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"Can You Really Teach a MOOC in a Refugee Camp? - Wired Campus - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education August 1, 2014 by Steve Kolowich Two men living in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya, would watch lecture videos and take online quizzes at a nearby United Nations compound. (InZone) One narrative that has driven widespread interest in free online courses known as MOOCs is that they can help educate the world. But critics like to emphasize that the courses mostly draw students who already hold traditional degrees. So when Coursera, the largest provider of MOOCs, published a blog post about how a professor had used one of its online courses to teach refugees near the Kenya-Somalia border, it sounded to some like a satire of Silicon Valley's naïve techno-optimism: Hundreds of thousands of devastated Africans stranded in a war zone? MOOCs to the rescue! Details of the experiment paint a more nuanced picture, one that highlights the challenges MOOC providers face in trying to change the lives of downtrodden people. Barbara Moser-Mercer, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Geneva, ran the refugee experiment and wrote Coursera's optimistic blog post about it. But in an interview with The Chronicle, as well as a more formal article she wrote about the experiment for a European conference on MOOCs, the professor expanded on the logistical issues that come with trying to make sophisticated online courses work in deprived settings."

The Holy See delivered this statement on 18 June 2013 at the Marrakesh Diplomatic Conference on a WIPO Treaty for the Blind. Statement by His Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN and Other International Organizations in Geneva at World Intellectual Property Organization Diplomatic Conference to Conclude a Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities Marrakech (Morocco) "...Mr. President, The primary goals of the copyright system is the dissemination of creative works to enhance the common good. Copyright has never been an end in itself. Increasingly, technological developments have strained the capacity of copyright law to limit the ways in which the public accesses creative works. As stated by Jean Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens, "It would be radically unworthy of man, and a denial of our common humanity, to admit to the life of the community, and thus admit to work, only those who are fully functional. To do so would be to practise a serious form of discrimination, that of the strong and healthy against the weak and sick" [2] . Since all persons are called to contribute to society, it is fundamental to create an international instrument that could give even to impaired people a variety of opportunities to discover their potential, understand their environment, discover their rights and put to the best use their talents and resources both for personal fulfilment and for their contribution to society. This common good must be served in its fullness, not according to a reductionist vision subordinated only to the advantage of some people; rather, it is to be based on a logic that leads to the acceptance of a comprehensive responsibility. "The common good corresponds to the highest of human inclinations [3], but it is a good that is very difficult to attain because it requires the constant ability and effort to see

La difesa incondizionale da parte del Vaticano di un trattato OMPI per i ciechi e altre persone che non possono adoperare testi stampati è particolarmente interessante: in incontri precedenti su questo trattato - sotto il Papa precedente - il Vaticano si era allineato sui paesi ricchi del cosiddetto "Gruppo B" dell'OMPI nel chiedere di seppellire questo trattato.