This section contains the collection of blog entries specific to the five funding areas or themes that carry a focus by the Shuttleworth Foundation under its general objective to drive innovation, change and policy reform in technology and education.
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Today, Toronto kicks off Open Everything: a global series of six (or more?) events about the art, science and spirit of open. We've got 60 amazing people registered who come from computer programming, community development and everywhere in between. It's gonna rock.
I have been hearing a lot lately about ACTA, a treaty which is being drafted at the behest of a handful of old economy monopolies. IPJustice has a useful anaylsis. ACTA is an accroym for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Who could be against measures to prevent counterfieting? No doubt the name was chosen for exactly that reason, to imply that anyone who wishes to debate the provisions or even the necessity for the agreement. Its also sold as a trade agreement, which in some of the countries taking part in negociations means that executive sign-off is suffecient to bind that country, and the treaty need not pass scrutiny by the legislature.
I have recently returned from Uganda. From 27 to 29 May 2008 I participated in the PALM Africa Workshop on alternative publishing models in Africa, which was hosted by the National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU). The participants in the workshop represented a wide range of types of organisations, including public and private sector publishers, and an equally wide range of competences, and attitudes toward alternative publishing models. The organisers of the workshop are to be congratulated on patiently and persistently explaining the potential benefits of alternative licensing. Experimenting with alternative publishing models offers a low cost, low risk way of testing the opportunities available to developing country publishers.
My presentation at eLearning Africa was Digital storytelling for Africa: Case study of an international digital media project.
On Wednesday this week, the City of Cape Town made the final approval to launch its ground-breaking municipal Broadband Infrastructure Project.
Below are notes from the eLearning Africa session titled mobile phones offering a lifeline to learners.
There are hordes of really impressive yet undervalued resources for teachers, parents and kids to use. I keep mentioning that I want Kusasa to embrace other resources and facilitate their use.
I am in Kampala at a workshop hosted by the National Book Trust of Uganda on alternative publishing models, PALM Africa. The air is full of new ideas, emerging business models…change.
There is considerable promise that local publishers will be able to find new sources of sustainability and increase access to knowledge. These are important benefits of open access publishing models. There is another, often overlooked benefit of open access publishing models.
Ok, the title is probably not worded very precisely but it's in the right ballpark. During the meeting today, one of the people from the University of Michigan mentioned that there are only 128 symptoms (is this the right word) a patient can present, it was a talk about health faculties sharing OERs. This had never occurred to me, but, in my defence, I had never ever even thought about it.
I just wanted to capture a concern and some thoughts around it. Today I heard it said in a meeting that available OERs are of low quality, irrespective of their cost. This was used to justify the statement that we should not expect OERs to be cheap, we should focus on their quality even if that means that they are expensive. This certainly doesn't sound like something I should be concerned about but it is. It can be used to justify spending vast sums of money to have a few experts write material which is released under an open licence.