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An interesting story about an initiative how to contribute to the development of Wikipedia content for a small country in its language.

The structure of MOOCs is continually evolving. Presently the major trend is the transferal of knowledge from the Western English speaking world, but this is changing. Collaboration and other countries' participation in creating this form of education are developing. I believe this is essential for specific regional needs to be satisfied and understood. It is technology and open education collaborating for the benefit of all, not only those with Western privileges. It's not education for education's sake, but brings in a more entrepreneurial approach - not only in Africa where one initiative has started. This article clearly illustrates these new developments in the MOOC arena, providing examples of projects underway and future plans for MOOC 2.0.

Es interesante notar que la propuesta educativa del MOOC sigue transformándose y expandiéndose. También me resulta desafiante que el terreno de aplicación del MOOC 2.0 sea el Asia (naturalmente, por la proporción de jóvenes) y no México. Esta es una interesante área de oportunidad.

I think MOOC will be much more effective as tool for learning exchanges between countries, especially developing stakeholder, rather than replacing high education.

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.

"EIFL enables access to knowledge through libraries in developing and transition countries to contribute to sustainable economic and social development."

EIFL-OA - free unrestricted access to peer-reviewed research literature

"An interactive network aiming to gather observations on whether, and under which conditions, open approaches to research and collaboration could lead to various development outcomes in the Global South." Also highlights open development, goal is to construct "....a conceptual framework and a 'Theory of Change' on how open science norms and practices could be further established in developing countries via a community-based and networked-driven approach, while building on key lessons learned from the funded case studies, and from other ongoing open initiatives"

Indigenous teachers bring in the non-Indigenous in a very radical way - a new name, a family relationship. This article was also interesting for the Indigenous response to a species completely outside their normal knowledge structures.

"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."

"Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated "open access" (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries."

Research by the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project thoroughly covers the issues related to copyright and access to learning resources in higher education in 8 African countries, namely Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. For each country, the authors give the background setting, an analysis and critical evaluation of the legal doctrine and inter-relationships, a qualitative assessment and then draw conclusions and make recommendations for improvements to be undertaken to improve the status quo of these challenges. It's acknowledged that much more research is still needed. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

from website: "Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. BI's goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap is crucial to a global understanding of health (tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new diseases), biodiversity, the environment, conservation and international development. By providing a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals (currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela), BI helps to reduce the global knowledge divide by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide." The site offers a range of journals, with full text access. Areas include zoology, health, agriculture, and nutrition. There aren't a lot of journals so the site is manageable. Good source if you are a scientist seeking data/information from areas other than the west.

The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world.For countries that have been more successful implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of the enabling environment. For countries and regions that are still in the early stages of Open Access development, the portal identifies key players, potential barriers and opportunities.

This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

BBC Click's Dan Simmons looks at how 5G has the potential to change our lives. [We've only just begun! The development of new technology will see major changes in education and publishing as it closes the connectivity gap between individuals, cities, states, countries.]

My last week in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City was markedly different from my week in Hanoi in ways I did not expect. A spirit of entrepreneurship and optimism about the future of education in Vietnam has been palpable. I met with several entrepreneurs in Ho Chi Minh City.

There is a lot of talk about education technology and open education resources having a big impact on learners in developing countries. This article offers a brief glimpse into education entrepreneurship in Vietnam. Vietnam Open Education Resources (VOER) has supposedly pushed Vietnam to have a more developed OER system than any other country other than the US. I would be curious to see how Thiem would measure this claim. Platforms built around OER have potential to lower costs of materials, but they rely heavily on an active base of creators and self-publishers. There may always be an incentive for creators of especially good content to offer it for a price. In addition, just as a movie benefits from the guidance of an experienced director, a textbook or etextbook or any other large-format education content benefits substantially from an experienced curator who could charge for his/her work. I don't see this going away any time soon.

This paper throws light on the growth and development of open repositories registered with OpenDOAR database. The study explores various facets of open repositories and tries to present a lucid picture of their overall development. The study provides a detailed description of repositories in terms of continent, country and subject wise distribution. The study further delves deep into the Asian contributions and brings to light detailed profiles of Asia