Beyond Access Members will receive travel scholarships to attend the Beyond Access Conference in Washington, DC in October 2012, receive support in expanding partnerships with governments and other stakeholders, and be eligible for additional grant funding at and after the Beyond Access Conference. Read more...

This is a 2nd call for speakers for the OER Workshop at the 2012 WSIS Forum. The Workshop will be held on Wednesday 16 May from 11:00 - 12:45.

If you are already attending the Forum, there is an opportunity to speak at the OER Workshop. We already have 4 excellent speakers and we're looking for 1 more speaker.

Please note, UNESCO is "not" offering any financial assistance to attend the Forum. We are looking for possible speakers who are already attending the Forum. Please do not apply to UNESCO for financial assistance.

If you are attending the Forum and would like to speak, please contact Prof. Dr. Jan M. Pawlowski (jan.pawlowski@jyu.fi) and myself (a.caine@unesco.org).

We look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Abel

UNESCO OER Programme

http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/make-commitment-open-education

The Support Centre for Open Resources in Education is hosting the statement and supporting its intial set up. The group will be a special interest group of the Association of Learning Technologies and aims to support, develop, sustain and influence policy in Open Education.

Mobile technologies are opening new channels of communication between people and governments, potentially offering greater access to public information and basic services to all. No other technology has been in the hands of so many people in so many countries in such a short period of time (World Bank 2008). In fact, globally, more people now have access to a mobile device than to justice or legal services (UNDP 2008). Recent estimates indicate that ICTs could be accessible to everyone by 2015 and bring internationally agreed development targets ever closer to achievement (ITU 2010). Indeed, we are witnessing a new wave of democratization of access to innovative ICT channels, propelled by state-of-the-art technologies and diminishing barriers to entry.

See call for proposals here. Last date: 02 April 2012.

The Saylor Foundation is offering $20,000 to college textbook authors and professors willing to openly license their works under a CC-BY license as part of its Open Textbook Challenge. By compiling college-level courseware that is freely available to anyone with Internet access, the Saylor Foundation provides an option for those individuals who seek a higher education, yet face monetary or geographical barriers. The Open Textbook Challenge is one of the Saylor Foundation’s efforts to diminish this accessibility gap by address the challenge of rising textbook costs.

Submitted texts that pass the Foundation’s peer review process and align with one of the eligible courses on Saylor.org will be entitled to the $20,000 prize and will be made freely available via Saylor.org. The Foundation is also offering a $250 referral bonus for those who refer a textbook author to submit their work. (Click here to generate a referral link.)

This is a great way for textbook authors and professors to increase their visibility and to add their work to the academic discourse, outside of traditional publishing.

For more information, please visit the Open Textbook Challenge webpage. Submissions for Wave II funding must be received by May 31, 2012. Subsequent waves of funding are also being planned.

The new OER logo was designed by Jonathas Mello, working together with UNESCO, to create a common identity for the global Open educational resources community of practitioners, projects and researchers.

The logo can be adapted for all of the world's languages. UNESCO initially released versions in the 6 UN official languages and Portuguese (available for free download here). User submissions for other languages are discussed and agreed here, at OER community in WSIS KC platform - as discussed here about the best Arabic spelling for OER. The new logo was released as Creative Commons CC-BY and instructions on how to use it can be found here.

This Global OER logo was created for the 2012 World Open Educational Resources Congress, at UNESCO HQ in Paris.

The new design creates a common global visual idea, representing "subtle and explicit representations of the subjects and goals of OER". The half-circle shape calls on the idea of a rising sun and upward direction. The bottom section represents an open book cover, shown in a profile view. Its shape and variation in width recalls a common symbol of a flying bird, representing freedom, no borders, progress and diffusion. The three sheets of paper reinforce the idea of a book, a traditional resource of education. Its angle gives a notion of dynamism and movement towards the center of the picture. Following the sheets of paper, the three hands stand for the collaboration and collective knowledge involved in OER practices. Having the hands as the main focus of the logo reflects the main purpose of OER: human education.The increasing size of the hands show the increasing interest, development and use of OER. The overall aesthetic figure is highly iconic and identifiable in different sizes, in a balanced proportion that easily fits different applications. The main lines were drawn in an organic way, transmitting the human/personal role in OER, turning away from a technicist or materialist focus to create OER in the language and culture of the author.