U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan explains in a three minutes video, why he believes that Open Educational Resources will help communities students and workers to get access to high quality education and to shape their own educational material. Check it on http://whyopenedmatters.org/ Link: whyopenedmatters.org ____ Note: This text was first published on the blog […]
It looks like the ideas around open education are reaching the mainstream media. I just found this piece on “Massive Open Online Courses — known as MOOCs” in the New York Times. the article takes up some of the ideas which we have been experimenting in the past years, e.g. collective building of open educational […]
Just got news about this years courses by the Free Technology Academy, which is a partner of http://www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net. See the following announcement: The Free Technology Academy expects to run two course modules for users and systems administrators who want to get started with GNU/Linux systems. Skills in this area are increasingly demanded and hard to […]
Two days ago, I met Prof. Michelis, who just published the second edition of this “Social Media Handbuch” (in German). Interesting book, with some good summaries on forward-looking issues such as “Commons-based peer production”, “Wisdom of the crowd” etc. Link to Book promotion – in German: http://www.nomos-shop.de/Michelis-Schildhauer-Social-Media-Handbuch/productview.aspx?product=14264
Interesting article on “Mobilizing Global Volunteers for Grassroots Innovations” in the online journal digital development debates. Also check my comment and related article on the “knowledge commons” and the “freedom to innovate“. Link: http://www.digital-development-debates.org/06-innovation/science-technology/mobilizing-global-volunteers-for-grassroots-innovations.html
Only one month to go before the “5th African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons” will start in Abuja, Nigeria. Idlelo is a conference organized by GIZ partner FOSSFA every two years to bring together the Open Source Community in Africa to share experiences and to network. Link: http://www.ict-innovation.fossfa.net/event/idlelo-5-5th-african-conference-open-source-and-digital-commons
This is an interesting call by the “Open African Innovation Research and Training” inititative, which is part of the GIZ commons@ip programme, which I run: “The Open A.I.R. initiative on the role of intellectual property (IP) in open development invites applications for a three- or six-month Research Fellowship to work in Cape Town, South Africa, […]
FYI – Interesting upcoming event on the knowledge commons: “1ST THEMATIC CONFERENCE ON THE KNOWLEDGE COMMONS” -governing Pooled Knowledge Resources: Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and Genetic Resource Commons. The call for papers is still open until 31. January 2012 … CONFERENCE TRACKS . Track 1 on “Scientific Research and Innovation Commons” . Track […]
UNCTAD just released their Information Economy Report 2011 focusing on the link between ICTs and private sector development. It also mentions our programm ict@innovation with FOSSFA (see section on “developing human resources” page 59). Check the: Information Economy Report 2011 – ICTs as an Enabler for Private Sector Development More Info on the site here:
Just released: an IT sector promotion manual and toolbox with many examples and tools pertaining to OpenIT@giz – Open Innovation for Development such as capacity building, open innovation methods, training-of-trainer networks in IT, Open Source etc. Check it out! BTW: It is drawing on the ict@innovation programme and other programmes described here). And for archival […]
“Free your IT Business in WEST Africa!” This was the motto of the first Training-of-Trainers of ict@innovation held in the West African region. Balthas Seibold and his colleagues Petra Hagemann & George Nyambuya officially welcomed more than 26 FOSS experts from Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal, who engaged in 10 intense days of peer-discussions […]
In a recent presentation for GIZ e-learning staff, Balthas Seibold gave an introduction to “Open Approaches to educational provision”, stressing the potential of Open Educational Resources and Open Licensing for Capacity Building. The presentation gives an overview of the changing educational landscape, introduces Open Education and Open Educational Services in practice (openSE, openEd 2.0 (UNU-Merit), […]
Balthas Seibold is now with the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)” – the successor of a merger of InWEnt – Capacity Building International and the two other bilateral technical cooperation agencies of Germany DED and gtz. The slogan of the merger is “Broad-based expertise for sustainable development – under one roof”. And this is […]
The working group on ‘Promoting Innovation Systems’ of Germany’s development cooperation just published a documentation on “Strengthening Innovation Systems in the Context of Development Cooperation”. An article by Balthas Seibold gives an overview of the potential of open innovation for developing countries. Taking the capacity building programme commons@ip as an example, the paper enumerates important […]
So this is me at InWEnt’s first regional Alumni Conference for Southeast Asia in Hanoi, Vietnam. At the conference, I was acting as a moderator of a Workshop on “open source for healthcare” (Link now to latest version of page on the Internet Archive. Here’s a gist of the workshop as summarized back then: Free […]