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I was lucky to be in Berlin with some colleagues earlier this month for the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival and associated fringe events. There's really too much to distill into a short post-from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, making the case for " Embracing the open opportunity," to Patrick Alley's breathtaking accounts of how Global Witness uses information, to expose crime and corruption in countries around the world.

A useful summary of some of the key take-aways from the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival, courtesy of Tariq Khokhar From the article: 1. There are some great open data initiatives around the world and two common themes are the need for a strong community of technologically literate data re-users, and the sustained effort needed within governments to change how they create, manage and publish data in the long term. 2. Spreadsheets are code and we can adopt some software engineering practices to make much better use of them. There are a number of powerful tools and approaches to data handing being pioneered by the scientific community and those working in other fields can adopt and emulate many of them. 3. Open data fundamentally needs open source software. App reuse often doesn't happen because contexts are too different. Reusable software components can reduce the development overhead for creating locally customized civic software applications and a pool of high quality civic software components is a valuable public good worth contributing to. Reading time: 15mins

I see that Google are the sponsors of the 2014 Open Knowledge Festival but despite having little knowledge about Google's role and interest in the Open Knowledge , I also feel they are the culprit when it comes to data manipulative for their own profit motives.

' ... licensing really does go to the heart of what open access means ...'

Open source and Open Access They are quite similar terms and with a common philosophy, give freedom to the user to use the share as he wills material. Interestingly both the open source and open access are four levels: Levels of open source 1 Level 0: Freedom to use the code 2 Level 1: Freedom of study code 3 Level 2: Freedom to study it and / or modify 4 Level 3: Freedom to redistribute (with or without changes) Levels of free access 1 Reuse all or part of the material for their own purposes 2 Sharing work with other 3 Power revise, adapt, change, and / or translate the shared work 4 Mix two or more existing sources and combine them to create something new As you can see they are very similar and can cause confusion, and believe they are the same. The authors are open access, public and / or private who wish to retain their copyright while the free code can be found that there is so much trouble (at least I think). ---------------- Código abierto y Acceso abierto Son términos bastante similares y con una filosofía común, dar libertad al usuario de usar el material compartido como a él le parezca. Curiosamente tanto el código abierto y el libre acceso tienen cuatro niveles: Niveles del código abierto 1. Nivel 0: Libertad de usar el código 2. Nivel 1: Libertad de estudiar el código 3. Nivel 2: Libertad de estudiarlo y/o modificarlo 4. Nivel 3: Libertad para redistribuirlo (con o sin cambios) Niveles del acceso abierto 1. Reusar una parte o toda del material para sus propios fines 2. Compartir el trabajo con otros 3. Poder revisar, adaptar, cambiar, y/o traducir el trabajo compartido 4. Mezclar dos o más fuentes existentes y combinarlos para crear algo nuevo Como se puede apreciar son muy similares y pueden causar confusión, y creer que son lo mismo. En el libre acceso existen autores, instituciones públicas y/o privadas que desean conservar sus derechos de aut

On my navigation searching for initiatives to see how Open Knowledge are making the difference on the Latin America society I found this... nowadays unfortunately on South America (and in other places as well) open knowledge initiative are not divulgated. Universities seem to be not interested about promoting these initiatives and few people know about them. I was amazed reading the text from Francisco J. García-Peñalvo (Open Knowledge. Challenges and Facts) and seeing that a lot of Universities on Europe and North America are promoting and working with open and free access to texts and online courses. It's incredible how people have the possibility of learning in a world that each day is more competitive. I really hope that this great news about Brazil helps more and more people to understand the impact and the changings on the educational process.

"Instead of calling for more money to prop up a traditional model that was never particularly viable in the first place, we need to embrace a variety of alternatives. Academic librarians are well positioned to lead the way here, both because of their long history of managing change and because they often hold the purse strings."

"Open access is a powerful solution to the barriers that researchers in developing and transition countries face. In 2013, a project was launched that let 100 institutions in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda join forces in educating their researchers on the changing practices of scholarly communication. The result: 25 fully operational open access repositories already, and the number is set to double."

"This report offers practical design advice to public managers and political leaders who are facing complex, dynamic public challenges involving multiple stakeholders on issues or problems where there is no clearly defined solution. In these situations, open project approaches have the potential to spark large-scale activity that could fundamentally change society."

In this article Abby Clobridge discusses the Scholarly Publication landscape today as it relates to open access journals, and how we need to re-think some of our standards for publishing (both my authors and by publishers).

Part 2 of this article addresses OA and journal impact factors, and part 5 give examples on how libraries/librarians can contribute in spreading OA acceptance.

Here is a list of the core readings and additional resources for each module from the Open Knowledge Changing the Global Course of Learning MOOC--a partial textbook for the course.

Sitios muy interesantes: http://mcpress.media-commons.org/plannedobsolescence/five-the-university/the-history-of-the-university-press/ http://www.amacad.org/publications/spring2002/hesse.pdf http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/1-22/1.full.pdf+html http://www.ccel.org/ccel/benedict/rule2/files/rule2.html#ch33 http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262512664_Download_the_full_text.pdf

thanks for sharing this

How the internet change the way we research and the way we live. Is it making us smarter or dumber?

Very interesting topic as we are moving deeper and deeper into the internet of things. May answer to that question is its depend how you use it and how you balance it with real life like nature, human relations etc.

The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable. The digital era is upon us. The Twilights and Freedoms of 2025 will be consumed primarily as e-books. In many ways, this is good news. Books will...

when I take a book in my hands, I always start with smelling paper (old or new), can we do the same thing with technology?

I do like physical book in my hand, but I find e-books more convenient either when I am writing my research paper or I want to read certain book right away. I heard that more and more universities are supporting e-book system, and getting rid of physical textbooks due to costs and other reasons. A lot more e-books will become useful in the future. I think paper books will exist, but it will be rare in the future.

Provides a list of important skills and how those skills are embedded within the curriculum.

Thank you Kevin Stranack for sharing. Tony Bates ends with five questions: 1. Have I covered the main skills needed in a knowledge-based society? What have I missed? 2. Do you agree that these are important skills? If so, should universities explicitly try to develop them? 3. What are you or your university doing (if anything) to ensure such skills are taught, and taught well? 4. What roles if any do you think technology, and in particular online learning, can play in helping to develop such skills? 5. Any other comments on this topic - My answers: 1. Frustration tolerance and keeping a balance between work and private life is a necessary skill 2, The skill set mentioned is important, but more likely trained in college than in university 3. I do have a personal coach and a counseler, and I'm enrolled in #OKMOOC 4. The activities required in every module of #OKMOOC ask to reach out, connect, build relationships, Have you answered the feedback questions?

This question is really the elephant in the room in a lot of university programs, especially in the humanities. I myself was a doctoral student in the humanities before leaving because, as I eventually learned, there were essentially no employment opportunities and my skillset in today's economy was sorely lacking. But the old mantra that "we teach critical thinking" is become a worn excuse. Do we really need four years to teach people the skills to survive "out there"? How much of our specialized knowledge will really be useful outside of the academy? These are questions we just don't have the answer to, and I'm not sure there are many people willing to ask them. But more to the point, I didn't see anything in this link about the changing ways that millennials (I promise that I hate the term as much as anyone, but it's a useful one) are engaging with information, and how that is changing how they actually think. There have been arguments made that digital natives (again, a pretty terrible term) think about and process information in very different ways that have serious implications for contextualization and long-term research. I'm not saying that universities don't teach these things in their own ways, but it's an important issue that needs addressing. I know that the link talks about the important of knowledge management, but there's a huge difference between simply knowing how and when to access information and quite another to properly contextualize its place in a larger hierarchy (or web) of knowledge. I would argue *that* skill is the one that universities are best poised to provide, and maybe why we keep hearing talk about how undergraduate degrees are the new highschool diplomas.

I followed a trail about Wikipedia that led me to their funding model. This is an interesting rebuttal to their strategy of asking users for donations atop the page (sort of a PBS/NPR model for those in the US). Interesting to think about how advertising or marketing might play into the Wikipedia model, and how it might change the dynamic of the conversation.

Thanks for the post! I also thought it was interesting to read the arguments for and against an ad-driven business model at the link below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_through_advertisements A limited advertising model actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think the real obstacle to changing business models is how passionately and adamantly Jimmy Wales has rejected even the future possibility. Strong wording sound heroic, but not allowing some flexibility could greatly limited Wikipedia's positive impact.

I really love this Jeff Jarvis talk. Education must change. Connected learning is our challenge!

Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in immediate open-access journals. The policy doesn't kick in until January 2017; until then, grantees can publish in subscription-based journals as long as their paper is freely available within 12 months.

This serves as a significant catalyst to change the mentality of both the researcher and the funder. The Gates Foundation is a leading organization in resolving world health issues. This action demonstrates their drive and desire toward their cause; and will hopefully it will start a trend amongst authors and other research funding NGOS.

As mentioned in class discussions, this is the only reasonable response. Bill and Melinda have put their time forth into creating charities, and attempting to control content which was given from charitable grants is lunacy. It is comforting to see the Gates foundation scrapping the 6-12 month window of restriction. WIth this said that said, this draws interesting parallels with journals that receive government grants due to the fact that the privately sold resource is already being funded by the tax payers.

Very recent video that has gone viral - two indian girls fight back after being sexually harassed on the bus. This video has brought a lot of media attention from all over the world to the mistreatment of women. As a form of citizen journalism, this video went viral through social media and has since stirred up political and social debates online, creating a movement for change.

Description: "This post discusses some of the tensions that exist between the increasing effort to enforce Intellectual Property Rights and the impact of the Internet." "It suggests that Internet users and IP owners are not fully reconciled on the impact of the Internet on IP. IP owners are often eager for the support of users in promoting their products, ideas, services online, still want to have almost exclusive control of how those activities are conducted, which often and inherently undermines the desire (and opportunity) to share. Hence although a mutually beneficial relationship between IP and IT can exist, there are still a number adjustments that ought to be made to better accommodate the changing paradigm that is occurring due to the Internet."

"By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

This article is fantastic, and speaks to just about everything I'm passionate about as an aspiring academic librarian. I'm somewhat worried about how smaller universities-my chosen workplace-will adapt to these newer models of scholarly communication and publication, and generally with how the academic conversation is changing. These exciting developments in what the university means have the potential to widen the already extensive divide between smaller and larger schools. I know the challenges section at the end talks a little bit about convincing decision makers to fund these projects, but has anyone read anything about how these changes can be made specifically by smaller or poorly funded universities?

The bot was created by an 18 years old programer. The objective is monitor the wikipedia changes made by government IP address. For exemple, guys from a public bank made some changes in the "Cimorelli" wikipedia page. Here an article (in portuguese) to explain how it works: http://gizmodo.uol.com.br/brwikiedits-wikipedia-governo