We need a service like this to foster adoption of open content: OSS-Watch - "OSS Watch provides the UK further and higher education community with neutral and authoritative guidance about free and open source software, and about related open standards." (via FOS)
Some very interesting things happen at Wikipedia.org. First a
new foundation was formed called Wikimedia. And
the last few weeks a textbook project is getting launched:
The Wikimedia Free Textbook Project. It intends to
cooperatively write textbooks using a wiki.
Read the archives at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/
listinfo/textbook-l
The University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, and the uPortal consortium are joining forces to integrate and synchronize their considerable educational software into a pre-integrated collection of open source tools. This will yield three big wins for sustainable economics and innovation in higher education: 1) A framework that builds on the recently ratified JSR 168 portlet standard and the OKI open service interface definitions to create a services-based, enterprise portal for tool delivery, 2) a re-factored set of educational software tools that blends the best of features from the participants’ disparate software (e.g., course management systems, assessment tools, workflow, etc.), and 3) a synchronization of the institutional clocks of these schools in developing, adopting and using a common set of open source software. The products of this project will include an Enterprise Services-based Portal, a complete Course Management System with sophisticated assessment tools, a Research Support Collaboration System, a Workflow Engine, and a Tool Portability Profile as a clear standard for writing future tools that can extend this core set of educational applications.
The modular, pre-integrated tools will greatly reduce the implementation costs of one or more of these tools at any institution. The Sakai Project Core universities are committing over $2 million per year to launch and support this two year project. The core universities are also committed to implementing these tools at their own institutions starting in Fall 2004 through the duration of the project. The commitment of resources and adoption is purposefully set on an aggressive timeline to swiftly integrate and synchronize the educational software at the core institutions. This effort will demonstrate the compelling economics of “software code mobility” for higher education, and it will provide a clear roadmap for others to become part of an open source community.
Short intro to Open Access (via Open Access News: "The current system of scholarly communication is in need of major changes. Journal price increases have been so dramatic and devastating that faculty who typically don't know or care about library expenditures are now front and center in the battle to change the dominant paradigm.
To celebrate its 3rd anniversary on the 13th of October 2003,
the OpenOffice.org project is spinning off something new - the
OpenOffice.org in Schools project.
One of the goals that needs to be achieved first, for this project
is to get as many activists as possible. This is to fuel the fact
that we want as many schools as possible knowing about
OpenOffice.org.
Building a list of local schools, and then contacting them is
really the aim, and we understand that public schools get a sweet
deal from Microsoft, whereas the private schools don't. So maybe
the target would be private schools in your area, but we don't plan
on limiting - who knows, OpenOffice.org may offer a cleaner outlook
to the school administrators.
Kuro5hin discusses a proposal for a collaborative learning
system. Many comments discuss topics we already have done. A nice
opportunity to recruit new members for Open-Education.org?
kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/27/143215/356
I will be donating 550 CDs of the program openoffice 1.1 (final)
to the public libraries of Scotland. This is not for installation
on library computers but as lending CD's. This will allow any
member of the public in Scotland to borrow the CD , copy, install
and distribute the software to anyone.
I was wandering if there is anyone else out there who would like to
donate copies of thier opensource software to libraries, School
libraries, university libraries etc.
BBC Opens Archives"...everyone would in future be able to
download BBC radio and TV programmes from the internet.
The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available
to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material
for commercial purposes..."
A Vision of the Internet Commons: "The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize.
I've mentioned this before...the Open Access (formerly FOS) movement has been walking paths that OE will have to walk in the future...and it's a resource that I think we need to utilize. These guides are a good example. They focus on converting to open access...or launching an open access journal.
James Love, director of The Consumer Project on Technology, wrote an open letter to the Director General of WIPO, asking for a WIPO-sponsored convocation to discuss open and collaborative development projects such as the World Wide Web and the Human Genome Project.