Community projects/Projects for other organizations

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Projects for other community organizations

These projects are coordinated by organization that have similar values and goals. Their work is important and interesting.


Project Gutenberg

http://www.gutenberg.org

There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. The Project Gutenberg collection was produced by tens of thousands of volunteers. You can help. Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

During proofreading, volunteers are presented with a scanned page image and the corresponding OCR text on a single web page. This allows the text to be easily compared to the image, proofread, and sent back to the site. A second volunteer is then presented with the first volunteer's work and the same page image, verifies and corrects the work as necessary, and submits it back to the site. The book then similarly progresses through two formatting rounds using the same web interface.

Once all the pages have completed these steps, a post-processor carefully assembles them into an e-book, optionally makes it available to interested parties for 'smooth reading', and submits it to the Project Gutenberg archive.

  • Register with the site as a volunteer.
  • Read the introductory email you receive and the Beginning Proofreader's FAQ.
  • Confirm your registration, sign in, choose a project, and try proofreading a page or two!


The Tech Museum projects

  • Bob Ketner, Virtual Community Manager, The Tech Virtual rketner@thetech.org is waiting to hear from you. You need to sign up as a Tech volunteer (online form) as well as creating a Tech Virtual account.
    http://www.thetech.org/about/volunteer/
  • You can volunteer at The Tech Museum - the physical place in San Jose if you wish. If you select either an online project or virtual project for The Tech (rather than one of the Global Fellows projects) Bob Ketner asks that you fill out the regular Tech Volunteer form as well.



Community Empowerment Collective

Community Empowerment - strengthening communities through training and support of community mobilizers to reduce poverty, increase self-reliance and develop leadership from within community. http://www.scn.org/cmp

Community Empowerment Collective creates, develops, produces and distributes training material and guidance aimed at community mobilisers, their trainers and their coordinators (managers) to promote the self reliance, development and strengthening of low income communities, with a focus on least developed countries, and in other low income areas.

The Community Empowerment training materials are available on the web. They are being translated into many languages already - notably English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Italian. The training resource library is constantly expanding with translations being added. Current translation initiatives include African and Asian languages. Additional translation volunteers with proficiency and fluency in any language are always welcome to help expand access to the Community Empowerment through localization.

Volunteers can participate in other ways, too. Illustrators, are especially invited to submit original black and white line drawing that depict community activities.

The Community Empowerment Collective is registered as a "Society" (Non Profit Organization) with the Province of British Columbia, Canada. Its budget is zero.

Community Empowerment Volunteers - community service learning opportunities

  • Illustrator - see Illustrator guidelines for details
  • PowerPoint summaries producer - see Computing overview
  • Translator - see specific instructions for CIS below


CIS2 Translators

  • Contact Community Empowerment volunteer coordinator ?? register as a UNOV indicating your language translation
  • Download and install Cat's Cradle - it is free. This program allows you to translate the content text without disturbing the HTML for the page.
  • Check out Cat's Cradle using some of your own text
  • The language coordinator will assign at test page for you to translate and will help you become familiar with the process.
  • Then work with the coordinator to translate assigned pages.
  • Maintain a log of your time and the pages you translate. This will help the Community Empowerment volunteer coordinator provide feedback and assist your instructor in evaluating this community service learning project option.


Cat's Cradle
http://www.tucows.com/preview/306058

CatsCradle is a software program that helps you to translate from web page to web page. It is not a mechanical translator. It puts the text of a web page into a box, and you type its translation into another box. It then looks after all the tags with controls and commands so the result is the same web page but in your language of choice. CC 3.5 allows you to translate into languages with non Latin characters, and those that write from right to left.

Mac users - Cat's Cradle
http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/CatsCradle-Download-6716.html


Tar Heel Reader

Books for beginning readers of all ages
http://tarheelreader.org/

The Tar Heels Reader provides a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces.

For this project, you will write your own books using pictures from the huge collection at Flickr or pictures you upload.

  • Read several of the books so you get the idea of how these work
  • Read the instructions to writing books. There are several different types of books - enrichment, transitional and conventional
  • Register
  • Create books about subjects of interest to you that are appropriate for college-age English Language Learners. Topics that are needed - math and science, working, studying, travel



Local Community Service projects

A Local Community Service Learning Project is also an option. If you currently volunteer at an organization, you can propose a community service learning project for that organization. This is more than volunteering.


Kids Open Dictionary Builder

http://dictionary.k12opened.com

The purpose of the Kids Open Dictionary Builder is to create a completely open dictionary that can be used by anyone for any purpose.

This dictionary is being created through a process of mass collaboration with the help of lots of people like you. There are many ways you can participate. It is relatively easy to define a few words or add to and improve definitions people have already written.

If you would like more information or help on documenting your participation, please contact us at info AT k12opened DOT com. Thank you!


Librivox

http://librivox.org/

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening.

LibriVox volunteers read and record chapters of books in the public domain (books no longer under copyright), and make them available for free on the Internet. Practically, this means we record books published before 1923. All our recordings (including yours, if you volunteer for us) are also donated into the public domain. http://librivox.org/volunteer-for-librivox/


Professional Education Organization International PEOI

http://peoi.org/

Professional Education Organization International (or PEOI for short) was created, and is run by volunteers who believe that it is time for open post secondary education be made available to all free of charge, and that the Internet is making this possible.


Online Volunteering service

http://www.onlinevolunteering.org

The Online Volunteering service connects development organizations and volunteers over the Internet and supports their effective online collaboration.

Engage in sustainable human development activities via the Internet, and contribute your individual strengths to support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Join the OV Service. Search the online assignments. Apply for an assignment.


Lingro dictionary translation

http://lingro.com/

Lingro is a project that aims to create an online environment that will allow anyone, in reading a foreign language website, a quick and easy means to translate words they don't understand. Simple in concept, yet profound in implication, Lingro uses open dictionaries and user-submitted CC BY-SA licensed, definitions to expand its ever-growing database.

For this community service learning project option, you will contribute translations to continue expanding the dictionaries. The Lingro dictionary builder helps contributors easily add translations and definitions. Once you have chosen a language pair you're fluent in, the builder shows you a list of words missing from that particular dictionary, ordered by how common they are in the language (the word "the" would be near the top, while "onomatopoeia" is further down). You can also see sentences showing the words used in context to help recall the meanings.

All the new user contributions are licensed under the CC BY-SA license and the GNU FDL to ensure that the content created on Lingro will be free forever. Anyone building on the work Lingro contributors have done will be able to freely share it with the community in the same way. This freedom is central to the creation of a commons of knowledge and allowing people to collaborate across cultures.

You must be fluent in both languages for this project.


Wikipedia Translation to English

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation

So far, the spread of materials has been very one-sided, with material being produced in the US and translated into other languages. The Indian IIT’s, which some say are on par with or better than MIT, have began publishing lectures on Youtube, and English-speaking students can now choose if they want physics explained by an MIT professor, or one from IIT. But I have yet to hear a single US university or organization announce that they will begin translating Chinese courses (of which there are over a thousand available online currently) into English.
...from Why I Deserve an OpenEd 2008 Scholarship. from Random Stuff that Matters - Stian by Houshuang

If you have a first language other than English, you can start providing a valuable service.

  • review the Wikipedia Translation guidelines
  • create a Wikipedia account - makes it easier to track the work you have contributed
  • locate and review Wikipedia articles in other languages that are applicable to DeAnza courses - lower division college credit courses. Provide links and summaries.
  • provide an English translation of the articles

The same community service learning time requirements apply.


Learn nodes project

http://www.wikieducator.org/Learn_nodes

For this project, you create learn nodes and post them to your blog or your account in the class blog. This quarter we are focusing on science education. Find open educational resources (OERs) about science topics of interest to you and create learn nodes for the subject of the resource. ..more details here

Think of Learn nodes as short promotions for the educational resource. You should be able to find information and create learn nodes for 3-5 learn nodes in about an hour. Be sure to promote your learn nodes at a social bookmark site as well.

To fulfill your community service learning requirement, you must work the required minimum number of hours. However, you can do the work in shorter sessions anytime throughout the project work time. All work must be completed by the final project summary due date.



Wikiversity Learning Projects

If you select one of the Wikiversity Learning Project options as your Community Service Learning project, you will innovate and create learning experiences that take full advantage of the wiki format of online community interactions. Non-traditional Learning Projects that are oriented towards learning about conventional course subjects are encouraged.

The Student experience - The new student of a subject is an "expert" in a narrow field: the student knows, better than anyone else, which concepts within the subject material are difficult to learn. Thus, a student who is struggling is encouraged to edit the subject material to expand it to cover the difficult material in more detail. A student who has mastered a concept after a struggle is encouraged to edit the material to make it more clear: such a student is much more of an expert in the clarity of the material than the original author.
-- http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity_learning_model

The format of the project is provided in the template. Complete each section as appropriate for your individual project.

Learning Project template http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Template:Learning_project_boilerplate

Directions for completing the information outlined in the template are provided http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Template_talk:Learning_project_boilerplate#Directions_for_use

  1. Learning project summary
  2. Content summary
  3. Goals
  4. Contents - Learning materials, Readings and other resources, Lessons, Activities, Assignments, Tests and quizzes
  5. Subpages
  6. Active participants
  7. Learning materials

Wikiversity Learning Project options

  • Create lessons - based on lessons from a college level course that you are familiar with, create a learning project in Wikiversity using the template provided
  • Translate lessons - if you are fluent in a language other than English, select an existing Wikiversity learning project and translate it. You must have approval from the instructor for this project, as another reviewer will be required to assess that the translated learning project meets the completion requirements for a Community Service Learning project.

For the Community Service Learning project, consider including


Global Fellows projects

  • SCU Global Fellows (SCU.GF) partners are online. There are discussion forums setup so you can ask specific project related questions for the SCU.GF to respond and collaborate.
    http://thetechvirtual.org/global-fellows

additional information for SPRING 2009


Research project

Finding and defining online community service learning projects is an ongoing need. Research and write about community service learning - locate research being reported, reviewing literature, providing commentary and analysis.

We are looking for:

  • examples of online community service learning projects - in progress, completed
  • proposals for projects that could be completed by students
  • results of research into the benefits of community service learning
  • suggestions for online community service learning projects and opportunities
  • community service learning guidelines and skills tutorials - collaborative writing and editing, ...

Search for definitions, projects and resources that relate to Service Learning in higher education. Suggest some "virtual" projects that would also contribute to your understanding of computers and the internet in society.

Include links to web resources that describe community service learning projects or student experience. Suggest some projects and identify how this will benefit the community organization and the student. Suggest additional resources or activities that would enhance or expand the community service learning component.


  • Projects for other organizations - there are many other online community projects listed. But WikiEducator projects are our first concern. Hope you find something that fulfills your generous spirit.


Community service...

These are the comments of students from previous semesters who completed their Community Service Learning


What did you learn from the Community service learning project? Will you do this kind of community service work again? What could YOU have done differently to improve this learning experience?

  • Project Gutenberg : I learned so much from the project. When I first started the project I had no idea that people could do community service online. So I was really confused about that, but when I found out that I could proofread pages of a book I thought that was really amazing. So I first learned that we were able to do community service online and I also learned about the Gutenburg Project. I really liked that project and I feel that it is a great idea. I also learned that we are able to read books online, I never knew that before so that was a great source for me. I will definitely keep in touch with the Gutenburg project and on my free time I will try and proofread some pages just to help out with all the books they are trying to put on the internet. I know that a little goes a long way so helping out even a little will make me feel good. Something that I could have done differently to improve this learning experience would have been to start the project sooner. I wish I understood what to do earlier so that I would have seen how much fun this project was an so that I could have started doing more community service.


  • Project Gutenberg : I learned how to proofread and correct grammatical errors based on how the books were written pre-1923. I would definitely do this type of community service work again. The nice thing about it is that it can be performed on your schedule and the comfort of your home. I guess if I could have done anything differently it would have been to start earlier. I think I could have added more value to the organization to have started earlier, gotten feedbacks from the mentors, and used their comments to do a better job. Although I did received 4 emails about the work that I had already proofread, more feedback and proofreading of different types of books would have definitely contributed to my learning experience.


  • One Laptop per Child command translation project (in collaboration with SFSU) : I have gain a lot by doing this community project. Along the translation process, I have learned few Chinese computer commands. This project is definitely a very good training, which refreshes my Chinese. I was able to practice my Chinese by translating the computer commands I would definitely do this community service work again after my exams. I have try to use translation software along the way to imporve the translation time and process.


  • I learned about many different things, but mainly i learned how community service can be an online event. I never thought of it this way, i thought of the internet as more of a leisure/business related service. This type of community service is interesting, and i would do it if i had more time to do it. I think that you should enforce to make people start on the project earlier. Because after you start the process it is actually interesting. But thinking about starting it is very tiresome and dreadful.


  • One Laptop per Child command translation project (in collaboration with SFSU) : Well, I learned that I need to spend more of my free time contributing to community services. Theres many time when I find myself surfing through channels saying " there's nothing on", instead of wasting my time I should be helping others. I know that I will be conducting this community service again because I'm going to keep this up. After Contributing some time I realized that this shouldn't just stop because my midterm is turned in. I should keep this continuing and I am going to! The only thing I could have done is given more time. I'm kicking myself in the butt now. With more time I would have been able to help out in other areas of the site, not just translating.


  • Project Gutenberg : I learned a lot of things from this project. As I said before I was very skeptical about online community service and couldn't see how it could be done. However I was proved very wrong and soon realized that online community service is just as legitimate as any other kind. I hope I do end up doing more community service online in particular work with Project Gutenberg more. It truly is a very well made site where everyone is friendly and willing to help. Honestly the only thing I could have done to improve my experience would have been not procrastinate so much so that I didn't have to grind out so much at one time. If I didn't wait so long to start I would not have had to work three hours at a time all four times I did it.


  • Bay Area Cultural Connections - teaching Turkish language to children of Turkish-American families : I learned about importance of helping your community. All the parents are very happy with my contribution. They tell me how much they appreciate my work, and that it means them a lot. They want to get me gifts, but we are not allowed to accept gifts or payments from parents. I just tell them that their appreciation is good enough. I am planning to volunteer again for the next semester, because I like children and I like teaching them. I think next semester I will try to find Turkish language version of their favorite movies, such as Shrek or Toy Story. I think it will be fun and help them improve their language skills.


  • Connecting Seniors to the world of the internet : I learned that people are much more eager to learn than expected. I went into this project thinking that when I presented no one was going to be interested. However, there were many people who asked lots of questions and kept every hour of my service interesting. I would like to do this kind of service again. I think that it would be fun to do with young children also. To improve this learning experience I think that I could have planned my time a little better so that I could have held my presentations more spaced apart. There was a lot going on at the facility, and some people couldn't make my presentations due to time constraints.


  • Project Gutenberg : I think what I have benefited is that I improved my reading and proofreading skills. In the beginning of my first project I made many mistakes. My last project I made very minimal mistakes. I think I will proofread more pages on my spare time. I definitely chose proofreading over spending money at the mall. I see Project Gutenberg as way helping the community and myself. I think I would spend more time reading the guidelines the next time around. I read it but there are still some areas I need to work on. I wish I made less mistakes if only I had read the guidelines more in depth and thoroughly.


  • Project Gutenberg : With anything in life, you always learn a great deal from an experience. Helping out with such an organization gives you such a great feel of service. I have in the past provided different kinds of community service, and will hopefully continue to do so.


  • One Laptop per Child command translation project (in collaboration with SFSU) : I learned that you do not actually have to go out in the community and lift things or build things to help out. You can also do online work that is just as effective. You can do little things that have a big effect on someone else and help others a lot. I think that I will definitely do this kind of community service work sometime again in the future. I think the way it was set up was very good.


  • Wikipedia article translation from Japanese to English : A. I was surprised when I heard Community service learning because this is the kind of project that I had not have experienced in school. It was also scary for me because I could not grasp what I was required to do. Despite, I feel it is very unique and interesting because I could learn the value of Wikipedia this time. It is free but a valuable tool people can use. It is achieved by the contribution of each person's effort. I also learned I can easily contribute to people. Contribution is not only doing charity activity but I can do it from my room. It is enabled by WWW. B. I want to keep working on Wikipedia, because I still want to edit my posting. C. I did not rush to finish this project in a few days like doing homework. I spent days and did work elaborately so that my brain remembers each procedures.


  • Kids open dictionary builder : I have learned that to work in a community service online is not that difficult. If you put effort on this project, you will get gain from it. The most thing is participate. If more people could participate in the community service, we will get better and easier program. To improve my learning experience to the community service learning project, I have to improve my writing skills and therefore I can do better for online community service.
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