Archive for the 'Open' Category
January 17th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
The Open Research and Open Knowledge Society (ORS Acronym) is a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) based on Athens Greece and is operating all over the world. It is not depending on any government, political party, political or religious organization or entities representing financial interests.
Given the significance of the knowledge society as a new context of our era, four significant objectives formulate the justification of the Open Research and Open Knowledge Society:
- The need to provide a sustainable worldwide knowledge society vision based on collaboration, knowledge and learning for all and especially for people in need.
- The need to investigate the “soft” and “hard” aspects of the knowledge society, with the aim of providing organizational and cultural frameworks as well as infrastructures enabled by the evolution of information technologies.
- The need to anchor government policies in scientific evidence concerning the characteristics of the emerging knowledge intensive economy and social environment.
- The need to investigate the key priorities of the knowledge society in terms of critical aspects of human life (e.g. health, education, culture, science, business etc).
January 7th, 2008 by Jorge Goncalves
Wikia Search Alpha Launched. ‘Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine.
Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.
Right now, the most important thing you can do is help with the “mini articles” that appear at the top of popular search terms.’
October 15th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
OLAT (Online Learning And Training) is a web-based open-source Learning Management System (LMS) based on Java and completely free of charge.
The development of OLAT started in 1999 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where it is the strategic learning management system and deployed on the main OLAT server. The University of Zurich leads the further development and has a team of 12 developers pushing OLAT to the next level.
See the OLAT feature list or the documentation section to get more information about OLAT.’
OLAT main features:
It is open-source and therefore free of charge
The Java based framework can handle over 700 students simultaneously on one standard Linux server
OLAT uses cutting edge AJAX/Web 2.0 technology
It is multilingual (UTF8) and offers translations for over 15 languages
OLAT supports eLearning standards such as SCORM, IMS Content Packaging or QTI
July 8th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange 2008 (TTIX): The Open Conference on Technology in Education. ‘The 4th Annual Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange will be June 5-6, 2008 on the UVSC campus in Orem, Utah, with a pre-conference workshop on faculty development June 4.
Join other educators, developers, and innovators from across the nation and beyond in this two-day conference devoted to the exchange and development of information, best practices, and new ideas. TTIX is an open conference that encourages free access to presentation information and materials, and facilitates the sharing of knowledge. Registration for this conference is and always will be free.
You are invited to contribute to the professional knowledge provided at this conference by presenting a session that relates to teaching and learning with technology.
The 2008 call for proposals is now open until February 1, 2008. Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required.’
June 4th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Producing Open Source Software, by Karl Fogel. ‘Producing Open Source Software is a book about the human side of open source development. It describes how successful projects operate, the expectations of users and developers, and the culture of free software. It is available in bookstores and from the publisher (O’Reilly Media), or you can browse or download it here.
Producing Open Source Software is released under an open copyright that allows everyone to share and modify the book freely. The latest version is always here. The online version is the same as the commercially available print version — in other words, you can buy a printed copy and know that it’s up-to-date. When and if there are significant differences, we will list them here.’
May 9th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
The Bazaar. ‘The Bazaar is a community portal for people who want to use, exchange and share Open Source Software and resources to support learning. The major aim of the project is to develop and support a community of practice for teachers, trainers, moderators and facilitators in the development, creation, exchange and use of e-learning materials.
Exchanging materials, networking with others and testing all kinds of Open Source Software tools and applications can be done through the forum, the wikis and the blogsystem, but also via the Stalls which are put on to the Bazaar website. Register yourself to the Bazaar and put up your own Stall for a project, tool or application. For instance: anything which is helping you as a teacher to better your learning materials might be of some help to others as well.’
Recommended:The Bazaar Project Stall
April 28th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Elgg. ‘Elgg is an open source software platform designed to allow people to easily connect and share resources. Established in March 2004 by Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh, Elgg allows you to create a social network and host it on your own infrastructure, modifying the features to fit your specific needs.
Users establish personal digital identities and connect with other people, collaborate with them and discover new resources through their connections. Plugins allow users on different social networks to collaborate, and provide specific functionality for tasks like project management, mobile browsing and collaboration through user-controlled wikis.’
Elgg Features and User Manual
April 24th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Open Access Learning Environments, Kenneth Mentor, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Vol. 10, Spring 2007. From the abstract: Educational institutions are increasingly adopting “closed†learning environments that hide learning materials in password-protected areas. While this may be a logical solution to a range of problems, much is lost in this mode of course delivery. Although there are logical reasons for moving toward closed environments, we may be erring too far on the side of caution. Educators and administrators are encouraged to consider the advantages of alternative models that respect the need for privacy while opening learning opportunities to a wider population.
Many of today’s online learning environments are private. This privacy is the consequence of institutional decisions that have resulted in the closing of learning environments to all but those who have officially enrolled in an institution or particular course. While many of these decisions are logical from an administrative standpoint, educators interested in making learning opportunities available to the masses may have a different perspective. While the Internet creates the opportunity to publish learning opportunities that are available to millions, at relatively low cost, educational institutions are increasingly responding to issues of privacy and intellectual property by hiding entire learning environments behind passwords.’
April 16th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Wanted: Single standard for open-content licenses. ‘New effort aims to unite open educational resources (OERs) under a common framework for permissions. The movement toward open course materials for education has created something of a problem: Although a number of repositories have been set up to allow users to download sharable online content, many of these sites contain materials that use different licensing agreements. Now, a new initiative from the nonprofit Creative Commons aims to solve this problem. Called CC Learn, the project seeks to create a single, standard licensing framework that can encompass all open educational resources.’
Creative Commons Opportunities: CC Learn Executive Director. ‘CC Learn is looking for an Executive Director.
April 1st, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
Open Training Platform. ‘UNESCO facilitates a collaborative access to existing free training courses and promotes open licensed resources to specialized groups and local communities for development. The objective behind this platform is to empower trainers or/and trainees with free resources, offer them a structured collaborative space to share their training but also to promote and value the “open†training materials, which are freely and openly accessible for trainers and self-learners to use and re-use for non commercial purposes such as teaching, learning and research.’
Open Training Platform: List of training resources (PDF, 464 KB)
March 31st, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
OpenSourceCMS. ‘The idea behind creating opensourceCMS revolved around the need to have a place where one could completely test content management systems in one place, before taking the time to install one. No one wants to install a CMS only to find it lacked key features or functions you need. Also, you may find a CMS you didn’t know about and realize it was exactly what you needed.
This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any CMS system here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs. You should also visit CMS Training Videos for more in depth video tutorials for many of these systems.
The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any CMS system here without fear of breaking anything.’
OpenSourceFund.org. ‘OpenSourceFund is a private organization associated with The Open Source Collective, Inc. OSF offers monetary, and/or other means of support for the betterment of open source CMS’s. OSF provides funding mainly for add-ons, modules, templates/themes, components, blocks, etc. to be coded and released to the public under the GNU/GPL license. Preference is given to developers that extend the functionality of any of the systems listed at opensourceCMS.com.’
March 27th, 2007 by Jorge Goncalves
OpenLearn 2007 Conference - Researching Open Content in Education, 30-31 October 2007, Milton Keynes, UK. ‘This conference recognises the research challenge alongside the business challenge of providing, using and sustaining free and open resources and invites contributions and participation from those who are interested in how to research open content and what the findings are from those working in this challenging area.
Conference participation will be over two days near The Open University in Milton Keynes. There will be no charge for attendance with priority for registration given to those responding to the call for papers. Selected papers will be developed for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education.’
The call for papers has just opened. The four main themes are:
- Research agenda;
- Sustainability;
- User Experience;
- Software and Tools.
OpenLearn 2007 Conference Flyer (PDF, 685 KB)
