[OLPC India] Digitizing Primary school textbooks for OLPC, India

Tue Apr 6 23:22:20 EDT 2010

Agreed Sameer. Now that Soundar has shown interest in doing textbook scans -
I think we should open this for inputs from others.

To keep this discussion streamlined and focused, I would like to suggest
following discussion points:

   1. To facilitate digitization of primary school textbooks, Soundar has
   offered his services to scan and digitized textbooks so that they can be
   used on OLPC. There are two formats which look attractive,

   a) HTML - as Sameer rightly points out, its easy to keep these on school
   servers. For this we would just need image scans of the pages. The images
   would need to be optimized to reduce the file sizes. Also, these would need
   to be packaged so that the HTML navigation can be incorporated using
   Javascript or simple hyperlinks.

   b) PDF - this is the easy option and can also be kept on the school
   server.

   Thoughts? This is pilot test so lets keep it simple without getting into
   painful technical discussions.

   2. Can someone check on copyright & legal aspects of scanning primary
   school textbooks? Can the scans be used for educational purpose? If not,
   what approvals are needed and from whom?

   3. Soundar, since you are based in Chennai, can you take couple of Std 1
   textbooks from your local schools? Try to find a kid you know and borrow the
   textbook for scanning. Please scan in JPG as well as PDF format. We do not
   need them to be 'editable'

   4. Once we do a pilot scan, then we can check if volunteers across India
   can help to collect primary school textbooks in local languages to be sent
   to Soundar who can then scan them for XO.

Thanks,

Harshal

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Harshal Jawale <hjawale at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello Soundar,
> >
> > Thank you for your email and interest in helping out OLPC.
> >
> > Here's what I think:
> >
> > The biggest shortcoming of OLPC in India (& elsewhere) is the lack of
> > content. Ofcourse, it has built-in activities and tools etc but when it
> > comes to learning for exams, how can it help the children? I do not have
> a
> > clear understanding of it.
> >
> > This is where you can provide immense value and help.
> >
> > The idea is very simple -
> > Digitize textbooks of Std 1 to 4 (primary school) for OLPC. And, to start
> > with, you can focus on Science, Maths and one language.
> >
> > Most of the syllabus and curriculum is determined by the State Govts. -
> in
> > many cases, the Govt publishes the textbooks and heavily subsidizes it
> for
> > primary students.
> > Now, if instead of carrying paper textbooks, if these kids had it all on
> > their XO or could access it using the XO- it changes the whole equation
> on
> > how the XO gets used! The students don't need to carry any books at all.
> >
> > Do you think you have the capacity to softcopy (digitize) textbooks from
> Std
> > 1 to 4 for 10 major Indian Languages? That would be around (4 classes x 3
> > subjects x 10 languages = 120 books)
> >
> > If you can do this, I am hoping that we can request volunteers around
> India
> > to ship you textbooks. You can then create the soft-copies and I can help
> > package the collection for XO.
> >
> > Sameer, what do you think?
> > I am aware that softcopies take disk space which the XO may not have.
> But,
> > school server can host this or an additional SD card can also help solve
> the
> > problem. In any case, this shouldn't be a big deal. I am also betting
> that
> > since the Govt owns the rights to the educational material, they won't
> have
> > problem if this is made freely available to all kids in India.
> >
> > Harshal
>

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 6:27 PM, Soundar <soundar at eaccessbpo.com> wrote:

Hello Harshal,

Thanks for the reply. Really I am very happy to do this. I would like to
know whether the all text books in softcopy ( only for image (PDF ) or
editable Soft copy.) please advice the same. How I will get the entire text
book.

Regards,
Soundar M

>
> There are two basic pathways to content. Either it is prepackaged by
> the country/state or the school/teachers create it. So, for instance
> you want electronic versions of textbooks, then the books have to be
> scanned or digitized (OCR). NCERT has already done this in an
> experimental mode. http://www.ncert.nic.in/textbooks/testing/Index.htm
> Anything that's HTML/web based for exams etc. are usable with a school
> server. A lot of the material is not clear legally for reuse in such
> environments.
>
> The mode of self-exploration and development of content locally is
> based on activities such as Write (word processing), Memorize (memory
> matching), etc. TamTamEdit is a music editing system that allows for
> building card-based music scores, which can then be played in
> TamTamJam.
> http://tamtam4olpc.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/new-tamtam-90-flat.png
>
> Etoys is its own authoring system. Sandeep Surve, the teacher in
> Khairat did some of his own development early on. I saw this when I
> was there in 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKy0SuZJHk
>
> Nepal is using a HTML and Javascript framework that they have
> developed (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Karma).
>
> The choices are several. A lot depends on who is authoring and how it
> is delivered.
>
> Note: A good bit of this discussion should happen on the lists so that
> others can chime in.
>
> cheers,
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, Information Systems
> Director, Campus Business Solutions
> San Francisco State University
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
> http://is.sfsu.edu/
>
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