6/7/2007
Technology and Cultural Festival in Kandiyapitawewa, Monragala to mark the completion of the ‘Shilpa Sayura’ pilot project

Venue; Kandiyapitawewa, Monargala
Date; 9th to 15 June 2007

A digital self learning programme for students in rural Sri Lanka was a pioneering effort named ‘Shilpa Sayura’ or ‘sea of knowledge’. It was initiated and developed by E fusion (www.sinharaja.com) in February 2006 and was funded by the ICTA e-Society Programme (www.icta.lk).

We believe ‘Shilpa Sayura’ could contribute to addressing the issue of the shortage of school teachers, especially in distant rural area one which continues to be a setback to the county’s educational system.

Shilpa Sayura goes live at 20 Nenasalas

Daily Mirror : 2007/05/07

The Internet is a vast ocean of content but special efforts are needed to translate and contextualize this content for consumption by rural communities.

The lack of digital content in local languages is in fact a significant drawback that keeps a majority of Sri Lankans who cannot read and understand English from reaping the full benefits that Information Technology can bring.

The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), functioning under the Presidential Secretariat recognizes this and has, through its e-Society Development Initiative (e-SDI) grants programme, sought to encourage the development of content in local languages.

As a part of review and feedback process Shilpa Sayura Project was presented to the Top Management and Officials of National Institute of Education (NIE) www.nie.lk.

Dr. I.L Ginige (Deputy DG), Mr. Jayasuriya (Director ICT) and many other Educational Experts and Section Directors of NIE was present.

It was an important milestone in Shilpa Sayura Initiative as it received high recognition from NIE, the top most institution of National Education.

Shilpa Sayura Concept, CMS and Shilpa Sayura Content was presented and we made a brief awareness of ICTA e-SDI , Nenasala and our findings at ICT in Rural Schools.

Shilpa Sayura was presented to Moratuwa Univercsity Telecom and ICT department heads. Dr. Ajith Pasqual, Dr. Sanath and two other members of Academic Staff were present.

They commended Shilpa Sayura as a suitable product for school net as well as provided us with valueble advice on e-learning concepts.

The content of Shilpa Sayura and Its depth was appreciated and commended by Dr. Ajith Pasqual.

Niranjan Meegammana
www.shilpasayura.org
www.sinharaja.com

Shilpa Sayura Completes with 5th Milestone
23 Nenasala Get over 4000 content topic Shilpa Sayura

Including 7 Schools in Deep South and 2 Schools in Kandy got Shilpa Sayura as a trail and feedback.

Detail report will follow

Due to the demand from Nenasala Shilpa Sayura Started a Research on a New form of English Content with Sinhala Touch. Rev. Balangoda Ananda Maithree thero had used similat technique to teach english.

In his book, he uses Sinhala Grammer in line with English. We have tested it with Students and they like the idea to map their Sinhala Grammer Knowledge for English Grammer.

Date Sep 1st
Shilpasayura.org was setup and Shilpa Sayura Software was set up by 10th September and testing started with a demo content base.

Date Sep 14 2006
The Software developed for Shilpa Sayura was first made available to professional ICT community through Sinhala Unicode Group, Which Helped to obtain fisrst hand feedback and bug reports.

http://groups.google.lk/group/Sinhala-Unicode/browse_frm/thread/ffdc920f53159f8c?hl=en

The Sinhala Unicode Group had been a great inspierer and supporter in Shipa Sayura.

The software also presented to Digidev Yahoo group
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/digidev/message/311

To Nenasala Operators

Shilpa Sayura is a Project Assisted by ICTA e Society Sub Programme of e Sri Lanka Project. We subitted a proposal in 2005 sep and it was selected over 300 proposals for a grant of Rs. 5 million.

What the project will do
Shipa Sayura is a Software and Content Base with e Learning facility for self and group. Its intended to be setup at Nenasala to strengthen Nenasala as a edicational center. We provide implementing Nenasala with software, content and technical services at no cost to Nenasala. Project also intend to identify and develop students using shilpa Sayura.

මිතුරනි
ශිල්ප සයුර ඉසවි අධ්‍යාපන ව්‍යාපෘතියේ මුදුකාංග අදියර නිමවිය. මුළින්ම අදහස් කළ තොරතුරු කළමණාකරන මුදුකාංගයට වඩා වැඩි අංග ගණනාවක් මීට එකතු විය. එයට හේතුව අපද ඉන ඉගන ගැනීමය. දැනට විශ්ව විද්‍යාල තුළ ජනප්‍රිය මූඩ්ල් නිදහස් මුදුකාංගය මා හට හඳුන්වා දුන්නේ ආචාර්ය පැස්කුවල්. එය පාසල් ළමුන්ට අත් විඳීමට ඉඩ දී පරීක්‍ෂා කර බැලූවිට ඔවුන් එය අපහසු බව පැවසූහ.