Reminder: Open Access Week, October 19 – 23, 2009

I just want to remind everyone that October 19 – 23 is Open Access Week.

This annual event presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Open Access Week builds on the momentum generated by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Event organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture welcome key new contributors, who will help to enhance and expand the global reach of this popular event in 2009: eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); and the Open Access Directory (OAD).

This year’s program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. OASIS will serve as the centerpiece of the 2009 program, delivering resources for every constituency and every awareness level. The Open Access Directory will again provide an index of participants on five continents, as well as their growing clearinghouse for all OA resources. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, OA videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other informative tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be highlighted during Open Access Week.

The organizers will also work with registrants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as “Administrators’ introduction to campus open-access policies and funds,” “OA 101,” and “Complying with the NIH public access policy” that take full advantage of available tools. Participants are invited to adapt these resources for local use, and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging — or even just wearing an Open Access t-shirt.

For more information about Open Access Week and to register, visit http://www.openaccessweek.org.

The Participatory Web - New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas

The most noticeable development in terms of e-tools is what is known as "Web 2.0", in which social software is used to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. This computer-mediated communication has become very popular with sites like MySpace and YouTube. These tools encourage self-publishing or online journalism, where people express their points of view on their websites. Whether you are sharing your words, video-sharing or photo-sharing, the most important aspect of Web 2.0 is the control it gives to any user to publish whatever they want to the web. Internet users are no longer passive recipients of information placed there by organizations and institutions. Instead they are active contributors. Web 2.0 tools have levelled the playing field.

Web 2.0 tools offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. The brochure, "The Participatory Web - New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas" published by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It serves as a practice-oriented introduction to the theme and discusses both the potentials and the possible limitations to the participatory web.

Download:
The Participatory Web pdf, 1.8 MB (English)

Clouding distinctions in higher education

I recently came across a thought-provoking volume - The Tower and The Cloud: Higher education in the Age of Cloud Computing - published as a free e-Book by EDUCAUSE. It examines the impact of IT on higher education and also on the IT organization in higher education. But it isn't intended as a book just for IT specialists or for higher education administrators (though it should be compulsory reading for these groups of people) - it is intended for all those with an interest in higher education and more broadly in societal structures in the networked information economy.

The book's description says: "The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual—or consumerization—is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing—a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services."

"Consumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions?"

Global Information Technology Report

The Global Information Technology Report 2008–2009 appears at a difficult time for the global economic system. Thus, it is important to reaffirm the crucial role of ICT for general competitiveness and progress and the importance of continuing to invest in ICT infrastructure and related services, as well as in innovation.

Published by the World Economic Forum under the theme “Mobility in a Networked World”, this year’s Report places a particular focus on the relationship and interrelations between mobility and ICT. With coverage of 134 economies worldwide, the Report remains the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of the impact of ICT on the development process and the competitiveness of nations. The Report stresses the importance of ICT as a catalyst for growth in the current global turmoil.

Electronic Health Records: A Primer

A Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records: A Primer - by Lucien Wulsin and Adam Dougherty.

Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records (HIT-EHR) is a broad term that refers to the generation, storage, and transmission of electronic health information. Information management is central to the healthcare system, and HIT-EHR is widely viewed as the necessary step to bring healthcare into the 21st century.

The benefits of health information technology are clear in theory, but adoption rates are low. While the development and wide-scale use of HIT-EHR has experienced obstacles, it is gaining ground in both the public and private sectors. This report highlights recent developments and explains various aspects of HIT-EHR, including definitions, current usage, how it can benefit healthcare quality and costs, barriers to its development, and current public and private efforts to implement and expand it. The report is based in the US, but the findings and lessons are applicable anywhere.

A Health Information Technology-Electronic Health Records: A Primer is downloadable free of charge as a PDF file here.

SOCOL@R - Index of Open Educational Resources

SOCOL@R - an index of Open Educational Resources (OER) - has been launched by China Educational Publications Import and Export Corporation (CEPIEC).

Along with the growth of network technology, open access (OA) resources achieved unprecedented development. OA journals and OA repositories provide reseachers with a new source of academic information. However, OA resources are spread in different organizations’ proxies and websites around the world, which makes full-scale search extremely difficult. Previously, the consolidation of OA resources was mainly conducted through two projects — DOAJ and OpenDOAR. Also, some similar work has been done by institutes and individuals. But none of these projects have made the majority of existing OA resource available to users in one single platform.

CEPIEC considers it is a necessity to collect and aggregate the OA journals and repositories internationally into one website in a searchable format for the convenience of end users. This is the aim of building Socolar — To provide a one stop search for all the open access information worldwide.

Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace

UNESCO releases new publication on open educational resources
26-06-2009 (Paris)

UNESCO has released its first openly licensed publication. Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace brings together the background papers and reports from the first three years of activities in the UNESCO OER Community. Access the online edition – or buy the book! Education systems today face two major challenges: expanding the reach of education and improving its quality. Traditional solutions will not suffice, especially in the context of today's knowledge-intensive societies.

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer one solution for extending learning opportunities. The goal of the OER movement is to equalize access to knowledge worldwide through sharing online high quality content. Open Educational Resources are digitalized materials offered freely and openly for use and reuse in teaching, learning and research.

Since 2005, UNESCO has been at the forefront of building awareness about this movement by facilitating an extended conversation in cyberspace. A large and diverse international community has come together to discuss the concept and potential of OER in a series of online forums.

The background papers and reports from the first three years of discussions are now available in print. Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace provides an overview of the first steps of this exciting new development: it captures the conversations between leaders of some of the first OER projects,and documents early debates on the issues that continue to challenge the movement. The publication will provide food for thought for all those intrigued by OER – its promise and its progress.

Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace is UNESCO's first openly licensed publication – an indication of the commitment of the Organization to the sharing of knowledge and the free flow of ideas.

Purchase the print edition

Access the online edition

Bridging the Knowledge Divide

Bridging the Knowledge Divide: Educational Technology for Development
Edited by: Stewart Marshall, The University of the West Indies; Wanjira Kinuthia, Georgia State University; and Wallace Taylor, The University of the West Indies.

In many international settings, developing economies are in danger of declining as the digital divide becomes the knowledge divide. This decline attacks the very fabric of cohesion and purpose for these regional societies and causes increased social, health, economic and sustainability problems.

This book, the first volume in the book series “Educational Design and Technology in the Knowledge Society”, discusses how educational technology can utilise ICT to transform education and assist developing communities to close the knowledge divide. It provides a comprehensive coverage of educational technology in development in different professions and parts of world.

The book provides examples of best practice, case studies and principles for educators, community leaders, researchers and policy advisers on the use of educational technology for development. In particular, it provides examples of how education can be provided more flexibly in order to provide access to hitherto disadvantaged and under-represented communities and individuals.

OASIS: A sourcebook on Open Access

With the growing interest in Open Access (OA) worldwide comes the increasing demand for training, knowledge development, and skills for the implementing of OA repositories and OA journals, the twin routes for making research results openly accessible.

OASIS aims to provide an authoritative ‘sourcebook’ on Open Access, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving it. The site highlights developments and initiatives from around the world, with links to diverse additional resources and case studies. As such, it is a community-building as much as a resource-building exercise. Users are encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use.

The concept of an OA resource arose because much ‘spreading the word’ activity (currently at least) is carried out by a core set of individuals who are invited to travel to address audiences or carry out training activities on all continents. This is reasonably effective on the local level at which it operates, but is costly for both trainers/speakers and participants, and the one-size-fits-all approach that necessarily has to be adopted is not the most effective way of educating and informing. Thus the current model for disseminating reliable and authoritative information about Open Access is unsustainable, is not effective on the large scale and is overly-onerous on the individuals concerned. The information needs of the scholarly community worldwide can better be addressed by the provision of an authoritative and informative resource on Open Access, delivered in various formats that accommodate the needs of all constituencies.

Objectives

The online content is intended to provide training and resources for anyone or institutions who wish to provide open access to their research publications. The objectives are:
• to increase the number of trainers and centres of expertise worldwide
• to expand the knowledge base of open access implementation
• to share resources and best practices
• to demonstrate and record successful outcomes of OA around the world


Key Characteristics of OASIS
• Open to any users
• Open to contributions from diverse practitioners
• Modular approach for content development to enable additions
• International cooperation
• Expert coordination and editorial team

An online education resource center

AcademicInfo is an online education resource center with extensive subject guides and distance learning information. Its mission is to provide free, independent and accurate information and resources for prospective and current students (and other researchers).



AcademicInfo was founded in 1998 by Mike Madin, a librarian coordinator, and is now maintained by multiple contributors.

The site currently features over 25,000+ hand-picked resources and the website is updated on a daily basis.