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We envision communications infrastructure that is owned and operated cooperatively, by the whole of humanity, rather than by corporations and states.We are using the power of peer-to-peer technologies to create a global network which is immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown.We promote freedoms, support innovations and advocate technologies that enhance and enable digital self-determination.

Article recounting the start of UMW Blogs and getting student to run their own infrastructure.

Martin Hawksey slides on using Wordpress plug-ins for the infrastructure of much of the ocTEL Mooc.

"As learning technologies are now integral to most higher education student learning experiences, universities need to make strategic choices about what technologies to adopt and how to best support and develop the use of these technologies, particularly in a climate of limited resources. Information from students is therefore a valuable contribution when determining institutional goals, building infrastructure and improving the quality of student learning. This paper draws on a survey of student experiences and expectations of technology across three Australian universities. Analysis of text responses from 7,000 students provides insight into ways that institutional learning technologies and academic-led technologies are influencing the student experience. This paper also discusses how the three universities have used this information to develop strategic initiatives, and identifies a need for new strategies to support academic-led use of the available tools."

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services."

Hey guys. Just watched a live session online at Cisco w the developers of this system, still in development, but interesting differentiators vs 2Life, e.g. peer-to-peer, nested worlds, oh and its open-source. Thought yaz might be interested in tracking it.

The vision for the Steeple project is to investigate, develop and document sustainable institutional infrastructure to support university wide educational podcasting. Steeple also hopes to instigate a viable community around scalable, enterprise-level solutions suitable for the UK-HE sector in the areas of automated video/audio capture, video/audio processing, and video/audio delivery ("podcasting").

"This is an initiative from the University of Otago, the University of Auckland, Wellington Institute of Technology, the University of Canterbury, and supported by Telecom NZ.  It is an open access national virtual world grid based on open source software.  It operates on NZ-based servers hosted at Otago, Auckland and Canterbury Universities, and leverages other national investments in IT infrastructure through deployment on the high-speed KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network). The grid has been set up with an academic focus and will be used for research and education, as well as for proof-of-concept application deployments and testing.  The objectives of the NZVWG initative are to: Undertake both experimental and routine use of virtual worlds in teaching and research;Develop engaging, interactive in-world content customised for NZ use; andDevelop new context-specific plugins enabling interaction between the virtual and real (non-virtual) worlds. "

Very well thought out exposition on how the 'openness' concept has been confused and damaged by the MOOC phenomena. Preview of a chapter to be published in Bonk's book MOOC and Open Education around the world.

The KAREN Services Working Group is opening their May meeting up to all KAREN members to get your input on collaboration and shared infrastructure services over KAREN.

Map of current and planned global internet cables