Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools/Offline Full/IT

Change in structure

I feel need of creating a new heading where we can have topics regarding Open_source-Free_Culture_movement- Free_and_open-source_software and its various popular products like KDE, GNOME &mysql and many more. Giving open source exposure to school students will be very advantageous.

Post above added by User:Madanpiyush. Sinebot, where are you? AshLin (talk) 08:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Most articles such as KDE, Gnome etcwould find their way into one or the other existing headings but things like FOSS, Creative Commons and social networking need to be more appropriately placed. One way to do could be to add a section on "Internet and society". What is the view of others? AshLin (talk) 08:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I suggest 'Websites and Internet' be renamed to 'Internet and Society' Yuvi (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I support "Internet and society" section Madanpiyush (talk) 09:23, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not support the change - it would create confusion in the minds of the students (and school/teachers), who just follow the syllabus.

Further, the CBSE States: "It is obligatory for the School and the students preparing for the Board’s Examination of a particular year to follow the syllabi, courses and the books prescribed by it for that year. No deviation from the ones prescribed is permissible."

As it is, we are offering another alternate to the prescribed text (with definitely changed contents), and now if we change the topics too, we'd create too much confusion. ~ DebashisM^Talk 17:22, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops! I wrote a reply to a dated comment. The same is no longer valid it seems... Now we are following the CBSE pattern only. :) ~ DebashisM^Talk 17:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops & double oops! I seem to be a real novice... didn't even see that the chapters were all there, but were simply hidden. Still, I would say that in this technology related topic, its unnecessary to bring in 'society' (more so as everything affects the society in some way or the other). Further, people generally differentiate 'internet' and 'websites', and rightly so, as 'internet' though is an all encompassing word, 'website' is the ethereal location of peoples, places, things or ideas. ~ DebashisM^Talk 05:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Useful Resources

Following table will be very useful:

Madanpiyush (talk) 10:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

We can use following portals to get required Articles

Madanpiyush (talk) 10:32, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

List_of_years_in_science I know we cant include so many pages, but atleast last 20-30 years should be included Madanpiyush (talk) 09:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Change in Name

IT vs Computer Science - aren't those two very different things? Can someone clarify if we're picking for 'Computer Science' or 'Information Technology'? Yuvi (talk) 22:18, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, keeping in mind that we are compiling offline wiki for school children, we need to put all topics that come under IT as well as CS under the field name provided to us ie 'Information Technology'. Madanpiyush (talk) 17:34, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Start modifying the list

Can we start taking things out of the to add / to delete lists and actually modify the actual list? Yuvi (talk) 10:57, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, even I feel that the "Articles to be added" section has a good number of articles and can be moved to the main list. I'm a new member of this project. Can anyone please tell me who does the moving of articles? Is it Ashlin or the members themselves? BPositive (talk) 17:41, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Two Important Direction Changes

Hi friends,

My apologies for a long silence to the team. Firstly welcome all of you to the IT OWIS team. This group is especially important as there are lots of books which act as guides for school mugging or give information on IT at higher levels but virtually no extra-curricular reading resources for IT organised around the syllabus for school students. So each of you and your efforts are very vital to the school community. So rest assured of the value and importance of the work we are involved in.

ISSUE 1 - IT to be made a high priority track

For sometime, a few of us who are able to physically meet up reflected on the asymmetry of numbers of involved people in each of the subjects. Most subjects are progressing fairly okay with a few motivated editors playing important roles across the spectrum. Some subjects like Art have few editors. However IT has a full house of editors and since lots of Wikipedians are tech guys and the rest of us are computer savvy - everybody is interested in supporting this subject.

While discussing with Hisham a few days ago, he urged me to concentrate on IT first saying that this subject was a low hanging fruit for us to get an early success. We have the editors - you guys are an awesome lineup. The articles generally tend to be well developed and supported by the world community. It will be easiest to get our collection up and about first. It will easily able to find sponsorship from IT firms to ship some tens of thousands of CDs to schools across the country. And the children would get some resources out very quickly. This would also give the entire project a major motivation and inspiration. Let me say that Ifound this a compelling argument.

Hence I write this to firstly, ask your views that we convert this topic to a high priority track. I have addressed the talkback to ALL members of OWIS and not just the IT team only as all of us are temporarily focussing on something or the other. We are all the same team members. In fact, I have opened this to the India list & notice board also for broader awareness and input.

The other topics would of course continue side by side. Priority does not make a subject more or less important - it only changes the sequence of focus based on wherever we find editors/circumstances more advantageous to tackle first.

Comments

• BTW, if this is a copy-paste from the syllabus book, it might amount to a copyvio. Lynch7 15:33, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

CBSE itself says:

Curriculum updation is a continuous process, as such the Board brings out the revised curricula every year. It is obligatory for the School and the students preparing for the Board’s Examination of a particular year to follow the syllabi, courses and the books prescribed by it for that year. No deviation from the ones prescribed is permissible. All concerned are, therefore, strongly advised to purchase the curriculum prescribed for the year concerned from the CBSE Headquarters or its Regional Offices for their information and use. Orders with the required price and postage can be placed with the Store Keeper (Publications) at the Headquarters or with the Regional Office of the zone as the case may be. Readers are also advised to refer to the details given at the end of the publication. The syllabi and courses in Regional and Foreign Languages have been provided in the volume II printed separately which is also a priced publication. (emphasis added by user)

Thus they would not sue for copyvio. On the contrary, if we state something else, under CBSE syllabus, then we could be hauled up. I don't know about Wikipedia policies though... ~ DebashisM^Talk 17:12, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Gave the refs & fair use rationale. This should meet your objection. AshLin (talk) 06:48, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

ISSUE 2 - Selection Vide Syllabus

As of now, some of us opine that we have many articles ready and want to start the selection. All of you have put in hard work, made intelligent choices and I thank you very much for that. However, to be fair, there seems to be no overall rationale for choice of articles in a holistic manner however some suggestions in the talk above are leading in this direction. I have realised that most of us are using our life's experience and our intuition to select articles of worth. That is a good thing but this approach is more useful to fill in missing useful/relevant articles once a systematic selection is done. It is obvious that the prime method of selecting articles has to be the examination of the school syllabus and systematic selection should be done based on it.

So I propose that we keep our present work aside for the moment and start selecting articles afresh as per the syllabus. This way we will realise what is the core, while any others we select that not part of the syllabus will be the value-adding extras.

We have chosen CBSE syllabus as an interim choice because it is one of the most important school systems to be found all over the country, is endorsed by a central national agency, that of the Central Government, and its syllabus is easily available online from 9th to 12th. I think as of now, we can ignore the junior classes syllabus and consider including them later on in a second iteration. Similarly, based on feedback from other school systems, such as ICSE, State boards etc, we can add more topics in the second round. Any topics already identified now itself can of course be considered for addition.

In my opinion, we will need to start checking against the syllabus and begin identifying the articles right away.

Once we have done a systematic collection of articles relevant to the syllabus, then we can consider merging the final list.

The following links are useful for checking the CBSE syllabus applicable till 2012 :

• Std IX & X - http://cbse.nic.in/currisyllabus/SECONDARY_VOL_1_FINAL_1_JUNE_2010.pdf (pages 195 - 205 refer)
• Std XI & XII - http://cbse.nic.in/senior_sch_curr_vol1_2011-2009.pdf (pages 133 - 165)

(Note: Dont pay attention to the file name. The contents inside are as mentioned by me. Poor file naming practice of CBSE.)

All points made above are applicable either now or later to other subjects too. Comments are not just welcome but vital. Please add your views.

AshLin (talk) 14:47, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• We might also want to look at the ICSE/ISC (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) syllabus here. The one I pointed to is the 2013 class 12 syllabus. Class 10 and Class 12 syllabi for both 2012 and 2013 are available on the same site (requires some browsing). Lynch7 16:15, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
• I also suggest we not look into too many syllabi. IMO, CBSE and ICSE should be enough; many state boards are gradually moving towards CBSE, and some state boards have syllabi which are of a too low standard. Lynch7 16:15, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with you, Mike. These two are enough for the time begin. Lets take the CBSE syllabus first, class by class. When that is done add missing topics for ICSE. I have placed Class IX syllabus and starting off today. AshLin (talk) 13:31, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• I feel we should not "restrict" ourself to CBSE / other school board syllybus. I wish to reiterate the aim of the Project:

The aim of this WikiProject is to help the organization of articles on English Wikipedia for the purpose of making offline compilations for schools, colleges and general community in India. Extract from Wikipedia:WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools

Madanpiyush (talk) 18:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Conceptually, Madanpiyush is right, but the fact is that despite all our efforts, the WikiProject might not have any takers if the same does not confirm to the prescribed syllabus. If one intends to make it as a primer then its OK, but fr higher classes due weightage to the prescribed course(s) must be given. ~ DebashisM^Talk 18:51, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

• I have given some thought to your comment, Madanpiyush and I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with you. I do agree that we should not "restrict", so I never suggested that we should consider only those articles suggested by a syllabus or two. The only reason, I put the SOS choice and others into a hideable box was NOT to freeze it or to waste the good work you did but to develop side-by-side a good core of topics. Feel free to add materials there. The choice of SOS Village & all suggestions made will be added to the IT compilation we are in the process of preparing. We need to have some kind of logic in order to get completeness of coverage. Of the various methods or yardstick we can choose to ensure that, the best way to do that is to ensure we have a core based on a syllabus or two. Once our choice is done, we merge and streamline these article lists later. AshLin (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree in principle to what Madanpiyush is saying, but Debhasis has good practical points to make. I don't know anything about IT articles, I'm only developing Physics and Math, and for core science subjects, one has to have a rallying point, and school syllabi are ideal for that.

Having said that, AshLin clarified on the mailing list that we do not have to stick too closely to the syllabi. Hence in Physics and Math articles, I have been including slightly out-of-syllabus topics, and other inspiring and thought provoking articles (something like Feynman diagram or Maxwell's demon). Lynch7 20:06, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Unit III: IT Applications

In report writing, greeting card and poster making it was wrong to tag the articles on report, greeting card and posters because the syllabus emphasis on the making of such using word processing and other tools(sort of DTP), not what they are...

Or may be we should write an article on the subject - eg we can see how to create a greeting card from here ........... http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/courses/a/greeting_card.htm

~ DebashisM^Talk 10:13, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, DebashisM, shows how much you evaluate whats happening around you - a positive trait. In this case, I happen to disagree, on the grounds that some person will be eager to know what comprises a poster, greeting card, etc. All people do not come from your or my middle class background. In rural areas, the concept of greeting card may be unfamiliar or even unknown. The encyclopedia is there to satisfy curiosity directly inspired by the syllabus, imho my choice fulfills that. As for making the article you suggested, do go right ahead, but please use free tools for the how-to. The proposed article falls in the realm of how to, and is the scope of Wikiversity and WikiSource, not Wikipedia. Your mention gave me an idea - that along with this, we should ideally at one point of time bundle a Wiktionary offline compilation (for dictionary/thesaurus), a set of free images to use, a set of FOSS software and a large batch of how-tos. AshLin (talk) 14:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Difference between Compiler and Translator

Refer to [| System Software: Operating System, Compiler, Interpreter and Assembler ] Here on wiki, Interpreter page redirects to Compiler wiki Page. We cant do same in offline wiki for school children as they should know the difference between them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Madanpiyush (talk • contribs) 12:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC)