THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A grand project to create a wiki for all schools in Kerala, India’s most literate state, will be rebooted from November 1, five years after its first foray ran aground within two years of its launch.
This time, the State government’s IT@School Project is bracing up to put its full weight behind the project, with the State’s entire student, teacher and alumni communities girding up to give it heave-ho.
Starting Nov. 1, Kerala Piravi Day, all there’s to know about 15,000 schools in Kerala will be made available at www.schoolwiki.in. Entirely in Malayalam, the school wiki will have content aggregated by students, teachers, alumni, and the public.
By logging on to www.schoolwiki.in, all schools will be able to key in and update their details as well as historical references, be it their infrastructure, famous alumni, school websites, their school map, blogs, clubs and forums, class magazines, images and videos.
The Kerala School Wiki will also host educational content prepared by students as well as teaching materials collaboratively developed by teachers. Several other features have been added on to the earlier initiative: analytical Malayalam language projects such as School Patram (school newsletter), Nadodi Vijnanakosham (local encylcopaedia) and Ente Nadu(my village). The geographic details of every school locality in the state will be available on the School Wiki.
The revived portal allows the browser to search – English and Malayalam – articles alphabetically in English and Malayalam. Its other features include a Wiki Editor, School Mapping using Open Street Maps. In addition, the new School Wiki has specific extensions such as prettyURL, Upload Wizard, Editcounts, Checkuser, Gadgets and Thanks.
Kerala education minister Raveendranath said awards would be given to schools that make use of School Wiki in an effective manner.
K Anvar Sadath, the executive director of IT@School Project , said arrangements have been made to training teachers and students to use the School Wiki and to identify district-level admins for data accuracy.
The earlier School Wiki initiative, using the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikimedia software, became inactive within two years of its launch in 2009. This prompted IT@School to revive the portal with modifications, supported by Wikipedia members