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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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.
During my recent trip to Cape Town, the Foundation held a 'messaging meeting'. This is basically a communications group therapy session. Everyone has two or three minutes to deliver a pitch on their work and projects. After watching a video playback of each pitch, the group offers constructive criticism.
Last week, I had a rare 45 mins withMark Shuttleworth. He asked: what do you think the Foundation has achieved in the last year? I answered that it had 'stabilized and grown strong'. Which is true. After a few rocky years, the Foundation is now in a position to actually pursue big ideas like free textbooks and learning analytical skills p2p-style in a serious way. Yet, I knew my answer wasn't quite right. The Foundation hasn't just stabilized, its, well, this sounds silly, but ...
Here is the full text of the South African Appeal iro the ISO OOXML process.
“Appeal from the South African national body regarding the outcome of the fast-track processing of DIS 29500 Office open XML
In the midst of grim and troubling news about outbreaks of violence against Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, there is a good reason to be proud of being South African today.
In many countries a basic monthly telephone subscription entitles the subscriber to free local calls. In other words, a subscriber pays a flat fee, and can make any number of phone calls within that area without paying any additional amount.
Microsoft has announced that it intends future versions of Office to support Open Document Format, the international open XML document format used by other developers.
Today I got to have breakfast at the Mount Nelson. It was quite disappointing from a food perspective but we, Steve Vosloo and myself, were there for the Breakfast Club as Naledi Pandor, Minister of Education, was the guest speaker.
Siyavula is a project focused on the development of educational materials. These materials will ultimately be hosted on a website with the primary authors being teachers. The question needs to be asked (and answered) as to who will (or should) own the copyright to the material on the website? Some initial thoughts relating to this question are below although every time I discuss it I want to explain it completely different so expect many follow-up postings!