Group items tagged

This blog about Open Data Developments in Asia analyses the recent state of Open Data adopted in Asia and highlights some of the 11 Asian countries participants that attended the Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva in 2012. Of the 11 countries that attended the conference, the author of the post focuses on the East Asian and Pacific countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar and discusses their state and role in Openness. The author does a good job at providing statistics of the different countries in terms of the Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), which analyzes the economic rankings of countries. The author then compares economic rank to that of openness, stating that countries low on the economic rank contribute little to no open data within their own countries or externally to other countries. Next, the author talks about the overall internet penetration in Asia as being only 27.5 percent and in that statistic, there is still a wide gap between North and South East Asia in terms of internet use and information distribution and acquisition from citizens and others. Moreover, the author continues to compare how many social, economical, political and cultural influence information distribution, contribution and acquisition in Asia countries. Openness is growing in the more developed Asian countries, but openness is limited, or even nonexistent, in developing (authoritative) countries. After reading this article, I've had a greater understanding of the current state of Open Data in Asia an the influences that contribute to enabling Openness. What I expected from the blog post or something that would've made the post even better could be some examples or projects of Openness or Open Data in Asia.

This piece was published as part of the GIZ compendium "10 trends in open innovation" and talks about self-organized and connected peer-to-peer learning for sustainable human development worldwide. Might be of interest as additional resource for Module 11: Global Perspectives on Equity, Development, and Open Knowledge

Dear Pris, dear Jurado, thanks a lot for your comments. I like the ideas and I would particularly like to know more about the thought, that "freedom has its own process tht could eventually produce a network ...". Thanks and cheers, Your Balthas

Thanks for sharing this great article! These topics are where I would like discussions about open access to start. We may be able to use that base of peer learning communities to think about all the other issues of open access in a new light.

An interesting opinion/confessional piece on one academic's experience of publishing in the developing world. The author points out cultural pressures and differences that could possible contribute to the expanding knowledge gap.

It is very fascinating articles, thank you for posting this. I myself, most of the times, focus on the publisher issues rather than the author himself. However, after read this I realise how important it is to pay attention to the authors because their contribution can really affect the quality of researches that they involved in. Regardless how successful the authors are, they are still human beings who are also affected by the national cultures.

This is an interesting piece but raises the question - why is the institution placing the pressure? It says, tacitly, a lot about the culture of the academic institutions in the country as a whole - and this culture is often shaped by funding patterns from central government, or major funders. The institution then responds to these funding patterns by pressuring staff to produce what is funded. In South Africa this is very much the pattern, with central government funding articles published in selected journals (see the readings for the module 11). However, there has been a rethink and there is proposed changes in now supporting book publication to a much greater degree. So whereas the pressure was on to produce articles, now the universities are looking at book production to a greater extent. As has been said as a truism; "Follow the money" - and in this case we see how this affects what should be, in effect, academic freedom.

A brief article that looks at some of the research emerging from the massive amounts of student use data collected in MOOCs. Points toward directions for future improvements. Still a great deal of focus on the video lecture, as opposed to participant connections.

From immemorial time, the education has been a privilege for richest, this is a real problem and creates atremendous inequality between the human beings. It is truth that the knowledge, in this globalised era the MOOC for example, makes by all means, arrive specialized education at a number of people highly motivated and, the quality of the same of this is excellent,...

The video depicts importance of education for all. Education is eye opener to live like a human.Education seems to be a single solution for all the major issues facing the human race. Educating a girl means educating entire family which results in more literates in this world

I think sharing is great but just throwing data in the Internet is rubbish.

In 1990, after seven years of teaching at Harvard, Eric Mazur, now Balkanski professor of physics and applied physics, was delivering clear, polished lectures and demonstrations and getting high student evaluations for his introductory Physics 11 course, populated mainly by premed and engineering students who were successfully solving complicated problems. Then he discovered that his success as a teacher "was a complete illusion, a house of cards."

The thing that I liked most about this article (and I really liked it!) was the mention of numerous research studies that have looked into the effects of active learning. Also how Mazur himself collects data on his students' results. The fact that interactive learning can be backed by empirical research only adds to its strength as an effective pedagogical method.

"In a plan to scan all of its publications to the cloud, the National Library of Norway is digitalizing its books, and it and plans to make them all freely available to users with a Norwegian IP address. The library plans to have the project completed in about 15 to 20 years."

This is such a great initiative! And it falls under common sense, why would the documents obtained by legal deposit not be available for all the population of a country? Seeing my own country, Canada, reducing the acquisitions under legal deposit while others makes it more visible and accessible makes me want to weep.

This report shows the importance of college education. With the rise in cost of higher education, it is all the more important to have alternatives to the traditional route for college. For those who question the value of college in this era of soaring student debt and high unemployment, the attitudes and experiences of today's young adults-members of the so-called Millennial generation-provide a compelling answer. On virtually every measure of economic well-being and career attainment-from personal earnings to job satisfaction to the share employed full time-young college graduates are outperforming their peers with less education.

There are also costs to society - countries with fewer educated citizens cannot be as competitive in the global environment. It behooves countries to try to figure out how to keep education economical for its citizens.

Well said. Thanks for bringing up this topic and adding it to the conversation. I don't doubt that those who keep learning and gain skills will be more valuable economically and probably then more economically rewarded. But I have serious doubts that the current program of institutionalized degrees is the best route for citizens.

Places the popular concept of the makerspace within the theoretical context of experiential education.

I have a 11-year old daughter, so a lot of the readings and activities we do in this course usually lead me to compare between how they apply to k-12 "fundamental" education and professional development. We are lucky in that some of her teachers are experimenting with flipped classroom and project-based learning. However, as a parent on the sideline, sometimes I wonder about their activities. How do I or anyone evaluate an activity to know that it is "educational"? This article gives a great definition, "...an experience is educative if it lead to further growth, intellectually or morally..." Another quote I like a lot is "learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results."

Good article on the Maker Movement, and references to the thinking of John Dewey. I hadn't realized some of the Maker Movement extends back to the 1970's. I had the chance to meet Sylvia Libow Martinez a couple of years ago (of Invent to Learn - http://www.inventtolearn.com/) and got a deeper insight into the power of the Maker Movement, Maker Fairs, and how sharing knowledge and collaboration is producing some amazing things in the realm of 3D printing, wearable technology, and changing paradigms for education.

La educación a distancia requiere de compartir recursos de manera libre para adquirir conocimiento y generarlo de la misma manera.

I like this article because give us templates to work and the possibility to create.

Peter Downes wrote this blog criticizing the Cape Town Declaration. It was very interesting reading in terms of looking at the issues from different perspectives. I did not agree on everything he wrote, but the following paragraph was resonated in my mind as I read it. I DID , however add a word - in parenthesis. "If there is anything that could be thought of as a truism in contemporary education, it is the idea that we are all learners and that we are all teachers. The idea of lifelong learning makes explicit the former idea, and the principles of learner-centered, constructive and inquiry-based learning make explicit the latter. Knowledge - particularly social and public knowledge - is not something that is (only) produced by a hothouse meeting of experts, but rather, is produced through a process of dialogue and conversation".

The fact is someone had to initiate and ask for comments. The door might not have been widened enough as the author comments. It is perhaps time to understand that in as much as we would like to live in an open world, our views will always diverging to a number of directions.