WSIS Knowledge Communities: Your announcements

Guardian newspaper article on World OER Congress

Abel Caine — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:53:14 -0400

The UK Guardian newspaper has uploaded a cool article on the power of OER and the impact of the World OER Congress.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/jul/04/open-educational-resources-and-economic-growth

Short survey on OER and Wikipedia

Abel Caine — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:15:12 -0400

This survey request (see link below) comes from Pete Forsyth, a strategist who works with Wikipedia on various OER projects. He's working on a new Hewlett funded project, Communicate OER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:EDU/OER). This initiative is a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia articles relating to open educational resources.

Please jump in and take the survey. It's short. Here's the link: http://j.mp/OERSURVEY

I'm very happy we were able to have Pete's poster exhibited at the 2012 World OER Congress (www.unesco.org/oercongress)

Which countries are leading online education?

Abel Caine — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 04:06:08 -0400

In the age of Knowledge Societies, the countries which can highly educate its citizens the fastest will be successful in lifting standards of living.

A small study has been released (by a vendor of learning management systems) of the leading countries offering a variety of online education for both its citizens and the regional global market.

In the study, the US, India, and China are the non-surprising leaders. Other countries on the list are pleasant surprises.

Are there other countries that were missed out, put them in the comments below.

Brazil Parliamentary Committee approves spending 10% of GDP on education

Abel Caine — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 08:06:51 -0400

Potentially wonderful news coming from Brazil. A Parliamentary Committee has approved a resolution to commit the Government to spending 10% of the GDP on education.

Read the original Portuguese news article here.

This is great news for the state of education in Brazil, an emerging BRICS country. The Bill was proposed by Representative Angelo Vanhoni who recently presented on the Govt of Brazil's OER Bill at the 2012 World OER Congress.

This move is very similar to a law in Indonesia which commits the Government to spending 20% of their GDP on education. With this level of financial commitment from Governments, and hopefully with the mandated use of OERs, we will achieve the Millennium Development Goals for Education.

New Report on the Re-use and Adaption of OER

Abel Caine — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:01:45 -0400

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has released a new Report: "The Re-use and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources (OER): An Exploration of Technologies Available" by Ishan Sudeera Abeywardenaof the Wawasan Open University, Malaysia.

(from the COL website)

The objectives of this report are to (i) explore the current technology landscape with respect to both proprietary as well as Free and Open-source Software (FOSS) technologies; (ii) identify techniques, actual and in development, for re-use of OER materials; and (iii) discuss the implementation in the context of a typical ODL agency.

This peer-reviewed report is a detailed catalogue of technologies available to teachers as well as learners for the re-use of OER material in the forms of text, HTML, audio, video and data. It also compares the technologies based on access, openness, usability and availability. The report will serve as a resource for teachers and learners for re-using OER mater.

The 2012 World OER Congress starting to geenrate media attention

Abel Caine — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:08:31 -0400

A colleague Stamenka sent a news article by the University World News website on the potential impact of the Paris OER Declaration that will be released at the 2012 World OER Congress.

The Congress will be held at the UNESCO HQ in Paris, France from 20 - 22 June and will be focussed on releasing a (non-binding) Declaration calling for Governments to support the development and use of OERs.

The article also lists many other very exciting OER initiatives such as OERu - OER university.

Sign the US Govt White House petition on Open Access (OA)

Abel Caine — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 14:48:20 -0400

A petition urges President Obama to implement open access for all federally funded research. This is our chance to demonstrate public support and goad the White House into action.

A recent article in the UK Guardian newspaper highlights a Petition currently available on the US Govt White House website allowing anyone in the world (above 13 years of age) to sign a Petition urging President Obama to support Open Access.

It goes without saying that free of cost and legal access to scientific research is critical for scientists especially in developing countries to take advantage of the latest advances to adapt and apply them to very pressing problems.

If the "We the People" Petition succeeds, and President Obama successfully enacts legislation that will mandate publicly-funded research be made openly available, the US Govt will have significantly advanced open access to scientific research and to sustainable development.

I hope that all research being conducted on OER is Open Access? Sound off in the comments below.

New publication - "NET.LANG: Towards the multilingual cyberspace"

Abel Caine — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:28:44 -0400

UNESCO is pleased to announce that a new book, NET.LANG: Towards the Multilingual Cyberspace, has been published (with a CC BY SA license) and is now available for the readers who are interested in the issues related to the promotion and use of multilingualism in cyberspace.

OER Asia Training Toolkit

Abel Caine — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 06:23:42 -0400

OER Asia is an Asian Forum to share information, views and opinion, research studies and knowledge resources in addition to guidelines and toolkits on good practices on and about Open Education Resources in the Asian Region.

They have developed an OER Toolkit to support a self-directed, activity-based approach to understanding how open education resources (OER) can be used to support teaching and learning in open and distance learning contexts.

MIT and Hardvard announce edX - is there any OER?

Abel Caine — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:20:13 -0400

EdX is a joint partnership between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University to offer online learning to millions of people around the world. EdX will offer Harvard and MIT classes online for free. Through this partnership, the institutions aim to extend their collective reach to build a global community of online learners and to improve education for everyone.

There's not 1 single mention of OER!

Does anyone know if there's any OER in this initiative?