Open philanthropy is the way to go!

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi everyone,

Apology for any cross postings -- but good news for all WikiEducators!

The OER Foundation is the non-profit entity which funds WikiEducator and our activities.

As you know, these past few months we have been working on the open and transparent development of the strategy and 3-year operational plan for the OER Foundation. A personal note of thanks to all the WikiEducators around the world who have provided inputs to help develop and refine our plans through various channels including the wiki, our discussion lists and the hundreds of personal emails sent through to my desk. Thank you!

The Board of Directors of the OER Foundation met today and have approved the strategy and 3 year operational plan for the OER Foundation -- without any changes! The Board has complemented our open approach and the quality of our planning. This bodes very well for the ongoing success of the WikiEducator project --- we have a solid foundation on which to build -- with thanks to all the educators around the world who are committed to creating, remixing and reusing OER for the social good of education. Open philanthropy is the way to go!

Today I scanned the page documenting our early history (see: http://tinyurl.com/yase8m9 ) -- It's great to reflect on the fact that we were celebrating 2.3 million cumulative hits on the WE website after one year's operation. During October 2009, we recorded over 10.5 million hits to the site in one month! WE have come a long way.

Now, with your help, lets make the future happen!

Cheers
Wayne

Links

Planning:

http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Planning

Strategy:

http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Strategy

Operational plan - (2009 -  2011)

http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Operational_plan

 
--
Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg

[Patricia Schlicht]

Congratulations, Wayne, this is quite an accomplishment in such a short time. Onward and upwards!

Cheers,

Patricia

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[Randy Fisher]

Hi to all,

The link for Open Philanthropy is: www.wikieducator.org/Open_Philanthropy

Cheers,

- Randy

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Open Education is a sustainable and renewable resource.

________________
Randy Fisher, MA, OMD
Senior Consultant, Organization Development, Intersol Group, Canada

Senior Consultant, Organization & Business Development
International Centre for Open Education / OER Foundation, New Zealand

Elected Member, WikiEducator Community Council, www.wikieducator.org
+1 613.230.6424 x144 (EST)
Skype: wikirandy
Twitter: wikirandy

* Stakeholder Engagement, Change / Transition Management & Performance
* Organization Design & Development
* Sustainable Project Implementation & Community-Building
* E-Learning, Online Collaboration & Communities of Practice
* Coaching & Facilitation
* My Bio: http://www.communitybuildingexpert.com

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Congratulations is in order to Patricia, Wayne and Randy for leading WikiEducator to great heights.
Keep up the excellent leadership you are providing and modeling for WE members.
Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
Sharing is Caring!
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
Integrating Technology for Active Life-long Learning (IT4ALL) http://www.integrating-technology.com/pd
Get ready for CO10 at WiZiQ: http://connecting-online.ning.com/
Free online workshops using WiZiQ: http://www.wikieducator.org/Workshops

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Thanks Nellie (and to all the folk who have responded to this post so far).

None of what we do would be possible without the hundreds / thousands of educators who work tirelessly every day in contributing to our compelling vision of developing OER in support of all national curricula by 2015.

I've said this on many occasions: My faith in education has been restored watching, experiencing and sharing what WikiEducators are doing all around the world. I trained as a teacher and am proud to be a member of this amazing family.

Collectively, we are part of an amazing project which will make a substantial difference to the future of education on our planet.

We still have lots of work to do --- but I know that we are going to achieve more than we could have dreamed possible. I have the experience from the WE community to vouch and justify the magic we are going to create around open education.

Watch this space!!!

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/27 NELLIE DEUTSCH <nellie.mul...@gmail.com>

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Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org
Mobile +64 21 2436 380

User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Wayne,
You are very modest but in my opinion, leadership is the key.

Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
Sharing is Caring!
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
Integrating Technology for Active Life-long Learning (IT4ALL) http://www.integrating-technology.com/pd
Get ready for CO10 at WiZiQ: http://connecting-online.ning.com/
Free online workshops using WiZiQ: http://www.wikieducator.org/Workshops

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Nellie <blush> -- and thanks.

Collective leadership is the key IMHO -- together we achieve far more than working alone.

In a connected world -- collaboratively each of our individual contributions result in a formidable leadership that is hard to replicated with closed "control" models.

I've experienced this so many times as WikiEducator has grown and matured. We have a winning approach!

The secret is to "risk" a little openness and transparency --- this brings collective wisdom and leadership beyond our imagination. This is why we have been able to do so much, with so little in such a short time.

We can only get better!!

[Edward Cherlin]

Congratulations.

Are you interested in discussing the infrastructure needed to make
this happen globally? How will schoolchildren use these Open Education
Resources in regions without an electric grid or a communications
grid? When we have educated the children, what do they do in countries
that do not know how to create jobs?

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--

Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Edward,

Always interested in talking about the learning infrastructure needed
to make OER happen globally :-)

We're part of a larger ecosystem and recognise that through
collaboration we can make a difference. For a start, we want to refine
our automation of digital to print resources, improve offline editing
alternatives etc. I don't know the answers to job creation and suspect
that there are communities more adept to working in this area. I
suspect that the OER ecosystem will evolve organically as a self-
organising system with many players and I hope that the OER Foundation
can be catalyst for making some progress.

One step at a time --- but with the power of community, we get closer
to our dream every day.

Look forward to the ensuing discussions!

Cheers
Wayne

> >http://tinyurl.com/yase8m9) -- It's great to reflect on the fact that we

[simonfj]

Congrats guys,

Yu really are doing wonderful stuff.

Can I bring up this one about the "technology required to make the OER
vision a reality". I wish i could talk about the physical
infrastructure/distribution meaningfully but this is beyond me. I've
set myself up an impossible enough task by attempting to get the
content creators, many of whom are OERers, and the infrastructure
guys, to collaborate. Or at least gain some understanding of what each
community is doing. Their ends do coincide, if not their language and
agendas.

Most of the global infrastructure developments in the edu/research/gov
domains can be seen through this euro centric portal. http://global.dante.net/

So far as the language in this technical space is concerned, the main
language revolves around what is called "Middleware"; the software
layer that helps apps talk to one another and sits above different
operating systems. The apps are what content creators just want access
to. We need a user name & password, usually issued by single
institution to their version of an app and content = duplicate ad
infinatum. This is something the OER Foundation is addressing
fundamentally.

At the moment, throughout the (mainly developed) world, there is a
push on by all NREN to create federations. Rather than going into
great detail, let me just point you at this Aussie initiative. Take
for granted with a bit of work i could point at a similar initiative
in your country. http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/services/

Long story short, we are getting to the point whare the NREN are
reconfiguring to support global groups (taskforces/ committees) rather
than national institutions. All the groups tend to be subject specific
in their interests and the bandwidth, apps - in short, the 'network
services' - which their global community will want to use. The
middleware guys in each NREN understand that the only way they can
satisfy these disparate needs is to try and talk to each community,
which is a bit like herding cats on a global basis = impossible

So we have a catch 22. Communities like wikipedia and wikiedicator.
i.e. passionate people who prefer to use one tool to produce open
content often duplicate wonderful stuff in their attempts to acheive
their related visions. Rarely do they have an opportunity to
contemplate what other ICT services may be identified which could be
shared between communities. (I noticed the Connexions Google group as
another duplication) Meanwhile, the Middleware guys who must allocate
resources, and try and figure out what service may be demanded and
when, are simply bamboozled.

OK. That the rave. I'm sorry for it. I'm sitting in Manila after
talking to their preginet, after taking for years with the likes of
aarnet, karen, internet2 (do a google search on NREN if yu want the
list), and it seems like the right time and place to start looking at
this. Let me bring it down to something concrete. If you're in the
APac region, this is the hub of the geekly get together.
http://www.apan.net/meetings/Sydney2010/schedule.php
My interest is in the e-culture thread, cause the WP community has it,
and APAN members have a clue but no experience of it.

I'll be be talking to terena's taskforces who look at this convergence
and be pushing to have a VC link up between Euro sites and Sydney. It
would be great if we could get the ice broken here to run, not just
for a singular event, but a series of get togethers which might help
welcome a few nearsiders to the e-culture fold, and give us an
opportunity to see which basic tools (services) many global OER
communities could share.


regards,

PS Randy, How about Canada (canarie)?




On Nov 28, 10:35 am, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Edward,
>
> Always interested in talking about the learning infrastructure needed
> to make OER happen globally :-)

>

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Simon,

The OER Foundation is very receptive to facilitating shared infrastructure.  That said, to date we've not had much success with Karen yet in figuring our how WikiEdcuator.nz for example could collaborate and share the local NREN. Obviously synchronous communication tools would be a great value addition to this "OER learning infrastructure"

mmm -- I don't see that the CNX-WE project is duplication -- rather a step in the right direction to improve OER interoperability and hopefully contribute to less duplication of effort. I'm I missing something.

At the end of the day -- this comes down to dollars -- the folk who take the decisions about resource allocation. From OERFs perspective -- we have no preference for the infrastructure that is used - -as long as its free software.

So what are you proposing? A couple of Video conferences bringing folk from the OER community together with the NRENs? That seems like a sensible thing to be do.

What do we want to talk about? Is this about NRENS hosting installations like WE? (not such a bad idea IMHO -- most of the newer NRENs need content to generate the traffic to warrant the investment ;-) ) -- But hey -- sites like WE are not white listed on Karen (to the best of my knowledge) -- so while, for example our institution has theoretical "access" to this amazing bandwidth, NZ WikiEducator usesr must chug along using the narrow pipe alternatives for access.  How do we mediate the language between the technogeeks and the technophobes (we teachers ;-) ) during these discussions.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/30 simonfj <sim...@cols.com.au>

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Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org
Mobile +64 21 2436 380

User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Simon & Wayne,

As you figure these things out - and you can prime me with the right technical questions to ask the folks at CANAIRIE - http://www.canarie.ca - , I'll be happy to make some enquiries.

My good buddy Jamie Rossiter may also have some contacts there that we may wish to contact. (I may be wrong, but at one time he might have sat on the board of either Canairie, or OCRI in Ottawa) - www.ocri.ca

Cheers,

- Randy

[Edward Cherlin]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 18:13, simonfj <sim...@cols.com.au> wrote:
> Congrats guys,
>
> Yu really are doing wonderful stuff.
>
> Can I bring up this one about the "technology required to make the OER
> vision a reality". I wish i could talk about the physical
> infrastructure/distribution meaningfully but this is beyond me.

My group, Earth Treasury, is on it. The absolute minimum requirement
to run computers appropriately is electricity and Internet. We have a
wide range of renewable power technologies, including solar, wind,
water, biofuels, animal power and child power. The hand crank on the
prototype OLPC XO was removed after Kofi Annan broke one off in a
demo, but it was becoming clear that hand cranking was inefficient,
and that it was necessary to be able to use any available power
source. So users can charge XOs from anything that will charge a
12-Volt car battery.

WiMax is the most promising broadband technology for general use, with
an installed cost of $10 per person in whole countries, for better
than 90% coverage. On the other hand, the XO has built-in mesh
networking, with a range comparable to WiMax. It is necessary also to
consider fiber optic landing points into countries, and the
distribution system from there. Although the very first cable to
Africa was put in only a few years ago, there are now numerious fiber
optics projects springing up, including undersea cables, links
overland to land-locked countries, and countries making deals with
international companies for building up a grid to link all cities and
towns. Plans to extend this network to villages are taking shape in
some countries, often using point-to-point wireless technology.

It would be helpful if someone would undertake to create a
co-ordinated and funded research plan to determine the best
combinations of available technologies for every inhabited terrain and
climate, out to the poorest and remote villages, considering both
available financial resources and new economic possibilities.

We propose to tie all of this together with microfinance: electricity,
Internet, education, jobs and new businesses. Preliminary study
indicates that it should be possible to do all of this at a profit, if
countries themselves can fund the basic education functions. In many
countries this should be straightforward, given that XOs already cost
less than printed textbooks in many places, and we can recruit
translators locally.

The remaining gap in the plan is then to create the digital
replacements for textbooks in every subject for every grade level.
Given the potential savings, it should be possible to get governments
to fund creation of these materials for free distribution.

To make this plan a reality requires finding the people and resources
to do it. I hope that the possibility of employment in creating a new
generation of digital teaching materials, superior in every way to
books, would interest some here, and that we can network to find
others to take part.

For example, do we have anybody interested in creating materials to
teach village power engineering and finance, and village wireless? Do
we have anybody with access to grant writers? The US Dept, of
Education wants to hand out $44 billion in stimulus money for projects
in educational innovation. Politicians often have staffers available
to help navigate the bureaucracy. I have started that conversation,
and will have much more to say about it after I get settled in in my
new home in Indiana.

> I've
> set myself up an impossible enough task by attempting to get the
> content creators, many of whom are OERers, and the infrastructure
> guys, to collaborate. Or at least gain some understanding of what each
> community is doing. Their ends do coincide, if not their language and
> agendas.

We should share resources.

> Most of the global infrastructure developments in the edu/research/gov
> domains can be seen through this euro centric portal. http://global.dante.net/

Another important source is WiserEarth.org.

> So far as the language in this technical space is concerned, the main
> language revolves around what is called "Middleware"; the software
> layer that helps apps talk to one another and sits above different
> operating systems. The apps are what content creators just want access
> to. We need a user name & password, usually issued by single
> institution to their version of an app and content = duplicate ad
> infinatum. This is something the OER Foundation is addressing
> fundamentally.
>
> At the moment, throughout the (mainly developed) world, there is a
> push on by all NREN to create federations. Rather than going into
> great detail, let me just point you at this Aussie initiative. Take
> for granted with a bit of work i could point at a similar initiative
> in your country. http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/services/
>
> Long story short, we are getting to the point whare the NREN are
> reconfiguring to support global groups (taskforces/ committees) rather
> than national institutions. All the groups tend to be subject specific
> in their interests and the bandwidth, apps - in short, the 'network
> services' - which their global community will want to use. The
> middleware guys in each NREN understand that the only way they can
> satisfy these disparate needs is to try and talk to each community,
> which is a bit like herding cats on a global basis = impossible

I have some experience in herding cats. The secret is to convince them
that where you want them to go is where they wanted to go in the first
place, and it has nothing to do with you. This requires good
listening, questioning, and translating skills, among other things.

> So we have a catch 22. Communities like wikipedia and wikiedicator.
> i.e. passionate people who prefer to use one tool to produce open
> content often duplicate wonderful stuff in their attempts to acheive
> their related visions. Rarely do they have an opportunity to
> contemplate what other ICT services may be identified which could be
> shared between communities. (I noticed the Connexions Google group as
> another duplication)  Meanwhile, the Middleware guys who must allocate
> resources, and try and figure out what service may be demanded and
> when, are simply bamboozled.

There is no way to avoid substantial duplication of effort in
currently unconnected islands. Better connections will necessarily
arise, and most islands will join in. But compare this with the
mindless duplication of effort that we get by assinging the same
homework from the same book to every child of a certain age in a
school system. We can actually have schoolchildren work on some of our
local and global necessities, as part of their studies of particular
subject matter and of languages. Children can collect data in
otherwise inaccessible places for aggregation, analysis, mapping, and
sharing with the community. There are many other such opportunities.

> OK. That the rave. I'm sorry for it. I'm sitting in Manila after
> talking to their preginet, after taking for years with the likes of
> aarnet, karen, internet2 (do a google search on NREN if yu want the
> list), and it seems like the right time and place to start looking at
> this. Let me bring it down to something concrete. If you're in the
> APac region, this is the hub of the geekly get together.
> http://www.apan.net/meetings/Sydney2010/schedule.php
> My interest is in the e-culture thread, cause the WP community has it,
> and APAN members have a clue but no experience of it.
>
> I'll be be talking to terena's taskforces who look at this convergence
> and be pushing to have a VC link up between Euro sites and Sydney. It
> would be great if we could get the ice broken here to run, not just
> for a singular event, but a series of get togethers which might help
> welcome a few nearsiders to the e-culture fold, and give us an
> opportunity to see which basic tools (services) many global OER
> communities could share.

I will be fascinated to hear what you can come up with, and I can
recommend a number of groups to bring into the discussion, many of
them listed in the EarthTreasury Web site under Replacing Textbooks.

> regards,
>
> PS Randy, How about Canada (canarie)?
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 28, 10:35 am, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi Edward,
>>
>> Always interested in talking about the learning infrastructure needed
>> to make OER happen globally :-)
>
>>
>> > Are you interested in discussing the infrastructure needed to make
>> > this happen globally?
>

[simonfj]

> The OER Foundation is very receptive to facilitating shared infrastructure.
> That said, to date we've not had much success with Karen yet in figuring our
> how WikiEdcuator.nz for example could collaborate and share the local NREN.
> Obviously synchronous communication tools would be a great value addition to
> this "OER learning infrastructure"

Thanks Wayne. I think this is a matter of what WE as the wikicogent
could bring to helping the regional NREN associations communicate
better; especaily to understand that they are trying to "align their
Middleware portfolios" on behalf of global communities and so need to
understand the I, and C, T which they want. They really are starting
to get a kick on these days. Let me give you a quote from Diego at
Rediris (spanish NREN)

"Let me just note that the creation and mangement of virtual
communities and the delivery of appropriate and open collaboration
tools to those communities is one of he hit topics within the
middleware-heads".

If you wnat to get Karen's attention, tell them Otago Polytech wants
to join this list, primarily so they can get your hands on some of
aarnet's tools (when they join). http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/about/member-institutes/
(asking innocently, "does this present any problems for Karen?" :)
Should be an interesting response if nothing else.

> mmm -- I don't see that the CNX-WE project is duplication -- rather a step
> in the right direction to improve OER interoperability and hopefully
> contribute to less duplication of effort. I'm I missing something.
>

Hey, I don't ever mean to rude (comes naturally) and I've given Jim an
idea of my perspective on that new OER thread.

> At the end of the day -- this comes down to dollars -- the folk who take the
> decisions about resource allocation. From OERFs perspective -- we have no
> preference for the infrastructure that is used - -as long as its free
> software.

I realy don't think so wayne. The main thing with the geek end of town
is that they are being torn to bits in each NREN because they never
get an overview of the global perspective which all progressive
content people have because of some simple tools like a wiki, utube
and this google group. You should see the problems that the regional
associations like Apan and terena have because they've never got into
the collaborative frame of mind. Internet2, at the moment are going
through this move to build their 'service portfolio' so their network
becomes "on demand", not "allocated".

>
> So what are you proposing? A couple of Video conferences bringing folk from
> the OER community together with the NRENs? That seems like a sensible thing
> to be do.

Well if you look at that Apan meeting in Sydney/feb, you'll see a
little note under remarks. http://www.apan.net/meetings/Sydney2010/Session/eCulture.php
So I'm not suggesting anything new here. The primary difference is
that you'll be think VC while I'm think TV.

One of the big changes in social dynamics is this idea of having a
number of sites, each with a group of attendees, one agenda and number
of online tools to bind the experience together. I've seen this
attempted a few times now; the last with one of parliament's media
people, pia, running a 'distributed conference' for our Kate Lundy. It
hasn't been done very professionally, which is expected when you
consider it's a new form of (inclusive) media. I never rush at this
stuff as non one will ever understand unti they've been a part of it,
but from the feedback I've been getting from the euro end, it's likely
to be common soon; if not in the edu space, then the gov space.

>
> What do we want to talk about? Is this about NRENS hosting installations
> like WE? (not such a bad idea IMHO -- most of the newer NRENs need content
> to generate the traffic to warrant the investment ;-) ) -- But hey -- sites
> like WE are not white listed on Karen (to the best of my knowledge) -- so
> while, for example our institution has theoretical "access" to this amazing
> bandwidth, NZ WikiEducator usesr must chug along using the narrow pipe
> alternatives for access.  How do we mediate the language between the
> technogeeks and the technophobes (we teachers ;-) ) during these
> discussions.
>

I think more than anything, you (in particular) and other WE's (and
WMF's) just want to be themselves. Running a couple of quiet workshops
betwen (say 3 or 4) global sites, where WE could talk about what WE're
doing and what WE intend to do will just give a perspective that a
National geek won't understand, until they are a part of the
discussion, and it's streamed and recorded, and people are directed to
an online place to ask questions and talk (preferably before and)
after one in a series of events.

You'll never have to mediate (except if asked) between communities. So
long as you understand that the WE community s a good representation
of the general need, so we need to be clear about the tools we need
the NREN to provide by collaborating. WE IS the customer.

I won't comment on the inside/external divide (apart from saying that
the interanals live in a dreamworld at the public expense). It's just
soooo different in each country and gov's are taking such different
approaches. But really what you are saying is the cost, because I know
NZ, for one has plenty of bandwidth in the backbone. NZ (and OZ) will
find out, like Europe has already, that the primary stopper here is
the interconnect fees between mobile carriers - wireless (via mobile
networks) being the boomer in most countries at the moment. The other
problem is that Unis can't market to commercial carriers. I'll explain
that one another time.

vamonos

> Cheers
> Wayne
>
> 2009/11/30 simonfj <simo...@cols.com.au>

> > in your country.http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/services/

[simonfj]

> As you figure these things out - and you can prime me with the right

> technical questions to ask the folks at CANAIRIE -http://www.canarie.ca- ,

> I'll be happy to make some enquiries.
>
> My good buddy Jamie Rossiter may also have some contacts there that we may
> wish to contact. (I may be wrong, but at one time he might have sat on the
> board of either Canairie, or OCRI in Ottawa) -www.ocri.ca

Thanks Randy. That's kind of you . No real technical question. The
obvious tool to use is the accessgrid, and that quite mature now.
Choose a site. http://www.accessgrid.org/community
One thing which would be great, cause you strike me as a creative
type, would be if you portable camera, and try and get our geekish
friends to understand that what we are attempting is a professional TV
show, not an academic meeting. I'm not saying we are trying to pose,
but if you have a handycam with mic when someone asks a question, and
you stick it under their nose, it works. We had a lot of fun with the
learning when linking up between Melbourne, Brisbane and Woolongong.
Besides the unrelenting technical stuff ups (we were band aiding it
together through a lousy wireless connection and ustream), the raw
approach made every at ease.

Give me a bit of time getting over to Europe (popping in on UAE's
NREN). I guess the main thing would be to see how many people in the
unis around you would like to 'sit in' on the Apan's sydney
> meetings. Check out the e-culture and 'future of the internet' streams' http://www.apan.net/meetings/Sydney2010/schedule.php

> > 2009/11/30 simonfj <simo...@cols.com.au>

> >> in your country.http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/services/

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Edward,

In response to several sections of your post, numbered below:

1. The remaining gap in the plan is then to create the digital

replacements for textbooks in every subject for every grade level.
Given the potential savings, it should be possible to get governments
to fund creation of these materials for free distribution.

On WikiEducator, we have a publishing option for the creation of low-cost textbooks - see: www.wikieducator.org/WikiPublishing - by using the wiki, folks can easily update and revise texts for smaller production runs. My understanding is that WE received Hewlett funding for the beta.


2. To make this plan a reality requires finding the people and resources

to do it. I hope that the possibility of employment in creating a new
generation of digital teaching materials, superior in every way to
books, would interest some here, and that we can network to find
others to take part.

Yes, agreed.

3. For example, do we have anybody interested in creating materials to

teach village power engineering and finance, and village wireless? Do
we have anybody with access to grant writers? The US Dept, of
Education wants to hand out $44 billion in stimulus money for projects
in educational innovation. Politicians often have staffers available
to help navigate the bureaucracy. I have started that conversation,
and will have much more to say about it after I get settled in in my
new home in Indiana.

Regarding this point, it probably would be best to repost this as a separate request to the list. There's lots of interest here, I believe.

Also, one of WikiEducator's core values is about networking on the development of funding proposals. We've had successed in getting funding, and for example, the successful Learning4Content proposal is on the wiki. http://www.wikieducator.org/Metawikieducator/Learning4Content/Hewlett_bid

I've even used the wiki for my company (Intersol's) development of a proposal for the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum (we'll see if we get that work - if we do btw: a percentage of our success will go back to the OER Foundation!). http://www.wikieducator.org/Intersol/Proposals/CAF_October_2009

I am using the wiki for other proposal development opportunities, and I encourage others to do the same. Why reinvent the wheel here, when we can use and remix content - even proposal development content - to achieve worthy goals and objectives.

Cheers,

- Randy

[simonfj]

Thanks Edward,

I did mean to write to you but got hang up on reading what yu where up
to.
I take it you do mean researching this on a country by country basis.
It does happen quite consistantly, (probably) as yu know through a
whole range of similar groups in may institutions; from the world bank
(who have just funded India to take a big leap forward) to
http://www.ubuntunet.net/vision_mission (who have huge cultural
differences to address).

>
> We propose to tie all of this together with microfinance: electricity,
> Internet, education, jobs and new businesses. Preliminary study
> indicates that it should be possible to do all of this at a profit, if
> countries themselves can fund the basic education functions. In many
> countries this should be straightforward, given that XOs already cost
> less than printed textbooks in many places, and we can recruit
> translators locally.
>
> The remaining gap in the plan is then to create the digital
> replacements for textbooks in every subject for every grade level.
> Given the potential savings, it should be possible to get governments
> to fund creation of these materials for free distribution.

If humans where logical animals and technology was all that stood in
our way, yes.
But this is a continuum, with all sorts of beliefs and value systems
which need to adapt. The primary one being, I'm a teaching
institution; if you study hard yo can have a piece of paper which will
get you a job. To give you some idea of how out of kilter this is; I'm
reading in the local Manailan paper that 200,000 trainee nurses will
graduate this year. There are a maximum of 10,000 positions
available.

>
> To make this plan a reality requires finding the people and resources
> to do it. I hope that the possibility of employment in creating a new
> generation of digital teaching materials, superior in every way to
> books, would interest some here, and that we can network to find
> others to take part.
>
> For example, do we have anybody interested in creating materials to
> teach village power engineering and finance, and village wireless? Do
> we have anybody with access to grant writers? The US Dept, of
> Education wants to hand out $44 billion in stimulus money for projects
> in educational innovation. Politicians often have staffers available
> to help navigate the bureaucracy. I have started that conversation,
> and will have much more to say about it after I get settled in in my
> new home in Indiana.

It's been a while since i looked at what engineers without borders
were doing. The grant writing one is one worth considering. Many of
the technical projects fall over beacuse few take the longer term view
of working through where an NREN (or a regional) RREN aims to be, and
when. Another cutural challenge (in the developing world) is, we have
this problem that the NRENs don't consider that they can be marketing
arms of commercial carriers. Most of the developing NREN tend to be
fairly thin islands surrounded by fatter commercial (mainly wireless)
carriers. The last mile problem is common.

I think the concept of using a commercial carrier as exponents of
'what is possible', and trading their (in kind) donations for
exposure (advertsing/promotion) in running events = streaming back to
the local NREN, and perhaps through to a local broadcast station = is
natural if we can get unis to think like media sales people. I've
noticed some events cropping up call TEDex ( a local take off of
TED.com) which is close to the idea. To be clear; preginet have (just)
enough capacity to stream out, but they have no decent connections at
the event sites. They will be talking to Sprint and Globe about this
(i hope).

>
> > I've
> > set myself up an impossible enough task by attempting to get the
> > content creators, many of whom are OERers, and the infrastructure
> > guys, to collaborate. Or at least gain some understanding of what each
> > community is doing. Their ends do coincide, if not their language and
> > agendas.
>
> We should share resources.

Thanks. I'm interested in getting people from similar global groups
talking, using the fatter real time tools like the accessgrid to break
the ice. Most of the technical stuff is falrly simple for the NRENs.
The main thing which is required are people who can run an event like
my friend Pia. This approach worked well in the gov.au space. Maybe
you'd consider a series of thes kinds of events as an Innovation in
teaching.
http://www.katelundy.com.au/2009/07/24/public-sphere-3-australian-ict-creative-industries-development/

>
> > Most of the global infrastructure developments in the edu/research/gov

> > domains can be seen through this euro centric portal.http://global.dante.net/

>
> Another important source is WiserEarth.org.
>

Thanks. I should be clear about my intentions here. You'll notice that
Dante is JUST about the technical aspects of networks funded by the
EC. There are others like Gloriad (us-russia). These guys don't even
consider the social networks, or even content as a collaborative
thing. They are engineers not media people. So let's be clear that I'm
talking cheese and you're talking to chalk. And we need to bridge the
agendas of each community. Better still we need to encourage their
groups to the collaborate on their strategies.

>
> > So far as the language in this technical space is concerned, the main
> > language revolves around what is called "Middleware"; the software
> > layer that helps apps talk to one another and sits above different
> > operating systems. The apps are what content creators just want access
> > to. We need a user name & password, usually issued by single
> > institution to their version of an app and content = duplicate ad
> > infinatum. This is something the OER Foundation is addressing
> > fundamentally.
>
> > At the moment, throughout the (mainly developed) world, there is a
> > push on by all NREN to create federations. Rather than going into
> > great detail, let me just point you at this Aussie initiative. Take
> > for granted with a bit of work i could point at a similar initiative

> > in your country.http://www.aaf.edu.au/index.php/services/

>
> > Long story short, we are getting to the point whare the NREN are
> > reconfiguring to support global groups (taskforces/ committees) rather
> > than national institutions. All the groups tend to be subject specific
> > in their interests and the bandwidth, apps - in short, the 'network
> > services' - which their global community will want to use. The
> > middleware guys in each NREN understand that the only way they can
> > satisfy these disparate needs is to try and talk to each community,
> > which is a bit like herding cats on a global basis = impossible
>
> I have some experience in herding cats. The secret is to convince them
> that where you want them to go is where they wanted to go in the first
> place, and it has nothing to do with you. This requires good
> listening, questioning, and translating skills, among other things.

OK

Than you edward. Let's hasten slowly.
I don't know if this may be of interest to you. It's an outline of the
Dutch National Strategy to do this; next year ( I believe).
http://openedconference.org/archives/1069

[Edward Cherlin]

Very good. I'll have to take some time to reply, because I am in the
middle of moving from California to Indiana.