Aiming to boost Tamil content on online encyclopedia portals, the state government has started a project to generate at least two crore articles to put online in the next two years.
The Tamil Nadu Virtual Academy (TNVA), the state government institute that is coordinating the project, has already received 86,000 Tamil articles. This was revealed at a four-day workshop that TNVA is hosting in Coimbatore to train students and teachers on how to upload content. The workshop was inaugurated on Thursday.
Project coordinator M Tamil Parithi said, "Our aim is to generate Tamil articles from students and teachers and also equip them with technical knowledge on uploading content. For this we are conducting summer camps and workshops across 100 colleges in the state."
Under the project, Parithi and his team have begun gathering content available with the Tamil Nadu government and converting them into e-content. "There are about one lakh articles on various subjects under different disciplines. For articles with government accreditation and copyright, we have started converting them into e-content, and the process of uploading them online is in progress," Parithi said. Besides collecting documents from multiple sources, the team is also encouraging students and teachers to contribute to the content pool.
"Our workshop and residential summer camps that last for almost a week train the participants on how to create, upload and enrich content online. One can write articles and upload them, or just post a picture or a video about the subject," he said.
Parithi and his team will collect articles categorized under 210 disciplines, including the history of 38,800 temples in the state, the panchayats in Tamil Nadu and so on. "We have started gathering content on subjects like agriculture, fisheries etc. We have got more than one lakh documents on science as well," Parithi added.
Until Thursday, according to Parithi, more than 20,000 articles have been submitted by students and staff of Tamil Nadu Agriculture University and Tamil Nadu Fisheries University. "We expect to generate at least 10,000 articles from students every month. Today, the most number of articles on Wikipedia is in English (more than 51,00,000). We should overtake this number," said Parithi in his speech during the inauguration of the workshop.
The Tamil Nadu Virtual Academy (TNVA), the state government institute that is coordinating the project, has already received 86,000 Tamil articles. This was revealed at a four-day workshop that TNVA is hosting in Coimbatore to train students and teachers on how to upload content. The workshop was inaugurated on Thursday.
Project coordinator M Tamil Parithi said, "Our aim is to generate Tamil articles from students and teachers and also equip them with technical knowledge on uploading content. For this we are conducting summer camps and workshops across 100 colleges in the state."
Under the project, Parithi and his team have begun gathering content available with the Tamil Nadu government and converting them into e-content. "There are about one lakh articles on various subjects under different disciplines. For articles with government accreditation and copyright, we have started converting them into e-content, and the process of uploading them online is in progress," Parithi said. Besides collecting documents from multiple sources, the team is also encouraging students and teachers to contribute to the content pool.
"Our workshop and residential summer camps that last for almost a week train the participants on how to create, upload and enrich content online. One can write articles and upload them, or just post a picture or a video about the subject," he said.
Parithi and his team will collect articles categorized under 210 disciplines, including the history of 38,800 temples in the state, the panchayats in Tamil Nadu and so on. "We have started gathering content on subjects like agriculture, fisheries etc. We have got more than one lakh documents on science as well," Parithi added.
Until Thursday, according to Parithi, more than 20,000 articles have been submitted by students and staff of Tamil Nadu Agriculture University and Tamil Nadu Fisheries University. "We expect to generate at least 10,000 articles from students every month. Today, the most number of articles on Wikipedia is in English (more than 51,00,000). We should overtake this number," said Parithi in his speech during the inauguration of the workshop.