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Socientize Project is funded by EU 7th framework program, and hosts several citizen science projects, including SavingEnergy@home (collecting global thermal data), Cell spotting (looking at images of treated cancer cells), Collective Music Experiment (creating music from audio samples), Urban Bees and others. The page also includes links to useful citizen science resources (e.g. Pybossa, EpiCollect, BOINC), policy pecommendations & news regarding citizen science.

The AGORA program, set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of more than 3500 key journals and 3300 books to 2500 institutions in 116 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world.

Thanks, the site is useful.

It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

As a tradesperson working in the skill development landscape, I found this article about a group of passionate industry folks collaborating to build a knowledge base and fill a need not being addressed by formal educational channels quite compelling.

A curated list of Open Educational Resources for teachers and students interested in accessing quality educational materials made freely available. I would draw your attention to #11 Gooru. Teachers and students can search for or remix collections of K-12 resources searchable by topic or discipline. The stated aim is to personalize learning with freely accessible, high-quality, curated resources.

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.

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

Adobe has just given us a graphic demonstration of how not to handle security and privacy issues. A hacker acquaintance of mine has tipped me to a huge security and privacy violation on the part of Adobe. That anonymous acquaintance was examining Adobe's DRm for educational purposes when they noticed that Digital Editions 4, the newest version of ...

The Internet is challenging its users privacy, and privacy carries a different meaning in the Digital Age.

It seems internet users might just have to become "comfortable" with software companies now having access to large amounts of information about them…the new normal

published by Mozilla, covers all sorts of open news. Interesting feature: unlike most news sites the content is actually CC-by-sa. "The Open Standard provides online news coverage of open, transparent, and collaborative systems at work in technology and our daily lives. Our purpose is to showcase the positive global impact of these systems and inspire more people to seek out, support and adopt open principles of accessibility, participation and experimentation. The Open Standard is published by Mozilla, a global community of technologists, thinkers and builders working together to promote openness, innovation and opportunity online. We will disclose and be transparent if we take a position on or promote the products and services of Mozilla or a partner company."

for example, check out this article about companies collecting data on school kids, https://openstandard.mozilla.org/whos-collecting-kids-personal-data-lots-of-people/

That is scary...

"HINARI Programme set up by WHO together with major publishers, enables low- and middle- income countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of biomedical and health literature. Up to 13,000 journals (in 30 different languages), up to 29,000 e-books, up to 70 other information resources are now available to health institutions in more than 100 countries, areas and territories benefiting many thousands of health workers and researchers, and in turn, contributing to improve world health."

Very good collection of useful sites + instructions how to find Creative Commons licensed items

Quite interesting guide on how to find relevant OER of different types and natures. «Reusing existing Open Educational Resources (OER) can save significant time and effort. The OPEN partners recommend TAACCCT grantees invest up-front time finding OER to reuse rather than starting development of new educational resources right away. A significant benefit of OER is that they provide source material to build your development efforts around.» Ricardo twitter: @ricbruno71

Really helpful go-to collection of links with explanations for each, and more than just image references (videos, sounds, etc). Great resource, thanks for sharing.

The pan-European data regulator group Article 29 has issued new opinion on how websites and advertisers can track users and the permissions they require. The new opinion dictates that "device fingerprinting" - a process of silently collecting information about a user - requires the same level of consent as cookies that are used to track users across the internet.

It is impossible to ban all tracking, just like if I am using Chrome, it is normal for me to think that I am tracked by Google. If I am using Safari, then it is normal for me to think I am tracked by Safari. I believe that there is not anything wrong with people collecting my "non-identifying material", since it is only data. But if it is more like personal information, it should be banned. Also, there are a lot of sites when we ban cookies, the photos or some content will not appear. So no cookies means no content. In the end would not there be no effect on how people uses the websites? If we do not accept it, we could not use the site, the only difference is we are informed about it, and we should assume every site or software once it is connected to the internet, it implies some kind of tracking.

This is a Wikipedia book on health care, a collection of Wikipedia articles that can be easily saved, rendered electronically, and ordered as a printed book

Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. More than 400 million CC-licensed works are now available on the Internet, varying from music, photos, research findings to entire courseware. Creative Commons provides the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. Millions of creators world over are taking advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity. The book The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators, some such famous creators are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization or the nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content to the rest of the world.

The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science is an open community offering countless ideas, DIY instruction and kits for carrying out science projects from your own kitchen (literally). Even better - you can become a part of a collaborative community, which shares ideas & tips, and all data collections are available under CC!

I particularly like the open source approach of the Public Lab, which ensures a collaborative building of creative solutions, which are then available under fair and open terms. Thanks for sharing the resource. Balthas

Traditional Healers Organization For Africa: " Biopiracy and Indigenous Traditional Medicine Knowledge The blatant plunder of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources in South Africa continues unhindered and without State monitoring. Since 1997, We have been monitoring private and public enterprises (or their intermediaries) who are actively collecting, sampling and acquiring traditional knowledge for the development of pharmaceutical products. What concerns us is that international organizations are entering South Africa to carry out this research. Not even the World Health Organization are free of scrutiny in this regard. "Biopiracy" refers to the use of intellectual property laws (patents, plant breeders' rights) to gain exclusive monopoly control over genetic resources that are based on the knowledge and innovation of indigenous peoples. Biopiracy and bioprospecting don't just happen in the field ; biopiracy is even more likely to take place in the laboratories of industry and academia, and in patent offices in the cities not even in South Africa."

"This paper provides a brief overview of the ideas and principles underlying the connected learning movement, highlighting examples of how libraries are boosting 21st century learning and promoting community development by partnering with a range of organisations and individuals to incorporate connected opportunities into their programmes"

Thanks Kevin for sharing this.

El lado oscuro de las bibliotecas: "¿Quieren leer? Pues a pagar" Es un delirio: cuando tomemos prestado un libro de una biblioteca será preciso pagar un canon http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/08/27/babelia/1409137321_870906.html

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.