School Wiki to link 15,000 Kerala schools

Thiruvananthapuram: School Wiki, a scaled down version of Wikipedia, an IT@School project of the state government is  expected to foster a culture of collaborative content development in 15,000 schools from Class I to XII in the state. The revamped School Wiki will be ready by November 1, the Kerala Piravi, on www.schoolwiki.in portal. School Wiki, compiled completely in Malayalam, features a unique content collection, jointly undertaken by the students, teachers, alumni, and public.

By logging onto School Wiki, all schools will be able to key-in and update all their basic elementary details as well as their historical references. Schools can also upload details such as their infrastructure data, renowned alumni, school websites, school map, blogs, various clubs and forums, class magazines, supporting images and videos in the School wiki. IT@School project executive director K. Anvar Sadath told this newspaper that specific training will be given to teachers and students on using School Wiki.

Education minister C. Raveendanath said that awards would be given to those schools that make use of and maintain School Wiki in the most effective manner. School Wiki will also host educational content prepared by students and teaching materials collaboratively developed by teachers. Apart from these, analytical Malay-alam language projects such as “School Patram”, a school newsletter, “Nadodi Vijnanakoshan”, a local encylcopedia and “Ente Nadu”, a page about one’s village will feature on the portal.

The geographical details of every school locality in the state can be made available through School Wiki. The project which was launched on November 1, 2009, became inactive after two years of its inception. This prompted IT@School to revive the portal with much needed modifications, amply supported by Wikipedia members. School Wiki has been prepared using Wikemedia Foundation’s Wike-media software.

The revived portal provides new features including special privileges for district administration, search articles alphabetically, facility to display pictures in Wikicommons directly in School Wiki, Wiki Editor, School Mapping using of Open Street Map, facility to search in Malayalam and English.In addition to these, the new School Wiki also has specific extensions such as prettyURL, Upload Wizard, Editcounts, Checkuser, Gadgets and Thanks.