Case studies: Successes in sharing?
Pia Smith,
President, Linux Australia
ICT in Australia - Time to SOS (Share Our Source)
Link to materials.
Brazil is an interesting case study.
It is embracing Open Source from the most technical geek
through to the Minister
of ICT. Many initiatives are in place in Brazil, including
a large one to turn around the current purchase of imported
software (to the tune of US$1.2 billion) to the migration
of around 500,000 government and school computers to Linux,
and eventually to export around US$2 billion worth of software
per year.
Other countries such as Spain, Malaysia, Germany,
and South Africa are also reaping the benefits of Open
Source. One
of the biggest factors is the idea of sharing knowledge:
the concept that IP is not a finite supply, but rather
becomes more valuable with sharing and collaboration, and
the notion that IP should be protected from monopolisation,
not open sharing.
Through Open Source we see a sharing culture and meritocracy
that can afford fair treatment and equal opportunity to all,
regardless of their normal societal restrictions. http://pipka.org/blog/1089123931 includes
some thoughts and observations from both FISL (Brazil) and
WSIS (the UN ICT conference in Geneva).
Pia Smith is in her second year as President of Linux Australia,
a national group focused on the Australian Linux and Open
Source developer/user community. In this role she attended
several global conferences and saw some novel implementations
of Open Source code and culture: 'Developing' countries able
to provide one computer to every two children at school,
'Free Knowledge' projects revolutionising community contributions
and opportunities for everyone, the Digital Divide slowly
but surely being reduced by one of the fastest growing and
most successful international collaborative projects in history.
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Professor James Dalziel
Director Macquarie E-Learning Centre of Excellence
Open code and open content for education: The LAMS experience
Link to materials.
The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) represents
a
groundbreaking new approach to online education in which
the focus is on
authoring sequences of collaborative learning activities
(rather than
simply transmission of single-learner content). A key innovation
of LAMS
is that activity sequences can be captured and stored, and
hence
searched for, reused and customised. In essence, LAMS sequences
are a
fundamental new category of media – a digital object that
describes a
flow of collaborative tasks - which capture the key pedagogical
elements
of lesson planning. Given the potential importance of this
new media
type, LAMS has decided to follow an "open" route
to encourage widespread
adoption (rather than develop proprietary software and a
proprietary
sequence description format).
This involved the decision
to make the
software available as open source under the GPL (to be released
in
February 2005), as well as encouraging the widespread sharing
of LAMS
sequences within the user community (most likely under the
Creative
Commons approach). This presentation will describe the background
to
LAMS, with particular attention to the decision process that
led to the "open" approach to both content and
software. It will also discuss
examples of sharing and collaborative development from LAMS
trials in
Australia and the UK.
As one of Australia's leading e-learning experts, James
Dalziel is well known nationally and internationally
for his innovations in e-learning, and his contributions
to technical standards.
He has been involved in a number of significant Australia
wide e-learning projects including Collaborative Online
Learning and Information Services (COLIS) and the Learning
Activity
Management System (LAMS).
James is currently Director of the Macquarie E-Learning
Centre of Excellence (MELCOE), which provides an international
focal point for e-learning infrastructure and standards development.
James is also currently a Director of the LAMS Foundation
and a Director of LAMS International Pty Ltd.
James was previously co-founder and Executive Director of
WebMCQ Pty Ltd an award-winning Australian e-learning company
specializing in online assessment and human capital solutions.
He was also a lecturer in psychology at the University of
Sydney.
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Vivienne Blanksby,
Australian Flexible Learning Framework
Sharing E-Learning Resources in VET
Link to materials
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework, the national
e-learning strategy of the Vocational Education and Training
(VET) sector, has produced e-learning materials for a number
of years through its Flexible
Learning Toolbox initiative. In
2004, the Framework has a focus on improving the potential
for VET
practitioners to access, use and re-use e-learning resources
from a range of sources. Through the Framework’s
Resources for Teaching, Learning and Assessment program,
a number of linked projects have researched and are now applying
technical standards for content packaging, learning object
repositories and metadata. The
overall aim is to create
an integrated system providing ready access to learning materials
from national, state/territory and other organisational sources.
Vivienne Blanksby is Program Leader for Resources
for Teaching, Learning and Assessment, a program within the
Australian
Flexible Learning Framework. She coordinates a number of
national projects which are linked by the theme of availability,
quality, interoperability and use of e-learning resources
for the Vocational Education and Training (VET) system.
Vivienne was formerly the national project manager of the
Flexible Learning Toolbox initiative
which develops online resources for VET. Prior to this, she
has worked in various flexible learning development roles within the Victorian
TAFE system. She has specialised in online learning for the past ten years,
both professionally and through post-graduate studies.
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Leslie Loble
Deputy Director-General, Strategic Planning & Regulation,
DET NSW
The teaching and learning exchange: Should sharing be limited?
Link to materials. Link
to speech.
Information technologies offer schooling the chance to shake
free of Industrial Era production modes. Connected learning
– which increasingly shows results in student outcomes –
relies instead
on distributed systems governed by users. This requires more
open access to information, capacity for personalising learning,
and moving from unilateral transfer to more dynamic, tailored
modes.
The Teaching and Learning
Exchange (TaLE) is a new online
platform developed by the NSW Department of Education & Training
to serve these aims. It provides professional support to
teachers and information to parents. It not only gives access
to thousands of learning materials but stimulates consumer-based
exchanges focussed on raising student outcomes.
Access to TaLE is carefully controlled to protect the intellectual
property rights of materials developers. But this limits
the impact of a potentially invaluable educational resource
built on principles of subsidiarity and sharing. In this
presentation, Leslie explores these issues and possible alternative
approaches.
Leslie Loble’s responsibilities include corporate
planning, performance improvement and external reporting
on performance and achievements. She is responsible for fostering
innovation in teaching and learning across the Department,
and for managing the Centre for Learning Innovation, which
supports e-learning development and resource production.
She manages the Department's external relations, including
Commonwealth-State negotiations, and is responsible for key
policy areas and processes including higher education, vocational
education and training (VET), non-Government schooling and
long-term planning for NSW schools. Leslie was previously
the department's Director of Skills Development and Workforce
Policy.
Prior to coming to Australia in 1998, Leslie served in President
Bill Clinton's Administration for five years as part of the
top management team at the U.S. Department of Labor. Her
positions included Chief of Staff to former Secretary of
Labor Robert B. Reich, acting Assistant Secretary for Policy,
and Counsellor to the Secretary.
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Professor Graham
Greenleaf,
UNSW Law Faculty, Co-director, Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace
Law and Policy
Centre
Legal Information Institutes: Creating law's global commons
Link to materials.
A global network of a dozen University-based 'legal information
institutes' has emerged over the last decade to provide free
access to essential legal information from more than 50 countries.
With nearly 500 legal databases it is starting to provide
a free-access alternative to the global commercial legal
publishers. It is based on shared principles that reject
government monopolies in this legal information (even with
free access) and insist that it be free for
republication: free speech, not just free beer. The technical
and cooperative
framework by which this major extension
of the public domain has been created will be explained and
demonstrated.
http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~graham/
Graham Greenleaf is a Professor of Law at UNSW where
he teaches most aspects of cyberspace law, and the computerisation
of law. His main research interests in cyberspace law are
in privacy and intellectual property. He teaches LAWS1031
Information Technology Law (LLB) via Internet delivery, and
co-teaches LAWS 3037 Data Surveillance & Information
Privacy Law (LLM). He is a co-director of AustLII and WorldLII,
and the General Editor of Privacy
Law & Policy Reporter. He is foundation co-director
of the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace law and Policy Centre,
which is co-hosting the conference.
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