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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