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There's a lot to digest here, particularly if you want to read the whole report as well as the edited summary. I particularly liked the responses from JP Rangaswami: "The quality of real-time information that becomes available will take the guesswork out of much of capacity planning and decision-making......The net effect will be to reduce waste everywhere: in physical flows and logistics, in the movement of people and goods; in logical flows and logistics, in the movement of ideas and information; decisions will be made faster and better, based on more accurate information; prior errors in assumption and planning will be winkled out more effectively." And from Howard Rheingold: "We will live in a world where many things won't work, and nobody will know how to fix them." On a personal note, I can see there might be benefits with the IoT, particularly the use of sensors and actuators for monitoring and improving health, but will it put the final nail in 'privacy' and enable marketers to push their products and control my thoughts 24 x 7 through the pervasive use of wearable devices and biological interfaces with technology? Reading time: 60 mins

Literacy is the human right, but there are still 781 million illiterate people in the world. Every single day is good to spread the word about literacy, and help organizations like UNESCO or Worldreader to bring educational opportunities to people in developing countries. One day, however, is special.

"Emergency and conflict in countries such as Syria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have made us more aware of the long-term serial disruption and psychosocial damage faced by people caught up in emergency and conflict areas. Open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) has sometimes been employed in these regions to maintain a degree of continuity in education. For the most part, however, this role has been ad hoc, short-term and often bearing limited relation to the psychosocial and educational needs of the displaced or traumatised populations it serves."

Canada's new anti-spam legislation (CASL) helps protect Canadians while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the global marketplace. On July 1, 2014 Canada's anti-spam law came into effect. I believe it's the strictest in the world. If you email anyone in Canada you need to make sure you comply with this new law. We had to take a number of measures at my company including ceasing all bulk emails until we get our new opt-in database populates; including a footer in all our emails that allows recipients to opt out of receiving emails from us, and company-wide training on CASL and what we need to do to comply. People can be personally liable for violating this law. I'm not sure if the government has any manpower to actually monitor and prosecute any violators but we will see. As a Canadian, I don't think my SPAM had decreased - I actually received more emails to 'opt in' to mailing lists. I have also noticed that almost every message I receive has an unsubscribe option at the bottom, something I've been taking advantage of. I am not sure how this will ultimately affect open knowledge or if it will but it has made me think twice about reaching out to people I don't know over email.

A keynote presentation from Tim Berners-Lee, advocating openness of the Web. He notes that some people argue the only way to protect the web is to make a walled garden of safe content, but Berners-Lee disagreed. "The world I see is predicated on an open neutral network," he said. 

Excellent article! " When questioned on the ethics of the web, he said it reflected humanity." and "I think surveillance is inevitable but not acceptable. We need a system built where there is an agency that watches the watchers." No one is watching the watchers. That's a big problem.

This website also offer free classes to high school and college students. I hope more and more students or people who can't accept good quality education can benefit from open knowledge !

Since I'm in South Africa, ... --- "My campaign has been working on the National Key Points Act for over a year, and some of the people in my team have been working on it for more than a decade. In this session, people who'd never even heard of the National Key Points broke new ground within 20 minutes."

Local Contexts is a new forum for applying Traditional Knowledge licenses or labels to materials from Indigenous communities. They work a lot like Creative Commons licenses. There are often different categories of Indigenous knowledge meant only for the community, or only for women, or only for leaders, and these licenses offer a way to label materials accordingly. These labels and licenses are added onto existing copyright, which is often held by the person who made a tangible material rather than the community where the idea comes from (an anthropologist who filmed a traditional ceremony owns the copyright on the film, and the community has no copyright). These TK labels are asking people who come across materials like this to think about how they are using the materials, and to think about whose intellectual property they are. This is a very new initiative, but a really valuable tool. This is part of a different conversation that challenges how we normally talk about copyright and intellectual property.

Edited by Dr. F. Woody Horton, the second edition of the UNESCO sponsored publication, Overview of Information Literacy Resources Worldwide 2014-2015, is available for download.

Hi Kim, thanks for this report. The list of "resources" includes a list of names of people, their organizational affiliation and e-mail adress who happen to be active in the field of information literacy in the Netherlands. Those are the people I would like to reach out to in developing a Wikipedia Education Program. Find ways to embed Wikipedia assignments to students in for example information literacy courses.

A Video Community for Why Open Education Matters

This video was created in 2012, where the OER was already promoted, and I just learned about it in 2014. I guess there are still a lot of people who does not know about it. Now I wonder, what is going to change in the teacher's role? If there are more MOOC courses, does that mean the need of teachers will decline? When he mentioned that they use public funds to develop these Open Educational courses, does that mean the rise of taxes? Although I do support the OER, it is still developing, adjustments need to be made for the balance of these courses and the public sector.

I like this article. I think students are limited to get access to knowledge, resulting from distance, poverty, politics. Open education resources can reduce the distance, making people all around world join a same class. Free makes poverty students get chance to take courses which he couldn't afford before.

Nothing beats the real thing

Professor Jansen at his best! I have been wondering if MOOC's would work well with entry level students. For me, this Mooc has been stimulating and informative, but then, I already have a post grad university qualification and I wished to update myself on newer research methodologies and advances in information management. It would be interesting to test whether young people who are not initially accepted at university, for whatever reason, could use MOOCs to prepare themselves for their future chosen courses, but that would take a lot of determination, maturity and dedication on their part. Having been a bricks and student myself, I would recommend it to all young people who wish to study after school, but MOOC's do have a place to keep oneself updated. I've learnt so much and I intend to carry on with this research after the course for my own benefit (and who knows maybe register for more MOOCs!)

"This small pilot study suggests that the article creation process may more closely mirror the traditional writer/editor process than it does the "crowd as writer-editor". It also raises questions about potential changes in how people view the content creation process."

Are you agree that social media profile becoming as important as your resume?

Actually I don't think so. Personally think Facebook is more about personal use and private, but resume is more professional. For example you wouldn't never put a photo that your friend and you was in a pub on your resume, but you may put this on Facebook. However, LinkedIn do better in professional online profile in terms of social media networking.

I would argue that LinkedIn and Twitter are better indicators of professional accomplishment. I would like to think that as of now Facebook is still relatively private considering its primary function is to serve as a social (more intimate/private) communication tool rather than a networking platform. I have heard employers openly admit to using LinkedIn as a preliminary screening tool. Regardless of the forum, social media will continue to play a significant role in reflecting our personal and professional identities.

The article was written a few years ago, but the subject is still strong on the scene. The internet based language learning has increased as people figure that money and time can be saved, and the learning can come as good as in a regular language school. I've studied languages on line with many of these free programs and I have really improved. Being able to connect with people from all over the world that are on the same path as you on learning helps a lot. I believe that, that is a relevant open online resource.

Why it "works" Network Effect Wikipedia benefits tremendously from the network effect. The network effect is when a user of a product benefits more from a product if other people also use the product. Telephones are a textbook example. If only a few dozen consumers have telephones, then the telephones aren't very useful. But if millions of consumers have telephones, they become more useful since each telephone owner can contact many people. The large number of Wikipedia users benefits Wikipedia. First, the more editors there are, the the higher the accuracy and quality of the articles. Secondly, it gives an incentive to users to edit. Since editors know the each article will be read by thousands of users, the sheer influence of each article is a strong enough incentive to edit, even though Wikipedia is free. Openness Wikipedia is free and open for any user to edit, even anonymously. This means there is a very large number of editors. This helps Wikipedia ensure accuracy since each mistake and inaccuracy will have to get by hundreds of editors. With so many writers, the scope of Wikipedia articles is very large, minimizing the amount of missing information. Although the openness of Wikipedia provides a powerful self-correcting method, it also makes Wikipedia vulnerable to vandalism. In addition, editors are anonymous and may have a conflict of interest, or might have inadequate knowledge of the article's subject. Yet, because Wikipedia is open to any edits, it is also likely to be corrected. It operates by a system of checks and balances from many editors. However, it has some guidelines to protect it against misinformation and bias: 1. Verifiability principle. To prevent bias and to protect the encyclopedic quality of its articles, all edits on Wikipedia must in theory be a verifiable fact. Moreover, it must have a reliable source to verify each fact. 2. No Original Research. As an encyclopedia, it is mean to be a secondary source of infor