Kerala’s Imprint on GCompris: KITE Contributes Tamil and Kannada Content

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has added extensive content in Tamil and Kannada to the world-famous educational and entertainment free software GCompris. Translations and voice-overs developed by KITE for students in Tamil and Kannada-medium schools in Kerala are now officially included in the new global version of GCompris.

GCompris is the main edutainment software in KITE’s “Kalippetti” ICT textbook, developed for children from grades one to four. Until now, the GCompris repository was not available in other regional Indian languages apart from Sanskrit and Malayalam. KITE had addressed this gap by developing content through its own GNU/Linux operating system for children studying in Tamil and Kannada mediums.

This contribution of content was made following a request from Timothée Giet, co-maintainer of GCompris, when he visited KITE last October. As part of this effort, KITE experts prepared 1,544 interface translations and voice-overs in Tamil and 1,582 in Kannada. GCompris now offers around 200 activities that help children up to the age of ten learn letters, reading, science, geography, and more through games.

KITE CEO K. Anwar Sadath stated that Kerala is the only place in the world where so many free software resources are being used simultaneously for educational purposes.