Grants:Project/Pavanaja/Tulu offline Wikipedia to schools

statusnot selected

Project Grants

Tulu offline Wikipedia to schools

summaryTo add articles to Tulu Wikipedia based on school syllabus, create offline Tulu Wikipedia, distribute to schools and thereby help in improving the secondary education program.

targetTulu

amount31,297

grantee• Pavanaja• Kishorekumarrai

advisor• Vishwanatha Badikana

contact• pavanajavishvakannada.com

this project needs...

volunteer

created on11:30, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Friendly space expectations

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

What problem are you trying to solve by doing this project? This problem should be small enough that you expect it to be completely or mostly resolved by the end of this project. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

Introduction

Re-applying

This is a re-application. From the discussion page (decision section) -

This was a very intriguing project idea and many reviewers were interested in supporting the project. However, this round there there many proposals submitted that the committee was interested in funding, and not enough funds to award grants to all of them. They determined that there were other proposals that were a higher priority for funding at this time. ... Next steps:... To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.

Based on the suggestion from the Project Grants Committee of WMF, we are re-applying.

Tulu is one of the Dravidian languages spoken primarily by people of south coast of Karnataka State and north coast of Kerala State of India. There are a lot of Tulu speaking people living outside this region also. Sizeable of them are living in other cities in India such as Mumbai and the rest outside of India such as Gulf countries. As per the Census of 2011, there were 1,846,427 Tulu speakers. It is estimated that the total number of Tulu speaking people will be much above 2.5 million. Tulu is mostly written in Kannada script. Though Tulu had its own script in earlier days but it is not in much use anymore. A book on Tulu grammar dates back to year 1872. Tulu has a rich written literature and huge oral literature. Karnataka Govt has constituted Tulu Sahithya Academy to nurture and promote Tulu literature. There is an interactive and searchable online Tulu dictionary.

Tulu Wikipedia

Tulu has a rich culture. Most of that is still preserved as oral treasure and very less has been documented in Tulu. Lot of research work and documentation about the rich tradition, culture, folk and literature of Tulunadu (Tulu land) has been done mostly in Kannada and English. Survival and growth of any language is dependent mainly on the amount of knowledge text available in that language. Tulu Wikipedia helps in bringing latest world knowledge in Tulu. It also helps in documenting and preserving the rich culture of Tulunadu. Tulu Wikipedia became live in Aug 2016. It is the 23rd Indian language Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online, free and open encyclopaedia which anyone can edit, and is available to everyone with an Internet connection.

Tulu in schools

Tulu has been introduced as a language by Govt of Karnataka in 35 schools of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka State of India. Students studying in 6th to 10th standard have the option of choosing Tulu as a language. The number of students studying Tulu is given below-

Grade	No. of students
6	97
7	126
8	443
9	527
10	445
Total	1638

What is your solution to this problem?

For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

There is no printed encyclopaedia in Tulu. Students who have chosen Tulu as a language of study have no encyclopedic book to refer other than the prescribed textbook. Tulu Wikipedia can bridge this gap effectively. Students can read article related to the topics of their study from Tulu Wikipedia. Most schools where Tulu is taught have computers but very few have Internet connection. This project envisages providing offline Wikipedia to those schools where Tulu is taught as a language. This will empower the students studying Tulu as a language with knowledge about their land and culture as well as with the latest world knowledge in their language. This is not the problem of Tulu students alone. Those who want to read encyclopedic content in Tulu have no resources available. Many books of encyclopedic in nature which have content about the rich culture, language, tradition of Tulunadu (Tulu land) are available in Kannada and English but none in Tulu. This project will also help all those who are looking for encyclopedic content in Tulu, be it about Tulu culture, language, tradition or about all other world knowledge in Tulu.

Project goals

What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually. Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

The aim is to provide students with articles on topics related to the subjects taught as prescribed in their syllabus. A project has been initiated in Tulu Wikipedia with list of articles on various topics based on the school syllabus. The number of articles needed as per the project is listed below -

Topic	No. of articles needed
Biography	97
Places	51
Bhootaradhane	18
Human body parts	41
Folk	44
Plants	18
Games	7
Diseases	28
Trees	46
Animals	33
Birds	37
Fishes	19
Other	293
Total	732

This project aims to achieve these-

• Try to achieve the required number of articles created in Tulu Wikipedia.
• Create offline Tulu Wikipedia using Kiwix and put it in a USB drive.
• Distribute the offline Tulu Wikipedia to schools.
• Train the school faculty in installing and using the offline Tulu Wikipedia.
• To evolve a pedagogy design involving Wikipedia as a platform to improve the overall quality of secondary education.

Project impact

How will you know if you have met your goals?

For each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:

1. During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)

For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal (i.e. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents). Remember to review the tutorial for tips on how to answer this question.

During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal?

• By regularly tracking the progress of the project.
• By regular monitoring the number of articles being added. This will be measured against the proposed timeline of the project.
• By regular monitoring the quality of the articles being added.
• By regular intervention wherever needed.

Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects?

The editors who participated in this project will be added asset to Tulu Wikipedia. It is expected that some new set of editors will be created by this project. These new editors will be oriented about Wikimedia movement and they will be motivated to take active participation in Wikimedia movement related activities.

Additional benefits-

1. Tulu community - Tulu community also will get benefited by this project. This project will help all those who are looking for encyclopedic content in Tulu, be it about Tulu culture, language, tradition or about all other world knowledge in Tulu.
2. Cross-community benefits - This project is going to benefit a bit to Kannada community as well. All those who know Tulu know Kannada also. The Tulu Wikipedia community while gathering the information to write for Tulu Wikipedia, are expected to write the same info in Kannada Wikipedia also. By translating the newly created articles of Tulu Wikipedia into Kannada, Konkani, English and possibly other language Wikipedias, we expect some benefits extending across other languages as well.
3. Low cost - The cost for offline knowledge production is low. This project is expected to produce knowledge at much lower cost.
4. Scalability - The project has good potentials for scalability. Apart from the listed topics, more topics might be added in future which have similar requirements. For ex., topics needed in higher education sector.

Project’s sustainability-

The project is the brainchild of Karavali Wikimedian User Group (KWUG), which is working towards popularising Tulu, Kannada and Konkani Wikipedias. KWUG has already been established by conducting various programs and established the credibility. KWUG will be devising various programs including short term and long term plans. Regular updation and distribution of new versions of offline Tulu Wikipedia to Schools will be one of the activities. Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy, a body under Govt of Karnataka, is actively supporting this project. They are sponsoring some of the activities of this project. They will also chip-in on the activity of updating the offline Wikipedia, creating new updated version and sending to schools. Another fact to be noted here is that the school syllabus is revised once in 5-6 years and hence there is no real need to add new topics on yearly basis targeting the school students. Nevertheless adding new content and distributing, is always useful.

Do you have any goals around participation or content?

Are any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, we ask that you look through these three metrics, and include any that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable.

Here are the projected metrics for this project-

	Metric	Definition	Tools & documentation
	Total participants who attend the workshop, editathons and training program	150	Sign-in sheet (paper) in the event and sign-in the editathon page (online)
	Number of newly registered users	50	Wikimetrics
	Number of content pages created or improved	600	Wikimetrics

Project plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

Project flow and the activities-

1. Making a list of articles to be created. This step has been accomplished already.
2. Inviting possible writers for a workshop and explain them how to write for Wikipedia. This will include well known Tulu writers, those who have already contributed to Tulu textbook and teachers who teach in Tulu. This will be a one-day workshop. They will be briefed about the philosophy of Wikipedia, Writing for an encyclopedia, Wiki style of writing, the NPOV, etc.
3. List of topics will be distributed to the willing writers and established Wikipedians after the workshop.
4. Many of the Tulu writers mentioned above are not well versed with using computers and Internet. There are some students studying in 11th and 12th grade who have already become Wikipedians but their ability to create linguistically and content-wise high quality articles is limited. They will be paired with the Tulu scholars mentioned above. Together they will come up with good quality articles in Tulu Wikipedia.
5. Some veteran Tulu Wikipedians also will be writing articles.
6. Series of editathons will be conducted at Mangaluru, Udupi and other locations to add articles. It has been found that organising theme based editathons helps in creating good number of articles in given time. Hence organising editathons is a must. Events like workshops and editathons are a must as many participants who will be adding the articles don't have access to computers and Internet at their homes. They will be adding articles at the lab provided during the events. Some colleges have agreed to provide the labs to the volunteers during the free time when their students are not suing the lab. These also will help.
7. Many articles need photographs, viz, famous personalities, Tulu folk performances, Tulu culture related artifacts and places. Photowalks and going to people to click their photos will be arranged.
8. Once the required number of articles is ready in Tulu Wikipedia, an offline Tulu Wikipedia with these articles will be created using Kiwix. This can be distributed to schools on an USB drive.
9. One teacher who is familiar with use of computers form each school teaching Tulu will be invited for a workshop at Mangaluru. They will be trained on installing and using the offline Tulu Wikipedia. They will carry the offline Tulu Wikipedia in USB drive to their respective schools.
10. These teachers will train their students on using offline Tulu Wikipedia. Students will read articles related to the subjects present in their syllabus. This will help in enriching their knowledge.
11. Design a pedagogy involving Wikipedia as a platform to improve the overall quality of secondary education.
12. Do an analysis of the impact of Wikipedia in secondary education.

Budget

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

Here is the summary budget for the project which is expected to spread over to six months -

Ser.No	Detail	Amount in INR	In-kind in INR
1	Writers workshop	28,500	10,000
2	Editathons (6)	288,000	60,000
3	Materials	296,000
4	Faculty training	26,500	10,000
5	Photography	101,500
6	Remunerations (for 3 persons)	91,2000
7	Miscellaneous	10,000
	Sub total	1,662,500	80,000
8	Administrative cost (20% of sub total)	332,500
	Total	1,995,000
	Total in USD	31,297

Detailed budget with breakups for every item mentioned above is available in a Google spreadsheet here.

Notes:

1. In-kind support is by way of providing the venue.
2. The materials - books, cupboard, laptop and projector will be kept with Karavali Wikimedians User Group. They will be used by the members of Karavali Wikimedians User Group also.

Roles and responsibilities: (Ref: Google spreadsheet)

Project manager - Overall project management. Breaking up of the activities into modules, assigning tasks to project leader, regular follow-up of activities and tracking the progress. For this project, this Project Manager will also provide the software professional support for the project like downloading, compiling, adding the files, to Kiwix, creating offline installations, etc. When needed he may travel to other place where people with expertise on creating offline Wikipedia distributing are present (like Mumbai where they have created and distributed offline Marathi Wikipedia). He will also be creating the project dashboard and running the metrics.

Project Leader - He will be the person doing the day to day running around, interacting and following up with the writers, collecting the articles written by them, distributing them to student Wikipedians, checking the articles for compliance with Wiki style of writing, tracking the progress by regularly updating the project activity spreadsheet, organising the editathons, orgainsing the training programs for writers and teachers, organising the photowalks, etc. will be his responsibilities.

Secretorial assistance - This need not be one single person. The duties of this person(s) will be to manage most logistics of training programs, workshops, photowalks, keeping all the accounts, maintaining accounting books, maintaining the library, etc.

Community engagement

How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve at various points during your project? Community input and participation helps make projects successful.

The whole project is the outcome of community discussions. This was one of the ideas emerged during the Karavali Wikimedians User Group meetup held at Mangaluru. Community will be informed through postings in Tulu Wikipedia Village Pump, Tulu Wikipedia groups in Facebook and Whatsapp, Wikipedia Mangalore mailing list and also by personal messages. Many members have already shown interest to contribute to this project. Community will be involved in creating articles in Tulu Wikipedia and in photography.

Get involved

Participants

Please use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja is a Wikipedian/Wikimedian since 2004. He contributes mainly to Kannada and Tulu Wikipedias where he is also a SysOp. He has conducted more than 100 outreach programs on Wikipedia. During his tenure at The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) he was successful in developing institutional partnerships with University of Mysore, Govt of Karnataka (GoK), Directorate of State Education Research and Training of GoK. During his tenure CIS due to his efforts CIS initiated many Wikipedia in Education Programs (WEP) in India, Christ University was the first one. Some institutions were WEP programs started and are going on are solely due to him. They are - St Aloysius College Mangaluru, SDM College Ujire and Alvas Education Foundation at Moodabidre. He initiated many projects in Kannada Wikipedia. Some prominent projects are- adding articles on science topics, adding articles on mechanical engineering topics, adding articles on women writers of coastal Karnataka, adding articles on Indian cow breeds, adding articles on Kannada language and QR Code project for Indian medicinal plants. He could rejuvenate the Tulu Wikipedia project which was in incubation since 2007, by instilling a new life to the movement, creating a new set of active editors for Tulu Wikipedia which finally resulted in Tulu Wikipedia becoming live in Aug 2016. He has initiated creating a Tulu Wiktionary by requesting in Meta and creating a Tulu Wiktionary in incubation. Due to his efforts, University of Mysore donated their entire 14 volumes of the best encyclopedia in Kannada and re-released them under CC-BY-SA. About 14,000 articles have come to Kannada Wikisource from this encyclopedia. Govt of Karnataka re-released 122 books under CC-BY-SA by his efforts. He presented a research paper at Wikiconference India 2016 about the metrics analysis that he did on women Wikipedians, their contributions after participating in outreach events and the sustenance. He presented a paper on how we could create an active Tulu Wikipedia community and made Tulu Wikipedia live, at the 4Ccon, Chennai, Wikimania 2017 at Montreal, Canada and also at Wikimania 2018 at Cape Town, South Africa. He also participated in the Wikimedia Diversity Conference at Stockholm, Sweden.

He is the founder member of Karavali Wikimedians User Group (KWUG). Some of the key achievements of KWUG are - 9 meetups, 13 editathons, 2 outreach events, designing and rolling out Wikipedia Student Assocation at Alvas College Moodabidire, designing and rolling out QR code project for medicinal plants at Alavs Shobhavana, training visually impaired persons on editing Wikipedia, first anniversary program of Tulu Wikipedia.

Dr. Pavanaja holds a Master’s degree from Mysore University and Ph.D. from Mumbai University. He was a scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, for about 15 years. He has done advanced research in Taiwan. He resigned from BARC in 1997 and dedicated himself fully for the cause of Computer and Indian languages. He has attended and represented Indian languages in many Indian and International forums like Indic Font Workshop (Indic Computing Consortium, Bangalore, India), Unicode conference (Unicode Consortium, CA, USA), OpenType Font Seminar (Microsoft, Seattle, USA), etc. He is quite well known in Indic computing arena. He was a member of the Kannada software committee of GoK. He is a contributor to ICANN and Unicode Consortium. He is also popular as a writer of articles in Kannada about ICT. He also worked as a consultant with Microsoft India and Microsoft Research Labs, India. More detailed profile of Dr. Pavanaja is available elsewhere.,

Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni
Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni is an active Wikipedian. He edits mainnly Tulu and Kannada Wikipedias. He is another founder member of Karavali Wikimedians User Group (KWUG). Being Principal of Shri Ramakrishna P. U. College, Mangaluru, he helped a lot in organising Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia programs like editathons, anniversary programs, training programs, meetups and workshops at his college by providing all facilities needed. He is one of the key persons whose work resulted in bring Tulu Wikipedia out of incubation. He is now part of the team which is trying to make Tulu Wiktionary live. He is a well-known researcher in the area of Tulu and folklore. He is the right person to work for this project having deep knowledge of Tulu language, tradition, culture and people.

Community notification

You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a Village Pump, talk page, mailing list, etc.--> Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

• Tulu Wikipedia village pump
• Kannada Wikipedia village pump
• Kannada Wikipedia mailing list
• Mangalore Wikipedians mailing list
• WikimediaIndia-l mailing list
• Tulu Wikipedia group in Facebook
• Tulu Wikipedia group in Whatsapp

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).

• Nice project targeting rural areas, Tulu wikians are working hard for this, hopefully achieve as much as other Indian language wikis. ★ Anoop / ಅನೂಪ್ ^✉ _© 18:06, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• I endorse this project. It is the need of the hour Vchetans (talk) 01:35, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
•  SupportThis project is an ambition, which will explore and explain the cultural heritage of fast of this unique land of our country. (Tulunadu), Contributions should be clear, simple and corroborative with evidences and whichever possible. So I strongly endorse with full support, it would be major mile stone for Tulu Community and people of that part. -BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU (talk) 02:25, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Support This seems like a good project and can have great outputs. — TBhagat (talk) 05:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Nice project to save a dialect. Vidyu44 (talk) 09:30, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• Fresh Idea. Would be interesting to note it’s expensive Abhinav619 (talk) 12:58, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
•  Support I like this project very much. Tulu is one of the Dravidian languages. There are so many editathan going on in Tulu Wikipedia. I'm confident this plan will reach all Tuluvas. The project can be well done.--Vishwanatha Badikana (talk) 15:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC).
•  Support Offline Tulu Wkipedia to school Project was well planed, output is very good in Offline Tulu Wikipedia.--Lokesha kunchadka (talk) 04:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Benet G Amanna
•  Support Sangappadyamani (talk) 05:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Great idea. needs support. this will help the digitally less privileged students of Coastal Karnataka. This project will be a good example to other similar language communities. I strongly endorse this project. Dhanalakshmi .K. T (talk) 13:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support We are running a program with a (quite, relatively) similar approach in the Basque Wikipedia. It would be great to have more projects like this in the Wikimedia Movement. Theklan (talk) 15:08, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support This project would help the Tulu speaking people to improve the knowledge of their own language, so this language could regain its own position in India. --Sangaram Keshari Senapati (talk) 16:16, 1 February 2018 (UTC) I support this project.
•  Support I support this project.This project would help the Tulu speaking people to improve the knowledge of their own language--Vinoda mamatharai (talk) 10:28, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support-Vikas Hegde (talk) 14:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
•  Support--Gopala Krishna A (talk) 09:41, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

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• re-endorsing ,as this project is great initiative to bring rural areas towards Wikimedia, as we are mostly getting quality content from rural parts. ★ Anoop / ಅನೂಪ್ ^✉ _© 06:35, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
• This is a very good initiative. Bha20991 (talk) 06:40, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support-re-endorsing,as this project is necessary to the tulu speaking peopleVinoda mamatharai (talk) 09:12, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support I like this project very much. Tulu is one of the Dravidian languages. There are so many editathan going on in Tulu Wikipedia. I'm confident this plan will reach all Tuluvas. The project can be well done.--Vishwanatha Badikana (talk) 13:08, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support I support this project, because Tulu is very old language, this project is very much necessary to Tuluvas. If we done this project school students and other tulu speaking peoples are get benefit from this. So I strongly support this project--Kishorekumarrai (talk) 14:05, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  SupportThis a good initiative.Vidyu44 (talk) 13:13, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• It is one of the dialect. It is our duty to preserve this old language. Vidyu44 (talk) 13:15, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
•  SupportThe project is well planned and productive. It targets school children and villagers of Tulunadu. The scholars from this region and other institutes will engage on it, therefore it, Tulu Wikipedia completely outreaches and connects the young generation and common people. So i strongly support this nicely sewed project --BHARATHESHA ALASANDEMAJALU (talk) 01:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support-Vikas Hegde (talk) 08:37, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Its a very good project and I strongly support. Dhanalakshmi .K. T (talk) 14:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support- Offline Wikipedia in Tulu language shall be useful to students and readers in remote rural areas endowed with imperfect net availability. There is urgent need for adding more material to the Tulu wiki, apart from updating and improving the quality and content of the existing textual data, complementing with more pictures, diagrams and maps for the purpose of liberal education and development.-Ravi Mundkur (talk) 13:38, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Support--Lokesha kunchadka (talk) 10:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support! Theklan (talk) 22:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Vincentvikram (talk) 08:53, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
•  Strong support Very good project, related to education which should be our priority. GastelEtzwane (talk) 23:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)