india planning to launch Bharatpedia like Wikipedia

[dhilipkumar]

                   The HRD ministry is planning to launch Bharatpedia, a collaborative online encyclopaedia like Wikipedia.
                 Primarily for students and the teaching community, Bharatpedia will be part of the National Mission in Education through ICT in the 11th Plan. Sources said the name Bharatpedia was coined by HRD officials as they felt that since the encyclopaedia was being developed in India, it should be called something that would evoke instant association.

             A senior official said, "Work on Bharatpedia is going on. It will have content for college students as well as others. It can be edited, updated and corrected just like Wikipedia entries. But it is aimed mainly at the teaching community."

             It will also have e-books in English for most subjects. "Launching an encyclopaedia is the next step after we started online portal Sakshat," the official added.

            The National Mission in Education through ICT, a collaborative effort of HRD ministry, department of information technology and department of telecommunications, aims to establish EduSat teaching hubs in each of the 200 central universities besides having 2,000 broadband internet nodes in each of these universities. There will also be one satellite interactive terminal to provide network connectivity in 18,000 colleges. Each department of 378 universities and each of the 18,000 colleges will also be networked through broadband internet nodes of adequate bandwith.

         The mission also involves digitisation of a large volume of video content of teaching and learning material generated over time and spreading digital literacy.

         A National Knowledge Network is also being planned that will support overlay networks, dedicated networks, create countrywide classrooms and empower campuses through campus-wide network. In the first phase, 1,000 institutions will be brought under this network.