourse, they'll be some
software
issues that may arise when we want to install the offline wiki
into these
computers. I'm not the software geek and I have never used
offline wiki so
I really have no idea whether or not the offline wiki is
compatible with
both types of operating systems.
So, this is the draft framework that I had in mind. I hope to
receive input
from you guys so that we can beef this framework up and come up
with an
organised, clear-cut plan.
Kind regards Abbas Mahmood.
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-- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 634 Skype: barry.wikimedia Twitter: @bazanews
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-- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 634 Skype: barry.wikimedia Twitter: @bazanews