Centre for Internet and Society

Creating Free Software Environment at Andhra Loyola College

rahim — 2015-05-27T00:54:42Z

Andhra Loyola college has signed an MoU with CIS-A2K and as part of it CIS-A2K team has provided a free and open software environment at Andhra Lyola College's Computer Center. Thirty machines have been installed with free software Operating system and some useful applications such as GIMP, Inkscape, firefox, libreoffice, etc.

Principal, Vice-principal, management and faculty at Andhra Loyola College expressed interest in upgrading their lab computers to latest software without having the glitches of piracy issues. The obvious solution to this was to install Linux based free OS like Ubuntu/Debian

Program Director of CIS-A2K advised to have this process done in a pilot manner instead of forced imposition on faculty and students to use a totally new working environment. So, 30 machines from PG lab were selected for this purpose.

These machines were installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS edition. In addition to the default available Libre office, firefox and terminal, Tools like Gimp, inkscape, apache web server were also installed.

Each of the faculty and students present at the installation time were evangelized about Free Software and its wise uses in the long term.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/creating-free-software-environment-at-alc

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

rahim — 2015-01-20T18:47:13Z

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.

Highlights

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia.
Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu Wikipedia

This is a big leap for the college in opening up itself to the internet world. The college is planning to train its faculty and students to create free econtent in Telugu. These resources will in turn be dedicated to the society.

The signing of the MoU took place in the college premises on August 14, 2014 at 2.00 p.m.

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ was released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0) on the same stage.

The event was organized by ALC and CIS.

CIS-A2K has been closely working with ALC. They have organised 4 workshops for students and faculty. CIS-A2K also helped in QR coding of the institute.

Now, this MoU would further enable CISA2K and ALC to collaboratively work on creating free and open knowledge in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia. This collaboration is set to benefit millions of Telugus to freely access knowledge in Telugu on the internet.

Media Coverage

ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/alc-cis-sign-mou-better-net-access

Ten Telugu Books Re-released Under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License

rahim — 2014-07-08T05:29:39Z

For the first time in the history of Indian books, 10 Telugu books by a single author were released under Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) on June 22, 2014 at 10 a.m. at Golden Threshold, Abids, Hyderabad.

The event was organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team.

CIS-A2K has collaborated with Telugu Wikipedians in convincing Indu Gnaana Vedika to re-release 10 of their books under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license which is compatible with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Unlike the predominant digitization efforts (which only makes scanned images available), these books will be uploaded on Telugu Wikisource (www .te .wikisource .org) and converted into Unicode (searchable) text. This will ensure that these books are freely read, both online and offline in various formats like PDF, epub, mobi, text, etc. This is a major milestone initiative by CIS-A2K to make the sum of all knowledge in Telugu freely available to all Telugus over the internet and is part of its Telugu language area plan.

Telugu Wikipedia has been in existence for 10 years and has 57000 articles on various topics. Telugu Wikisource is one of the sister projects of Wikipedia which has more than 9600 pages and 100 books, it is the largest online Unicode book library available today at the service of Telugu people.

The Programme

The event started with invocation by Indu Gnaana Vedika followed by introduction of Chief Guest and Guest of Honour.

The patron of Indu Gnaana Vedika, Sri Sri Sri Prabodhananda Yogeeswarulu presided over as the chief guest and N Rahamthulla, long time wikipedian and Special collector, Srisailam project, Kurnool was the guest of honour.

Addressing the gathering, Prabodhananda emphasised on the importance of availability of knowledge in ones own mother language, and also why knowledge should not be confined to books alone, but should be brought onto various platforms, internet being one among them. This would not only ensure wider reach for the books, but also enable the language to survive in the fast changing era.

Then, a video interview of guest of honour, Rahamthulla was played, where he spoke about creation of new technical jargon in ones own mother language and how Telugu was being used as administrative language in his office among his subordinates.

Rahamthulla also spoke on the practices he brought into in his own office to adopt mother language at work and gave out suggestions that would effectively help all in adoption of mother language at work places with Telugu as an example.

This was followed by Veeven’s talk on “End-User’s perspective of free licenses”, where he spoke about importance of open content, free software and free licenses.

Then, program director of CIS-A2K, T. Vishnu Vardhan spoke about the importance of creative commons licenses in the context of Indian languages in Internet. In his speech, Vishnu informed that there is enormous literature and content available in Indian languages which is unusable because of ignorance of licenses. He listed out guidelines that would help writers to have their work reach millions through releasing it under a free license.

Then, in a formal manner, the copyright holder of the books signed on the documents, specifying that the books are released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. In the tea break that followed, participants enquired experts on free licenses.


Above: Prabodhananda handing over the signed agreement to Vishnu Vardhan (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, CC-BY-SA 3.0 License)

A Wikisource demonstration by Rahmanuddin Shaik was shown followed by Q & A session.

Then there was a panel discussion on “CC licenses” which saw participation from one each of a free license expert, writer and end user. This brought in awareness and more deeper thought into bringing in more literature in Telugu into CC licenses.

An outcome of the event was:

N Rahamthulla promised to re-release his books under CC license.
Mandali Buddhaprasad, Deputy Speaker, Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly, gave permission to release 4 of his books under CC license.
Several other writers have come forward to re-release their books under free licenses.

Given below is the certificate signed by Sri Sri Sri Acharya Yogeeshwarulu giving permission to publish his works under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License:

For additional details of the event, click here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ten-telugu-books-re-released-under-cc-by-sa-license

Tewiki 10th Anniversary

rahim — 2014-03-19T11:01:01Z

Tewiki 10th anniversary celebration 2014, started on February 15 in Vijayawada at Kakaraparti Bhavanarayana College. It was co-organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team and the Telugu Wikipedia community. Ch.Arjuna Rao expressed his happiness on Telugu Wikipedias completion of 10 years and 55000 articles in Telugu on the inauguration of decade celebrations.

The full details are captured in the report published on the meta page. The following is an abridged version of the same in English.

The founding president of the Wikimedia India Chapter CH.Arjunarao , T.Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, CIS-A2K, President of the decade ceremonial committee BK Viswanath. K.B.N.college officials Sambasiva Rao, Rajith Kumar and Krishnamurthy inaugurated the function by Jyothi Prajwalana.

Talking on the occasion the chairman of Andhra Pradesh official languages commission Buddha Prasad said that 2014-15 must be declared as the year of the Telugu Wikipedia and to make the most of it by more exciting activities. Telugu Wikipedia has put in more efforts than governments and universities to the culture of the Telugu language. Many great personalities served Telugu language and culture were remembered in this occasion including Lakshmanrao, Mallampalli.

Telugu Computer: Past, Present, Future of the Convention

Komarraju Laxmana Rao Visishta Wikipedian award-winner Veeven organised an awareness seminar. Veeven talked about how in 2004, a decade ago, the Internet Telugu writing, and reading had many problems, and how by the year 2014 they got eliminated in the sequence. He also touched upon the future development of the technology used in the Telugu language. He said that Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Adobe In Design, Adobe Photoshop, etc., will be used as the applications in Telugu. Today Telugu is expected to be used in mobile phones, i. Pods, and this justifies the use of Android in Telugu.

Convention on Wikidata

Rahmanuddin spoke about wikidata. He explained in detail how linking an article in all languages is the first step and linking diagrams and figures is the second step and showed participants that in the third stage classification is included. He explained it with examples of the mango tree and the word 'mother'. After this he showed how the link the particular article to the word. Thereafter he spoke about the app developed by Tamil students to link a particular word to the article and urged that people should start using these apps early on in their life as then only development in this field would be possible.

Experiences of Other Language Wikipedians

Some Tamilians shared their experience in developing Tamil wiki. They said that government and other organisations have helped a lot in developing Tamil wiki. Government organisations helped a lot in filing data in digital form. Many educational institutions have take part in this project. Some even proposed that Tamil wiki might be made a part of the education for students. They said that they shared this info about Tamil wiki to various friends and organisations.

Odia wikipedian Mrutunjay said that they attached the voice app feature to help with pronounciation. They attached the Odiya files to English words so that it will be useful for easy search. He also mentioned that there is a lack of creative writers in Odisha and that they are trying to overcome this problem.

Malayalam wikipedian K.Manoj said that from wikisource Malayalam remains the topmost Indian language for obtaining various data from a specific language. He said that over 200 books and 800 articles were included in the Malayalam wiki. They organised the structure in such a way that students will be able to use it from a very early age. These books in wikisource were used by many students.Konkani wiki. Darsan said that in 2007 they started the Konkani wiki. Goa students made a significant contribution to the development of this project. They uploaded 290 articles till now and they are trying to digitalise konkani wiki and other projects to help them develop.

Making a substantial contribution to the Telugu Wikipedia Nisar Ahmed also spoke about the developments in Urdu Wikipedia. He came to share his experience with others. He said that Urdu language was born in India and in the globalized Urdu wikipedia there are only 2 or 3 Urdu wikipedians from India. He also spoke of the experiences of an article on national anthem and about the views of the Pakistani community.He further discussed about the difficulties in work caused by different countries, the available options and how to solve those problems and gain experiences.

More pictures of the event can be found here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/tewiki-10-anniversary

Telugu Wikipedia completes 10 years

rahim — 2013-12-31T04:40:40Z

Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 years on December 10, 2013. Several training sessions, aka Wiki Academies, were planned by the Telugu Wikipedia community to mark the occasion.

The article by Rahmanuddin Shaikh was published by DNA on December 16, 2013. It was edited by Rohini Lakshané.

Telugu Wikipedia completed 10 years on December 10, 2013. Several training sessions, aka Wiki Academies, were planned by the Telugu Wikipedia community to mark the occasion. One such session, the Te-Wiki Shikshana Shibir was organised at Hyderabad on December 8. It was the fifth Wiki Academy ever held in the city.

The Wiki Academy saw a turnout of around 21 people coming from various teaching backgrounds, right from a professor of Telugu from Osmania University to a teacher at a private school. Teachers, professors, student-teachers, and instructors participated in the event. It has carved the way for organising Te-Wiki Dasabdi (Telugu Wikipedia decennial celebrations) with more enthusiasm.

The Telugu teaching community has affirmed that it would make use of the Telugu Wikipedia in and out of the classroom. Many of the participants have already turned into Wikipedia editors. "A few of the difficulties the Telugu teaching fraternity faces have been solved by the Telugu Wikipedia," said one of the participants hailing from Mysore CIIL. "I've been horrified by the mere touch of keyboard and mouse, this Telugu Wikipedia seems promising to deal with my Computerophobia," said HoD, Telugu Osmania University, Prof S.V. Satyanarayana. The professor also urged the organisers to conduct one such workshop for his students in the coming days.

Resources:

Event page on Telugu Wikipedia
Photos of the WikiAcademy
Cross-posted at Wikimedia India Chapter blog

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dna-december-16-2013-rahmanuddin-shaikh-telugu-wikipedia-completes-10-years

Eenadu coverage of event

rahim — 2015-01-19T09:32:01Z

Eenadu coverage of event

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/eenducenterspread6jan2015.jpg

ALC Wiki Winer Camp

rahim — 2015-01-13T06:34:37Z

Students and Faculty who attended the Wiki winter camp.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/DSC00773.JPG

Stubs vs Total Articles Created, April 2016

rahim — 2016-05-23T19:45:31Z

Bar graph showing articles created and stubs created.The bars above x axis show count of all articles created, those in negative y axis show stubs.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Stubsvsarticles.png

Participants at Tewiki hackathon 2014

rahim — 2015-02-10T16:32:27Z

Participants at Tewiki Hackathon 2014

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Telugu_Wikimedia_Hackathon__2014_40.jpg

ALC Wiki Winer Camp students

rahim — 2015-01-13T07:03:10Z

Students and Faculty who attended Wiki Winter Camp

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/ALC_Wiki_winter_camp_students.JPG