Conmergence

2008 Fiber To The Home Conference & Expo September 21 - 25, 2008 Gaylord Opryland® Resort & Convention Center, Nashville, TN

<ed.note>The conference's theme is "Linking Communities at the Speed of Light" but more intriguing to me is the the scheduled appearance of Don Tapscott (The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business, Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs, Creating Value in the Networked Economy, Blueprint to the Digital Economy: Creating Wealth in the Era of E-Business, Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation, The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence, Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World, Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology)  adreessing his latest work, Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Implicit in Tapscott's writings is management's buy-in of the distrubuted digital enterprise-enabled results-only collaborative work environment. If you happen to be one of those creatures (especially if you are from Nashville), I invite you to join the Linkedin.com Project Net-Work group and Technology Nashville.</ed.note>

Sunday, September 21, 2008
1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.	Registration Opens
Monday, September 22, 2008
7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.	Registration Opens
8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.	Developer Panel Workshop  *Additional fee*
8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.	Home Networking Workshop  *Additional fee*
1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.	Track Session - Series 100  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
1:00 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.	FTTH Executive Summit *By invitation only* Moderated by: Don Tapscott, Author
2:00 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.	Track Session Series 200  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
3:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.	EXPO Grand Opening & Opening Reception *Open to all registered attendees*
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.	Registration Opens
7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.	Continental Breakfast *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.	Opening General Session    *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only* Keynote Speaker - Don Tapscott, Author Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything Sponsored by: FTTH Council Awards Sponsored by: FTTxcellence Awards Sponsored by:
10:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.	Refreshment Break    *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
10:15 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.	Global Carrier Keynote Panel   *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
11:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.	EXPO Hall Opens   *Open to all registered attendees*
12:00 noon - 2:00 p.m.	Luncheon in EXPO Hall  *Open to all registered attendees*
3:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.	ITCo Panel  *Conference Pass attendees only*
3:15 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.	Track Session Series 300  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
4:15 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.	Track Session Series 400   *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
5:00 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.	Track Session Series 500   *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.	International attendee Reception   *By invitation only*
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
7:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.	Registration Open
7:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.	Continental Breakfast  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.	Government and Regulatory Panel
8:00 a.m. - 8:45 a.m.	Track Session Series 600  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.	Track Session Series 700  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
9:45 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.	Refreshment Break  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
10:00 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.	Track Session Series 800  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
11:00 a.m. - 12:15 a.m.	Panel Session Series 900  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
12:15 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.	On Own for Lunch
1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.	EXPO Hall Opens
4:15 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.	Closing General Session with Keynote Speaker  *Conference Pass and Day Pass attendees only*
7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.	EXTRAVAGANZA - Closing Reception with Entertainment *Additional fee* "Don't forget your dancing boots!"
Thursday, September 25, 2008
8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.	Post Conference Workshops

Father Google and Mother IM: Confessions of a Net Gen Learner

Carie Windham, Student Relations Specialist, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

The rise of the Millennials has spawned new conversations about engagement and learning on today’s college campuses. But what do these Net Gen learners really want? And what do they need to survive in a Web 2.0 world? From the mouth of a confessed Net junkie, learn what makes these students tick, what ticks them off, and what faculty and administrators need to know to bridge the generational divide. Carie Windham spoke at MSU on Jan. 10, 2008, sponsored by the MSU Teaching and Learning Committee.

IBM Opens New 3D Virtual Healthcare Island on Second Life

Interactive environment displays IBM’s vision for consumer-driven healthcare

ORLANDO, FL - 24 Feb 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) debuted at HIMSS®08 its newest island in Second Life: IBM Virtual Healthcare Island.  The island is a unique, three-dimensional representation of the challenges facing today’s healthcare industry and the role information technology will play in transforming global healthcare-delivery to meet patient needs. 

The island supports the strategic healthcare vision that IBM released in October 2006, entitled, Healthcare 2015: Win-Win or Lose-Lose, A Portrait and a Path to Successful Transformation.  The paper paints a picture of a Healthcare Industry in crisis – of health systems in the United States and many other countries that will become unsustainable by the year 2015.  To avoid “lose-lose” scenarios in which global healthcare systems “hit the wall” and require immediate and forced restructuring, IBM calls for what it defines as a “win-win” option: new levels of accountability, tough decisions, hard work and focus on the consumer.

The IBM Virtual Healthcare Island is designed with a futuristic atmosphere and provides visitors with an interactive demonstration of IBM’s open-standards-based Health Information Exchange (HIE) architecture.  Working with project leads in the U.S., the island was designed and built by an all-IBM-India team.

Starting from the patient’s home, they create their own Personal Health Records (PHRs) in a secure and private environment and watch as it is incorporated into an array of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that can be used at various medical facilities.  As they move from one island station to the next, they experience how the development of a totally integrated and interoperable longitudinal Electronic Health Record (EHR) is used within a highly secured network that allows access only by patient-authorized providers and family members.

Patient avatars arrive and are welcomed at the Central Park and then visit a Central Information Hub, where IBM’s view of the healthcare industry and the power of information technology to transform it are presented.  An amphitheater on the Hub’s second floor provides an area that can support virtual meetings, complete with a large video screen and accompanying slide presentation on IBM’s HIE architecture and the positive impact that this technology can have in the transformation of the Healthcare Industry.

Visitors can then walk, fly or use transporters to visit the various island stations:

• The Patient’s Home:  In the secure environment of a private home, patient avatars can initiate a PHR and populate it with their personal health characteristics and clinical history, accessed and downloaded from physician EMR data.  They can also establish privacy and security preferences as well as health directives.  The ground floor demonstrates secure messaging with providers and activates the initial PHR.  Using a transporter to move upstairs, patients use home health devices to take weight, blood pressure and blood sugar readings in the privacy of a bedroom, further incorporating this information into the PHR, which is shown on presentation screens. 
• The Laboratory: This stop offers laboratory and radiology suites to help avatars extend their understanding of the benefits of  HIE.  Here, patients can check in at a Patient Kiosk and have blood work and radiology tests performed. The use of EHRs – revealing only appropriate portions of the PHRs -- shows how consumers can also benefit through cost and time savings.
• The Clinic: Patient avatars transport or walk from the Lab to the Clinic, where a welcome from their primary-care physician awaits.  A combination of scripting and information screens supports simulation of a patient exam, after which an electronic prescription is generated, and the continued development of the EHR is explained on nearby screens. 
• The Pharmacy: Here, avatars can check in at a Patient Kiosk that simulates the verifying of drug information.  They then receive their prescriptions and update their PHRs/EHRs with new medication data.  The HIE architecture demonstrates how use of PHR/EHR technology can prevent consumers from purchasing medications that are contra-indicated given the medicines they presently require, as well as alerting them about potential drug-to-drug interactions.  The PHR/EHR is again updated.
• The Hospital: In this futuristic, three story structure, avatars arrive for a scheduled visit with a specialist.  Physicians’ offices, patient rooms and exam rooms are all simulated here. 
• The Emergency Room: Avatars can chose to experience a virtual emergency by “touching” a specially scripted control.  This engages a medical episode and a ride on a fast gurney directly into the private and secure emergency treatment area, where a special screen is programmed to reveal the full incorporation of the PHR to ensure proper treatment.

“We are pleased to offer our IBM Virtual Health Island as a tool for our healthcare customers and our worldwide sales force.  The island allows each healthcare stakeholder to envision how the total system can be affected by intercession at each juncture of the healthcare delivery process,” said Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry.  “We believe that the use of our new virtual world provides an important, next-generation Internet-based resource to show how standards; business planning; the use of a secured, extensible and expandable architecture; HIE interoperability; and data use for healthcare analytics, quality, wellness and disease management are all helping to transform our industry. “

IBM’s Healthcare & Life Sciences (HCLS) Industry will continue to develop the new island in months to come.  The island can perform as a virtually “always on” demonstration tool for IBM’s sales personnel.  A video version of the island is also under production.

IBM believes in the significant promise of virtual-worlds technologies far beyond today's usage: the next evolutionary phase of the Internet. IBM is helping clients and partners to conduct business inside virtual worlds and to connect the virtual world with the real world through a richer, more immersive Web environment. 

Second Life is a 3D online world created by Linden Lab, a company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, to create a revolutionary new form of shared 3D experience.  Last October, IBM and Linden Lab announced their intent to jointly develop new technologies and methodologies based on open standards that will help advance the future of 3D virtual worlds.

The Future of Companies Report at Global Futures and Foresight

<ed.note>David Smith sent a pointer to a new GFF study:</ed.note>

We are living in a period of great economic and political volatility. There are new global players entering every field of commercial endeavour and the political power brokers across the globe are changing rapidly.

India, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and a great many other countries are growing dramatically, creating new consumer societies and absorbing financial capital and human capital in their activities.

In the process new business models are emerging often being facilitated by the latest technologies.

Many of the issues facing our companies are common across the world. Even, the ability of the world to survive our economic activity is at stake.

Are we innovative enough to survive let alone thrive in this rapidly changing and risky environment.

Can we make the changes necessary to build our future?

This report will highlight some of the compelling drivers of change and offer questions for you to address in your own organisation to help you thrive.

Please download a copy. We hope it will help your business create a more secure future.

Our goal is to help organizations 'better prepare for the future'. So do feel free to call for our support.

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning Special Regional Issue CALL FOR PAPERS -- "A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER: LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST"

Co-editors:
Prof. Cengiz Hakan Aydin, Anadolu University, Turkey
Prof. Yoram Eshet-Alkalai, The Open University of Israel
http://www.irrodl.org

Publication target date: Spring 2009

March 31, 2008: Send an outline of proposal (500-700 words) to irrodl@athabascau.ca

April 15, 2008: Notification of Acceptance of Proposals

INVITED PAPERS:

September 1, 2008: full length papers due (5000 – 6000 words, double-spaced)

December 15, 2008: Peer Review and revisions finished

January 1, 2009 – February 19, 2009. Copy and production editing

This Regional Theme issue of IRRODL aims to describe and analyze current trends and issues in ODL in the Middle East. It will seek to detail the actual and potential contribution of ODL to the educational, social and economic development in the region, and will do so by discussing the challenges and obstacles to ODL’s optimal effective and efficient utilization. As such, we seek proposals from a broad range of topics and sub-themes:

• Models and paradigms of ODL
• Cognitive aspects of using ODL
• Usability aspects of designing ODL
• The effectiveness of teaching and learning with ODL platforms
• Issues in the management of ODL
• Innovative technologies for ODL
• The interaction between learners and computers in distance learning
• Widening access to education through ODL
• ODL in the service of people with special needs
• Gender and cultural aspects of using ODL
• ODL in teacher education
• ODL for improving governance and national development
• Policy issues in designing and implementing ODL
• Economical and ethical aspects of ODL

The proliferation of communication technologies in the last decade has opened new horizons for learners and instructors, offering new modes for learning and communication. With the modern open and distance learning technologies, instruction and learning receive new dimensions and new meanings. For the first time, education becomes independent of time and space and can be delivered anytime and anywhere and to everyone. Nevertheless, despite their great potential, the use of learning technologies raises a wide range of questions regarding the traditional learning paradigms, and poses challenges for learners, instructors and policy-makers, who need to develop new teaching and learning strategies that fit the new synchronous and asynchronous ODL platforms.

Educational technologies are used today in most educational systems for a large variety of purposes, including delivering knowledge, managing the teaching\learning process, as well as for communication between learners and instructors and between learners and their peers. Present-day studies on the use of educational technologies in educational systems indicate that they have become an inseparable part of the teaching/learning process. However, a meta-analysis of the last-decade's research on the integration of ODL technologies suggests that it suffers from a series of severe pedagogical, political, cognitive and technological problems that hinder their successful implementation and lead to frustration among educators, decision-makers and learners. The major problems are: Problems of users to read effectively from a digital display of text and to cope with graphic user interfaces.

Learners and instructors are not proficient in making an effective use of ODL platforms.

Learners face problems in gaining knowledge from the hyper textual and non-linear learning environments, which are most common in ODL learning.

Most present-days ODL environments are ineffective for learning, due to their design as a trivial conversion of the "good and old" traditional, face-to-face teaching & learning paradigms into the ODL platforms, without making an educated use of the pedagogical possibilities, which are available in the ODL technologies.

Learners suffer from feelings of loneliness and non-ownership, and face learning difficulties in a distance-learning situation, without the physical presence of an instructor.

Learners face problems screening the huge volumes of information available in ODL environments and constructing from them coherent bodies of knowledge.

As indicated by most recent studies, the key issues in developing effective distance learning models are the adoption of adequate pedagogical paradigms that make educated use of the special technological features of ODL technologies, and the consideration of the state-of-the-art knowledge on designing effective distance learning environments. These studies also indicate the pivotal role that the local conditions, such as the cultural, political, economical, sociological, ethnographical and geographical circumstances play in designing effective ODL.

In this respect, the Middle East is a unique and challenging geographical, economical, cultural and political region, mainly because of its heterogeneous nature, calling for serious and unprecedented considerations in planning, designing and implementing distance and open education:

It is composed of a large variety of cultures, languages and religions, which calls for special considerations in designing effective open and distance learning environments which are available-to-all.

Economically, countries in the region range from very poor to extremely rich countries, which call for special policies, which consider the ability of some of them to cope with the high cost of ODL.

Technologically-speaking, the region consists of very advance countries, and others, which are only in the early stages of ODL systematically.

The above-listed problems and considerations, illustrate the special challenges that educators, designers and decision-makers face in developing policies, strategies and models for distance and open learning, which make an educated use of the available educational technologies on the one hand, and which fit the unique abilities and needs of countries in this extremely heterogeneous region. In this respect, the major challenges are:

Develop and improve the technological infrastructures to enable using the state-of-the-art educational technologies.

Develop adequate models for distance ODL.

Develop adequate policies and strategies for a proper integration of ODL in educational systems.

The Human and technology Development Foundation's 7th International Internet Education Conference (ICT-Learn2008), Cairo, Egypt, October 2008

 

Under the patronage of Dr. Ahmed Nazeif, Prime Minister of Egypt, you are invited to submit a paper for discussion and to attend this conference. Suggested topic areas include:

1. Strategies for accessible, effective and innovative education;

2. How to exploit technology or hybrid delivery strategies to provide new ways of learning;

3. Pedagogical implications of electronic delivery of education;

4. Quality Assurance in Education;

5. Leveraging technology to deliver professional development opportunities;

6. Technical and Vocational Educational training to achieve access for all, learning opportunities throughout life, and high quality, relevant and effective programs.

This Conference will be of interest to:

· Instructors, teachers, academic faculty and students;

· Administrators, managers and others who are interested in educational technology;

· Government, university, college officials and decision-makers;

· Trainers, private, public institutions and companies;

· Lifelong adult education and professional practitioners;

· Technology experts and policy experts.

ICT-Learn 2008 is a consortium of educators from around the world who are interested in using these technologies to help their countries increase access to quality education for a larger percentage of the population. These educators turn to HDF as an organization through which they can communicate with others like themselves not only with other educators but also with scientists, innovators, researchers, corporations, and foundations.

Given its reputation among educational institutions worldwide, the Human and technology Development Foundation is well-positioned to bring together the kind of educators and experts who are most capable of initiating change and progress when it comes to the role of ICT in educational, social, and economic development in emerging countries.            

The official language: English.

File type : Only .doc file formats can be accepted.

Submission : By form submission or by email attachment to : info@hdf.org.eg

Important dates :
Abstract submission deadline: 1^st April 2008
Notification of acceptance: 1^st June 2008
Full paper due for review:  1^st July 2008
Notification of paper acceptance: 1^st August 2008

Accepted and published papers in the ICT-Learn conference will appear in the transactions of the International Journal of Internet Education (IJIE) ISSN 1687-5796 

For further information please refer to http://www.distant-learning.net

The Human and technology Development Foundation
Founded in the year 2000, Under supervision of the ministry of  social affairs ,  ministry of communications , ministry of education register in the formal Government News 453. The Human and technology Development Foundation ( http://www.hdf.org.eg/ )  is the largest non-profit organization in the Middle East working in the field of Information Communication Technology. By building unique partnerships between key manufacturers, ICT service providers, media outlets, educational institutions, and students, HDF informs, promotes, and trains to foster a more comprehensive understanding of information technology in the region.

Education Conflicted on Collaboration

On the one hand, yet on the other.

Schools Empower Potential GRID Workers So That Management Can Turn Around And Disempower Them

here and here.

<ed.note>Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation released a study indicating "Telework" benefits employers, employees and the environment; and the U.S. Treasury, together with SIFMA and the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee recently incorporated telework in their 3-week pandemic drill.</ed.note>

Michael Robertson Crunches the Numbers on Higher Education

<ed.note> I'm a big fan of data-driven policy. I'm very appreciative of my college years but with the growth of the global knowledge economy empowered by the broadband build out and world-wide distance education offerings, the US economy is seeing a decoupling of college and university attendance and "gaining an education". The real catalyst on the disintermediation of the US higher ed "monopoly" will be when global HR adopts hr-xml competencies and job standards which will allow for true evaluations of skillsets instead of the four year degree strawman bar used now. As social networking builds out the value of frat and sor connections will decrease. Then the media networks will have to find another mechanism to allow young folks to compete unpaid in athletics in order to drive their HD video ad revenues. Though if you need an atom smasher the campus will have still have the advantage -- until fedgov redirects funds directly to private firms.</ed.note>

Recently College Board presented to congress a report which concluded that college is "high yield" financial investment for all attendees. My preliminary analysis raised several questions about the methodology used to arrive at that conclusion. I subsequently exchanged emails with the primary author and after a few inquiries they provided the actual worksheet and formula used in that report. Although it's puzzling why the data backing their conclusion is not published for all to read on their web site if it's so convincingly advocates college attendance.

eLearning Africa 2008, May 28 to 30, 2008 in Accra, Ghana

To date, more than 380 proposals have been received for eLearning Africa 2008! The deadline for submitting proposals was Friday, December 7th, 2007 and although the Call for Papers is now officially closed, we still welcome submissions. Late submissions will be considered although preference is given to proposals received by the deadline. Please refer to the “Call for Papers” section for more details.

The 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training will take place from May 28 to 30, 2008 in Accra, Ghana under the Patronage of the Ghanaian Minister for Education, Science and Sports, the Hon. Prof. Dominic K. Fobih.

eLearning Africa has established itself as the largest and most comprehensive capacity-development event for technology-enhanced education and training on the Continent. Initiated in May 2006 in Addis Ababa under the Patronage of the Ethiopian Minister for Capacity Development, H.E. Ato Tefera Waluwa, the pioneer event attracted more than 830 participants and 250 expert speakers.

The 2nd eLearning Africa was hosted by the Kenyan Ministry of Education in Nairobi in May 2007. It attracted 1406 participants, with nearly 80% coming from Africa. The conference programme featured the input of 308 speakers and chairpersons from 55 countries and offered 69 presentation sessions and 17 pre-conference events. Major international and African corporations, as well as development agencies and foundations supported the conference.

eLearning Africa addresses the whole of Africa. A rotating event hosted by a different African government every year, it supports and reinforces the growing pan-African eLearning community. Through its Open Call for Papers, resulting in the engagement of a widely distributed international community of experts, industry partnerships, governments, initiatives on the ground, and the development partner community, a solid capacity-development framework has been established.

The sheer magnitude of the event and its innovative conference features provide an unprecedented opportunity for African professionals and stakeholders to benchmark, learn, share and network, thus strengthening the Continent’s many and varied educational technology initiatives and projects.

This year’s patron, the Hon. Prof. Dominic K. Fobih, and all members of the conference committees welcome you to join us in Accra in May 2008.

World's next outsourcing hub: Kenya?

The Kenyan government is pumping millions of dollars into improving the nation's outdated telecom industry.

<ed.note>I reiterate my harrangue for the Kenya Call Center Industry -- driving in to a call center to access the wiki and VOIP is missing the point. Rural telehealth and disease management will never reach its full potential if you can't develop a management structure which can trust remote workers -- or develop enough tech monitoring tools savvy to fake it. Just because the US keeps talking "green" but refuses to adopt ROWE doesn't mean the rest of the world has to repeat the mistake.</ed.note>

New technologies and innovation in higher education and regional development

According to the Academy of Finland and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, there are two prominent driving forces in today’s global operating environment. The first is the trend towards increasing mobility; the second is the growing interdependence of different parts of the world, their increasing interaction and cooperation in the economy, production, social development, communications and human exchange. In today’s global and technological world, learning has become increasingly important to all people and all communities. It is widely understood that the most important skills of the future will be communication skills. Today, everyone is able to access vast amounts of data without a mediator. Critical thinking skills are needed as a productive and positive activity. Critical thinkers see the future as open and malleable, not as closed and fixed. As noted in the UNESCO Report on Knowledge Societies (2005), there is a general agreement on the appropriateness of the expression “knowledge societies”; the same cannot be said of the content. However we define the 21st century societies there are some trends that seem to have consequences in all spheres of life. Globalization and digitalization have fundamental consequences in educational and learning life, working life and in governance. The vision is a society which develops and utilizes the opportunities inherent in the information society to improve the quality of life, knowledge, international competitiveness and interaction in an exemplary, versatile and sustainable way. These ideas have been used to develop the Global University System (GUS) within the UNESCO Chair in global e-learning at the University of Tampere. Because of the importance of media and digital literacy and competencies, in 2007 the Government of Finland published a Proposal for an action programme for developing media skills and knowledge as part of the promotion of civil and knowledge society. The reason for setting up this committee was the topicality and importance of media education as part of citizenship skills and the problems encountered in its realization. Keywords higher education, Finland, universities and innovation, new technology in higher education, regional innovation

Tapio Varis, tapio.varis@uta.fi
Professor and Chair of Vocational Education, with particular reference to global learning environments, University of Tampere, Finland. UNESCO Chair in Global e-Learning, Professor and Chair of Vocational Education, with particular reference to global learning environments at the University of Tampere, Finland, Research Centre for Vocational Education, and UNESCO Chair in global e-Learning with applications to multiple domains. Principal research associate of UNESCO-UNEVOC. Acting President of Global University System (GUS). Former Rector of the University for Peace in Costa Rica. Expert on media and digital literacy to the European Union. Communication and Media Scholar at the University of Helsinki and the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. and the University of Lapland, Finland. Published approximately 200 scientific contributions.

Intel's Craig Barrett on Bridging Africa's digital divide

<ed.note>The fact that many are discovering that to get "teaching" to a student in a "far off place" doesn't require getting the "teacher" there -- has been "missed" by public schools in the U.S.

Educational policy needs to be focused on reallocating good teachers rather than attempting to pay for one good teacher per each hectare ( read: virtual classroom instruction ). As Barrett points out as in "Africa it is not a choice between clean water and broadband. You can do more than one thing at a time". The same is true of the US. One Laptop Per Child, for instance, does no good if the kids aren't allowed to begin learning until a teacher is standing in the same room with them. Curriki, DSpace, etc. are of no value if they have to be moderated by some official gatekeeper.

The REAL question is how will the self-taught receive certification for their acquired knowledge ( and will potential employers' HR personnel recognize it ) when the global higher ed system measures achievement, in part, by butt time in an "official" school desk. And newspapers thought they were dealing with disintermediation...</ed.note>

Omeka

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content rather than programming.

Omeka will come loaded with the following features:

• Dublin Core metadata structure and standards-based design that is fully accessible and interoperable
• Professional-looking exhibit sites that showcase collections without hiring outside designers
• Theme-switching for changing the look and feel of an exhibit in a few clicks
• Plug-ins for geolocation, bi-lingual sites, and a host of other possibilities
• Web 2.0 Technologies, including:
  • Tagging: Allow users to add keywords to items in a collection or exhibit
  • Blogging: Keep in touch with users through timely postings about collections and events
  • Syndicating: Update your users about your content with RSS feeds

Project Goals

Beginning in Fall 2007, CHNM will host and organize and open source community to plan, design, test, evaluate, and disseminate Omeka over four phases through September 2010, while working closely with our major partner, the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS).

We envision Omeka benefiting cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators in three ways:

1. Enable users to publish web content with a system that is low-cost and easy-to-use.

Since many cultural institutions publish limited web content because they lack trained staff and sufficient budgets to manage a professional online presence, CHNM will release Omeka as a free and open-source system that will be fully documented and easy to use for staff with little technical experience. Omeka offers users professional-looking design themes that showcase collections and eliminate the need to hire outside designers. CHNM also plans to offer a hosted version by 2009 for those who cannot run Omeka on their own servers.

2. Provide users with a standards-based, interoperable system that allows them to share and use digital content in multiple contexts.

When cultural heritage and teaching sites offer online resources, those digital pieces do not conform to basic metadata standards and do not meet accessibility guidelines, making resource sharing and reaching all potential visitors impossible. Omeka will be fully standards-based, both with regard to object metadata (Dublin Core) and to design interface (W3C), and to be extensible and interoperable with other Omeka installations and selected collections systems. This will allow users to re-use materials in multiple online contexts without redundant data entry and to share collections more easily with other users. By 2009, omeka.org will host a live directory that aggregates content from all Omeka installations to encourage resource sharing.

3. Facilitate users, in particular cultural institutions, engaging their publics and building communities around objects and primary sources.

Omeka will include basic Web 2.0 features such as an RSS feed, blog, and a tag cloud. Other planned plugins include a mapping function, and ways to collect and display stories and photos from web visitors who are demanding a different type of online interaction shaped by Web 2.0. Omeka offers organizations and individuals the opportunity to share in the creation of content. We encourage users to develop other Web 2.0 applications that fit into Omeka’s plugin architecture, and omeka.org will host a directory of all plugins created by the community. Interactive and participatory systems,like Omeka, build regular interaction with a base of online visitors and encourage democratic participation in the shaping of our culture.

Development for Omeka is funded by grants from the Institute of Museums and Library Services and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Omeka will be released under General Public License, Version 2.

http://omeka.org/blog/

Geolocking vs Wikis [ was Hobbs on Wharton on Wikis ]

<ed.note>Wharton@Work discovers blogs.   

Here's the Businessweek Wiki article du jour. Here are some thoughts on the opposing force -- geolocking jobs. Also see here.

Public Squares vs. Walled Gardens was one of the dichotomies mentioned in the Knowledge@Wharton piece. I argue the really significant question is -- is the wiki geolocked?:

Bill: The TN difficulty is the workplace which follows Wharton on wikis and Asinines ( the forgotten Greek philosopher ) on allocation -- workforce, that is. Making people commute in to access the wiki is missing the point. Here's hoping folks will allocate 20$ and buy themselves a clue!</ed.note>

GK3, Third Global Knowledge Conference Programme, 11-13 Dec 2007

here.

Education Without Borders

By Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems, Inc., Synnovation, p. 68-69. Related podcast here.

No one questions the right to learn, yet more than 100 million children worldwide do not have access to a primary education. Knowledge should never be proprietary.

While the No Child Left Behind Act helps to address this problem in the United States, the child we're holding back here and around the world, because of lack of Internet access and other economic hurdles, is of equal disaster and needs help, too. The solution to this challenge is simpler than you think. In the Participation Age, an age in which everyone and everything is interacting on The Network, the first step is to open source education.

"Expanding Africa’s Broadband Capacity", Connect Africa Summit in Kigali, 29-30 October 2007

Where: Kigali, Rwanda

Why: The main goal of the Summit is to help bring connectivity to Africa and promote "Connect Africa", a new partnership that seeks to expand the information and communication technology infrastructure of the continent, especially Internet broadband.

Who: Some 500 participants are expected to attend the Connect Africa Summit. Participants include the patrons of the initiative, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Ghana’s President John Kufuor, who is also the African Union Chairman. High-level participants include International Telecommunication Union Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré; President of the African Development Bank Donald Kaberuka; and Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett, who is also the Chair of the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, will make a contribution by video link. The Presidents of several African nations are expected to participate.

The event will bring together political leaders, including Ministers and Heads of State, CEOs and senior executives of global and African IT companies, leaders from civil society and heads of international and regional development banks. Industry leaders including Cisco, GSM Association, Ericsson, Huawei, British Telecom, Qualcomm, NTT DoCoMo, Neustar, Safaricom, Nokia-Siemens and Microsoft will attend and announce new initiatives to help bring connectivity to Africa.

The Summit sessions are designed for television to encourage interactive participation and key sessions will be moderated by Stephen Cole, a renowned TV anchor with Al Jazeera International. The event’s press conferences will be webcast live, and time slots for telephone interviews with prominent participants will be allocated for those journalists who cannot attend.

The event is organized by the International Telecommunication Union, the African Union, the World Bank Group and the Global Alliance for ICT and Development, in partnership with the African Development Bank, the African Telecommunication Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the Global Digital Solidarity Fund.

For further information, click here or contact:

Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information
ITU
Tel: +41 22 730 5046
Mobile: +41 79 249 4861
Fax: +41 22 730 5939
E-mail

Contact: in New York Enrica Murmura, Tel: +1 212 963-5913, E-mail murmura@un.org; in Washington, DC Henny Rahardja, Tel. +1 202 473 4857, E-mail HRahardja@worldbank.org; in Tunis, Emmanuel K. Ngwainmbi, Tel: +216 71 10 26 27, E-mail e.ngwainmbi@afdb.org.

About ITU

Sweet Home Alabama

By Mark Gura, convergemag.com

Alabama Students Have Open Access to a New World of Learning

Head south to Ozark City, Ala. -- population 15,119. This "City for All Seasons" boasts a Wal-Mart Supercenter, two Dairy Queens and a Goodrich Tire dealer. Mayor Bob Bunting calls Ozark "the best kept secret in the South, for that matter, the best small city in the United States."

Hometown hyperbole? Not when it comes to education. True, Ozark only has one high school, one middle school, two elementary schools and an early childhood education center. But it does offer its students world-class opportunities to learn. This is something its residents couldn't have dreamed of a few years back. Now, however, as part of Alabama's Connecting Classrooms, Educators and Students Statewide (ACCESS) program, Ozark's Carroll High School distinguishes itself as more than the home of the Eagles football team. Students at this school experience material and challenges that some of the best schools in our nation's largest cities would be hard-pressed to set before their students.

Curriki.org Master Units

Curriki is accepting applications for projects that will make a difference to students and teachers everywhere. We will help fund your curriculum initiative to be built using the Curriki platform and distributed globally via our website.

Funding Qualifications

To qualify for funding, projects must meet the following requirements:

• Provide or develop comprehensive resources for substantial units of study—for example, a sequenced collection of all necessary components for a semester of microbiology, or a year of algebra.
• Develop or post open source curriculum in an area of need. Special emphasis will be given to math, science and reading for upper elementary through high school grades.
• Deliver all content resources as open source (including editable formats and publication under the open source Curriki License) so they may be used and developed further by a broad community.
• Use best practices in pedagogy and instructional design.
• Use the Curriki platform and tools to build out and post the resources, either as wiki-based templates or as sequenced collections of editable attachments.
• Be created by either an individual or group who continues to "own" the project, monitoring and working towards growing its usage. Part of the grant funding will be specifically allocated toward this goal.
• Bring with it a community of users who will employ and actively engage with the materials on an ongoing basis.
• Have a track record of efficacy based on real use.
• Projects will be funded on a rolling basis. Grant money must be used for curriculum development and production and training, community use and community involvement. Grants will be given in increments of $500 and will not exceed $5,000. Funds can be allocated toward development, production, training, and community outreach activities.

How to apply

If you are interested in applying, please send a one to two page letter to projects@curriki.org and be sure to include the following information:

• Full name of applicant
• Position and school or institution
• Location of institution or home address and email address
• Project title
• Project description
• Project goals
• Subject areas covered
• Target audience
• Project features and key components
• Project milestones (What will be done, by when?)
• Key individuals involved in the project
• Research base or best practices reflected
• Ways in which this project will promote community use on the site
• Amount of funding requested
• Breakdown on expenses (List all budget items including time, resource allocation, training expense, etc.)

All awards will be made at the discretion of Curriki staff and based on the above requirements.

NOTE: CURRIKI REVIEW SYSTEM: This fall, Curriki will launch a review system designed to make finding great resources even easier for members. Curriki seeks a few paid Lead Reviewers to coordinate efforts in the the major subject areas (Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies). We are also looking for volunteer reviewers in all subject areas. To learn more, visit: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/ReviewQualifications

This Day in Open Source

<ed.note>A new project, a podcast, some recommendations and a passalong ( see below ) from Tim Cook -- all in all a fruitful day in the world of open source.</ed.note>

Telecentre Technology - The application of free and open source software ( APDIP e-Note 19 )
By Fouad Riaz Bajwa

The affordability of FOSS and its openness to modification and localization is contributing to the sustainability of telecentres, and more broadly, to empowered communities and poverty reduction. This APDIP e-Note explores the benefits of using FOSS applications in telecentres with case studies from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Telecentre models are successful when the focus, starting from the early planning stage, is on its sustainability. Two critical factors affecting the sustainable operations of any telecentre are: (i) its information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure; and (ii) the choice of hardware and software.

Of course, the sustainability of the telecentre is also dependent on many other equally important factors including service delivery, staff responsiveness and community acceptance, especially of new technologies. This APDIP e-Note, however, will focus on the technological aspects.

The choice of hardware and software should not be based on what others are using, but rather on what is needed and appropriate to the telecentre and the community it serves in the long run. Recent findings from various experiences, some of which are mentioned in this APDIP e-Note, show that free and open source software (FOSS) applications combined with low-cost hardware have emerged as an intelligent solution for sustainable telecentres.

This APDIP e-Note explores the benefits of using FOSS applications in telecentres with case studies from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa. The affordability of FOSS and its openness to modification and localization is contributing to the sustainability of telecentres, and more broadly, to empowered communities and poverty reduction.

APDIP e-Notes are brief snapshots that present analyses of specific issues related to ICTs for sustainable human development in the Asia- Pacific region. This online series introduces readers to the who, what, where, why and how of a wide range of current issues related to ICTs such as Internet governance, ICTs and poverty reduction, e-governance, free and open source software, and many others.

Download APDIP e-Note 19 from http://www.apdip.net/apdipenote/19.pdf

Download APDIP e-Note 15 - Telecentre sustainability: Financing ICTs for the poor http://www.apdip.net/news/enotetelecentre

Download APDIP e-Note 14 - Telecentre 2.0: Beyond piloting telecentres http://www.apdip.net/news/enotetelecentre

Download APDIP e-Note 7 - Open Technologies: Catalyst for transformation http://www.apdip.net/news/apdipenote7

All APDIP e-Notes are available at http://www.apdip.net/apdipenote/

All APDIP e-Resources are available at http://www.apdip.net/elibrary/

My Personal MBA (Open Source)

<ed.note>The journey begins...</ed.note>

The Wikiklesia Project

The Wikiklesia Project is an experiment in on-line collaborative publishing. The format is virtual, self-organizing, participatory - from purpose to publication in just a few weeks.

Anyone* can write a chapter for the Wikiklesia. The first volume, Voices of the Virtual World, is a "collective, chaordic conversation on how emerging technologies are impacting the church." All proceeds from Volume One will be contributed to the Not For Sale campaign. The e-book is now on sale at Lulu.com. The paperback version will be available in late August 2007.

Innovation Plantation Air Quality Index, K-12 Online, Montana Associated Technology Roundtables, My Global Career, Telework Beat, Virtual Work Factors

<ed.note>Some people ask what I do re: conmergence. I aggregate trends, predict the future, am ignored locally and read globally ( the prophet in his own country, parable of the field with hidden treasure, etc. ). And I connect innumerable folks walking down parallel paths who are unaware of one another's work. Since information is the "new gold" it's my way of being a social venture capitalist.

Jay Deragon is one refreshing Innovation Plantation entrepreneurs who has a keen eye on the "siliconvallification" of global work, especially as it has affected the Relationship Economy. Among other things, he shepherds Wirelessfactors.com and today has posted on "Virtual Work Factors." Jay mentioneds IBM, who purchased WebDialogs yesterday, in part, because IBM has learned from their foray into open source how online global collab tools makes for more efficient work ( they do a lot of professional service work, you know ). Similarly, SUN's Jonathan Schwartz is betting on using the viral nature of the global open source collab model to underpin their marketing push re: hardware, etc. And, of course, Microsoft has the groovy Ray Ozzie.

I've been monitoring how online collab work is affecting the educational establishment ( curriki.org, dspace.org, ocw.mit.edu, blackbaud, socialtext, GLOSAS Global University, etc. ) especially as young workers ( new parents to be ) are migrating out of the NE of the US and to Europe and Asia -- and into more rural US climes while competing more globally. Yet, for whatever reason, while corporate online unversities flourish, we send our K-12 students home at half-day because the temperature in the building is over 100 degrees F because we lack sufficient air conditioning capacity in the public school buildings. The question no Nashville locals appear to be willing to ask is "Why do you need to drive a student to a public school in order to attend a public school in the first place?"

Question: If you want a quick shorthand indicator for local workplace culture innovation, should one look at air quality?</ed.note>

Why, Yes, I AM A LIFE Scout

Scouts on the GRID.

<ed.note>Now, if someone would just tell the leadership of Girl Scouts of the United States of America that the best way for them to model best business practices for the girls is to use their e-commerce site to sell cookies instead of doodads...</ed.note>

Managing Virtual Distance - Driving Business Transformation through Distributed Work, November 14-16, 2007

The Disneyland Hotel • Anaheim, CA

THE One, THE Only Conference Focused on Strategies, Teams, Tools & Beyond in the Virtual Workplace
ANNOUNCING INAUGURAL CONFERENCE ON MANAGING VIRTUAL DISTANCE

• IDENTIFY, MANAGE & MEASURE virtual distance
• Break through language barriers & manage MULTI-CULTURAL ENVIRONMENTS
• Harness virtual KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
• Believe the unbelievable & witness the power of VIRTUAL WORLDS technology
• Transform business norms & cause cultural shifts in the way people work through SOCIAL NETWORKING
• Implement new millennium strategies that change the way we think about INNOVATION in a corporate context
• Manage, Train & Measure Productivity of the REMOTE EMPLOYEE
• Identify SECURITY CHALLENGES introduced by the transition into Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

To Register:
E-mail register@iirusa.com
Call 888.670.8200
Fax 941.365.2507 
Visit http://www.iirusa.com/virtual

The New World of Work
Daniel W. Rasmus
Director of Information Work Vision – MICROSOFT

Virtual Distance Under High-Stress
Honorable Jerry MacArthur Hultin
President – POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY & FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF THE U.S. NAVY

Global Projects vs. Traditional Projects
Karan Sorensen
Chief Information Officer – JOHNSON & JOHNSON PHARMACEUTICAL R&D

Legal Issues & IP Protection
Michael S. Mensik
Partner – BAKER & MCKENZIE

Virtual Worlds Technology
Philip Rosedale
Founder & CEO – LINDEN LABS

Secrets of High-Performance Distributed Teams
Cynthia C. Froggatt
Author of “Work Naked: Eight Essential Principles for Peak Performance in the Virtual Workplace”

Leadership in the Digital Age
Charles H. House
Executive Director – STANFORD UNIVERSITY, MEDIA X LAB

A Perspective From Corporate Resources
Ann Bamesberger
Vice President of Open Work Services – SUN MICROSYSTEMS

More here.

Call for Source Code for Biology and Medicine

Dear Colleague,

We would like to invite you to submit your next manuscript to Source Code for Biology and Medicine.

Source Code for Biology and Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal published by BioMed Central. It covers source code employed over a wide range of applications in biology and medicine. The journal is advised by an expert Editorial Board.

Thanks to Source Code for Biology and Medicine's open access policy, all articles published in the journal are freely accessible online. Articles published in Source Code for Biology and Medicine are highly visible and read by a wide audience. Two of the most accessed articles published in the journal since its launch are:

Accesses 4166		Software review Gbrowse Moby: a Web-based browser for BioMoby Services Mark Wilkinson Source Code for Biology and Medicine 2006, 1:4 (24 October 2006) [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles] [Cited on BioMed Central]
Accesses 2028		Research A traveling salesman approach for predicting protein functions Olin Johnson, Jing Liu Source Code for Biology and Medicine 2006, 1:3 (12 October 2006) [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [PubMed] [Related articles]

To keep up to date with the latest articles, why not register to receive article alerts when new research is published?

Submit your research to Source Code for Biology and Medicine and take advantage of an efficient online submission process, a rapid, high quality peer-review service, and immediate publication upon acceptance. There are no color charges and no limits on the number of figures or embedded movies.

The published version of your article will be immediately placed in PubMed Central and other freely accessible full-text repositories. This complies with the NIH Public Access Policy and the Wellcome Trust Open Access Policy.

To enable the journal to make all of its content open access, Source Code for Biology and Medicine will levy an article-processing charge for each manuscript accepted after peer review (payable on acceptance).

Please submit your manuscript via our online submission system. For more information about the journal, contact peterson.leif@ieee.org or visit our instructions for authors.

Yours sincerely,

Emmanuel Ifeachor and Leif Peterson
Editors-in-Chief, Source Code for Biology and Medicine

Editors-in-Chief Emmanuel Ifeachor (United Kingdom) Leif Peterson (United States) Editorial Board Generoso Bevilacqua (Italy) Elia Biganzoli (Italy) Ramón Cacabelos (Spain) Xue-wen Chen (United States) Matthew Coleman (United States) Anne Denton (United States) Jose Fonseca (Portugal) Paolo Frasconi (Italy) Jonathan Garibaldi (United Kingdom) Owen Hoffman (United States) Jung-chang Huang (United States) Vasily Leonov (Russian Federation) Paulo Lisboa (United Kingdom) Francesco Masulli (Italy) Rita Noumeir (Canada) Lucila Ohno-Machado (United States) Silvano Paoli (Italy) Giovanni Parmigiani (United States) Ioannis Pitas (Greece) Edward Sarkisyan-Grinbaum (Switzerland) Scott Smith (United States) Roberto Tagliaferri (Italy) Manuel Ujaldon (Spain) Staal Vinterbo (United States) Michalis Zervakis (Greece)

If Congress Can't Understand the Decrease in STEM Students

<ed.note>it is, in part, because CIOs are being paid to down-salary and geo-concentrate tech-related gigs and the folks intelligent enough to enter STEM classes are also intelligent enough to use this new-fangled world wide web thingie and read about. Informed, market forces can be very efficient re: incenting activity.

The comments at one posting on this reality ( "This is all about containing costs. There are more than enough well trained US citizens available to fill these positions." and "There are lots of other professionals with elite qualifications (and sometimes experience) that would love to join the revolution. What about using technology to employ people where they currently live?" ) reinforce for me the inconsistency of the fedgov's lack of policy to encourage firms which make software to enable the distributed, digital enterprise, which the fedgov buys, to adopt the work over ip paradigm, especially at as time when politicos "make hay" over e85 ( noone dares mention it is in part because of all that commuting folks are doing ).

Any currently running Green politician out there willing to make "the work over ip paradigm as default position" part of their campaign speech? "e-nable first, then e85." How would that play with the Iowa server farmers?</ed.note>

The Blackboard Patent Pledge

here.

14th Annual iEARN International Conference and 11th Youth Summit in Cairo, Egypt July 21-26

The theme of this year's conference is "Connecting Cultures ... Respecting Differences: A global dialogue for development and sustainability"

The iEARN International Conference is a unique global opportunity and attended by approximately 1,000 participants from over 70 countries each year. The annual conference showcases educational technology activities, school partnerships, new Internet-based professional development tools, innovative curricula, and the collaborative efforts of youth and educators participating in the network. The six-day event also features visits to local schools, a community service project, and interactive presentations by ministries of education, businesses, and educational organizations eager to form partnerships with iEARN schools.

Objectives

Share models for how educational telecommunications can be used to affect positive social, political and economic change, and address unmet human and environmental needs.

Share successful classroom project examples that make a meaningful difference, and ideas/models of curriculum/classroom learning enhancement. Address issues of global technological inequalities and costs to local schools.

Demonstrate and provide hands-on experience in leading technology.

Encourage cross-cultural understanding through the use of different languages in project work, making place for voices which are not usually heard, and exploring other ways of breaking down barriers.

Enlarge the iEARN community to expand its global community of educators and youth leaders using telecommunications.

Share innovative educational resources from different centres, countries and organizations.

Identify steps toward enhancing and sustaining on-line project participation.

Create the environment for new collaborative project ideas to be developed, and enable participants to return home with specific action steps to create and/or expand educational telecommunications project work.

Build on the highly successful inaugural teachers and students previous meetings and conferences in different countries.

Open to educators from outside the iEARN Network.

Discuss and demonstrate of the latest developments in educational practice utilising telecommunications and associated technology will be the key focus of the workshop sessions.

Advancing Virtual Organizing: Potentials and Realities from Scientific Grid to Citizen-Service Communities - June 20, 2007

The purpose of the workshop is to envision greater possibilities for distributed citizen service communities, in light of grid-based, research and design communities. How can emerging public service communities learn "build to share" principles from distributed research communities already benefiting from cyberinfrastructures they have built? What are the implications for accelerating Service Oriented Architecture in public service communities?

By discovering how different fields of business, science and healthcare are using grid computing, participants will share in lessons learned and best practices to provide a common foundation for establishing next steps in planning projects that leverage all the advances associated with grid communities.

"...Grids are the integrated platforms for all network-distributed applications or services whether they are computationally or transactionally intensive." Paul Strong, Grid Today, Sept.11, 2006

In addition, the workshop includes a focus on the U.S. HealthGrid. Current priorities as seen through the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for example call for advancing collaboration in biomedical research and using biomedical data and information to improve the quality and outcomes of health care delivery.

The President's goal to make an electronic health record available for most Americans by 2014 and the development of the Nationwide Health Information Network under the leadership of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, present a timely opportunity to share and collaborate advanced HealthGrid projects, systems, data and knowledge. Through collaboration, open solutions and innovation, the grid community can contribute to advancing quality, electronic health records, population and bio-surveillance and personal health records to achieve higher levels of performance and interoperability.

Open Education 2007: Localizing and Learning, September 26-28, 2007

OpenEd 2007 Call for Proposals - Deadline extended to Friday, June 15, 2007

For the first several years our field focused on content production and content licensing. Today, there are thousands of full university courses and tens of thousands of learning modules available as open educational resources under open licenses like those offered by Creative Commons. However, our work isn't finished; we're simply nearing a checkpoint.

If our open education efforts aren't supporting learning, we're failing as a field. Period. And as we are beginning to understand how to produce and license content, we have to turn some of our attention to how this content is used by learners and teachers. How do they change, adapt, and localize it for their specific needs or the needs of their specific students? Do open educational resources support learning in ways different from non-open resources? In what concrete ways do open educational resources support learning?

OpenEd 2007 will focus on:

• Localizing open educational resources
• Learning from open educational resources

Submission Instructions

Submit a brief description (50 words or less) and a long description (500 words) describing your topic, project, and/or research related to one or more of the conference themes. All presenters are required to register for the conference.

Acceptance announcements will be made by July 31, 2007. If your session was accepted for presentation, we strongly encourage you to submit a full paper for publication in the conference proceedings. Accepted full papers (5-10 pages) are due no later than August 17, 2007.

All submissions (brief description, long description and full papers) and presentations must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

Acceptance Criteria

Acceptance decisions will be made based on the following criteria:

A submission is RELEVANT when

• it directly address one or more of the conference themes

A submission is SIGNIFICANT when

• it raises and discusses issues important to improving the effectiveness and/or sustainability of open education efforts, and
• its contents can be broadly disseminated and understood

A submission is ORIGINAL when

• it addresses a new problem or one that hasn't been studied in depth,
• it has a novel combination of existing research results which promise new insights, and / or
• it provides a perspective on problems different from those explored before

A submission is of HIGH QUALITY when

• existing literature is drawn upon, and / or
• claims are supported by sufficient data, and / or
• an appropriate methodology is selected and properly implemented, and / or
• limitations are described honestly

A submission is CLEARLY WRITTEN when

• it is organized effectively, and / or
• the English is clear and unambiguous, and / or
• it follows standard conventions of punctuation, mechanics, and citation, and / or
• the readability is good

Questions?

Ask your question on the OpenEd 2007 Forum. Or email conference at cosl dot usu dot edu.

Who Fetches Coffee? - Internships move online

<ed.note>Apparently somebody knows about Results-Only Work Environments.</ed.note>

Friday, June 8, 2007, by Amy Hoak, MarketWatch

Last school year, Matthew Hanzelka did an internship with a financial planner, helping develop a monthly e-mail newsletter and taking on special projects while finishing coursework at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

But his wasn't a traditional type of internship, complete with a small workstation in an otherwise unused corner of an office. All the work was completed from the comfort of the house he and his roommates lived in, and he mainly communicated with his boss through e-mail and telephone.

College students across the country are beginning to embark on summer internships, often one of their first chances to apply concepts learned in the classroom to an actual workplace. Increasingly, however, defining the office casual dress code isn't necessary, as some interns aren't making regular appearances in the office at all.

Giving Knowledge for Free - THE EMERGENCE OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

01/06/2007 - The burgeoning Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is bringing higher education resources within reach of growing numbers of potential users around the world, but education authorities will soon have to grapple with new challenges such as copyright issues and the sustainability of business models, according to a new OECD study.

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources ( pdf here ) identifies more than 3,000 courses made available openly in 2007 to outside users by more than 300 universities worldwide. All kinds of institutions are involved, as are researchers and teachers from a wide range of disciplines. While English is the dominant language so far, translations are gradually catering for greater language diversity and increased global use.

“The potential number of users is enormous,” says Tom Schuller, head of the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, which carried out the study. “Open educational resources can expand access to learning for everyone, but most of all for non-traditional groups of students, thus widening participation in higher education. “

Open educational resources can be an efficient way of promoting lifelong learning, both for individuals and for governments. They can also help to bridge the gap between informal and formal learning.

At the same time, however, the OECD points to a need for clearer management of such projects. Few of today’s initiatives display a clear idea of how they will be sustained in the future, once initial funding from public or charitable sources is exhausted. What’s more, the OECD notes, higher education institutions will need to develop effective information technology strategies to manage innovations in the way students and teachers work.

The report is a follow-up to studies on e-learning in higher education produced by the CERI. It has been supported by the Hewlett Foundation (http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/).  Marshall Smith, the Hewlett Foundation’s Education programme director and a former Dean of Stanford University School of Education, welcomed the report: “this is a significant contribution to identifying key issues in a major new field, which could help to bridge the worldwide digital divide….”

For further information, journalists are invited to contact:
- at CERI/OECD: tom.schuller@oecd.org (00 33 1 4524 7901) or francesc.pedro@oecd.org (00 33 1 4524 8083)
-  at Hewlett Foundation: Marshall Smith (MSmith@hewlett.org) or Cathy Casserly (ccasserly@hewlett.org)

To obtain a copy of the report, journalists may contact Louise Fietz in the OECD's Media Relations Division.

World Bank Approves 164.5 Million for High-Speed Connectivity in Africa

elearning-africa.com [ See also the attachments for the GLOSAS Post for 05/26/07 ]

East and Southern Africa is the only region in the world that is not connected to the global broadband infrastructure. A crucial step in removing this obstacle occurred in Washington DC on March 29 2007 when the World Bank Board of Directors approved an International Development Association (IDA) financing package of 164.5 million (USD) for Kenya, Burundi and Madagascar. The financing package represents the first segment of the US$424 million Regional Communications Infrastructure Program (RCIP) for high-speed connectivity in East and Southern Africa.

Until now, the region has been held back by the prohibitive costs of international connectivity. At present, the region accounts for less than one percent of the world’s international bandwidth capacity and relies on satellite connectivity, with costs among the highest in the world. Because of this missing link, businesses are unable to compete in the global economy, university students suffer because they cannot access the Internet, and Government agencies cannot communicate effectively with each other and their citizens because they are not connected.

RCIP will bring affordable high-speed connectivity to as many as 25 countries in East and Southern Africa. The US$164.5 million first portion of funding consists of IDA credits amounting to US$114.4 million to Kenya, US$30 million to Madagascar, and an IDA grant in the amount of US$20.1 million to Burundi.

RCIP financing of terrestrial networks will be a catalyst to attract and maximize private sector investment in telecommunications infrastructure. By the end of the Program, it is expected that all capitals and major cities in East and Southern Africa will be linked to competitively priced high-bandwidth connectivity. This will equip Africa to trade on a level playing field, extend education beyond the classrooms, and accelerate good governance.