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--- Begin Message ---Hi allYes, most of the matters covered in the article is true. Kerala is the most educated state in India with nearly 100% literacy rate. Almost all read news papers, except some really hidden communities, all children are given lower and upper primary education. Almost all innovations that are to be experimented in the field of education(Like DPEP, Grading system, EDUSAT implementation etc)and Democratic measures( like changes in voting methods etc) are first tried in Kerala. We review everything and even the Govt is not free from that, starting from the first month of their ruling. No Govt rules Kerala for more than 5 years.During the Last Govt's rule, some educational reforms were introduced and [EMAIL PROTECTED] came to existance. It went fine with MS. But then the state saw a financial drop and naturally the Idea of switching over to GNU and Free softwares came in and now the entire system of Kerala is changing. Teachers are being taught to use Linux and OOo English and children of Secondary divisions - 8,9,10th classes are given IT education in these platforms. This forced the Universities to change the Professional course curriculums and now the Engineering students are taught in Linux Platforms - GNU C, C++, Java, Shell pgming, Unix etc. Considering the fact that there are about 75 Engineering colleges in Kerala, this is a biggie. Right now it has only been a start and by two years students will start using it for projects. Naturally private firms and tution centres all around Kerala will be forced to take up GNU softwares. nowadays almost all child! ren have heard the name Linux and OOo have started to become popular. The Govt officials are given training in OOo step by step. But a small pblm is the Unicode correction and OOo Malayalam not yet ready (will be ready soon - CDAC-TVM is with me now - with a good dedicated team, a highly experienced team leader and good language resource). It is taking a bit time only because, once launched it should not be rejected because of the words being too complex for comoners(we are concentrating on a proper vocabulary now). Given Free, Keralites always go for Brand Names and OpenOffice.org is a name heard by everyone.Richard Stallman was here( I think it was some two years back) and Both the ruling and Opposition party are interested in Linux and OOo.There are a huge majority in Govt offices who are not familiar with English, A large number of schools are Malayalam Medium and most Keralites are only educated in Malayalam (though they somehow understand english). So when OOo malayalm is released (if the words are simple), it simply will be used everywhere. After all who wants to go after pirated softwares when you can get something comparable- free of cost. Once fininshed now, I hope OOo will be in the text books by next Educational year.Manu.
hulz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Hello,
I've read this article:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/08/19/1912207.shtml?tid=150&tid=132&tid=2
Which is really interesting. I wanted to ask Manu if there were already
predefined roadmaps and deadlines for migration, and how OOo in
Malayalam (the local language) was fitting in all this.
For those interested, here's the Malayalam Native-Lang web site (work in
progress) : http://ml.openoffice.org
Rajesh, aside the state of Kerala, is there any other initiatives coming
from local states similar to this one? (besides the successful and
famous distributions of CDs in Tamil and Hindi of course)
Best regards,
Charles.__________________________________________________
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