There is a very interesting initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_for_Schools that I read about today. The site says, “Wikipedia for Schools is a selection taken from the original English-language Wikipedia by the child sponsorship charity SOS Children. It was created as a checked and child-friendly teaching resource for use in schools in the developing world and beyond. Sources and authors can be found at www.wikipedia.org”. It offers 6,000 articles adding to 26 million words and 50,000 images. The current content is the 2013 version. I checked to see how detailed the articles are. The one on Galileo turned out to be 7200 words long.
The way the collection is organized and interlinked, it is easy to find something of interest by clicking on two relevant letters of the alphabet in the beginning of a relevant word (like Ga for Galileo). Visit http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/index/alpha.htm
The collection is online, but you can easily make it available offline. The downloaded collection can comfortably fit into a tablet, which can also run a web server. Students can use tablets, laptops, PCs or cell phones to connect to the server tablet via WiFi. The cost per student would be very small, if we assume that they have some access device like a cell phone. The schools may provide this service at no cost.
An audible version would be of great value to the visually impaired, and those for whom English is only a second language. Spoken content in English on topics of their choice would go a long way to make them comfortable with spoken English. I would prefer recordings made by selected volunteers to text-to-speech systems. Subtitling in languages would help specific language communities. Software to deliver the audio output with subtitles in selected languages would surely be worth developing. There is a great opportunity for volunteer groups in universities to do work in this area.
Audio versions, with or without sub-titling could in principle be hosted on the Internet as well.
Finally, while articles in “Wikipedia for Schools” have been selected to be suitable for use by school students, anyone can use them and benefit. I did read a couple of articles from the collection this afternoon, and am none the worse for having done that! This opens up the possibility that public libraries, big and small, can make this collection available to their readers who bring in some access device.
Users should examine the terms on which content is downloaded, and respect in letter & spirit the values of the Wikipedia community that has created the primary asset.
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