11.1 Unesco's activities in foss for education, past, current and  (Page 3/6)

• Phase 2: Planning Phase
• Phase 3: Detailed Design Phase
• Phase 4: Construction Phase
• Phase 5: Testing Phase
• Phase 6: Implementation Phase
• Phase 7: User Support Phase
• Phase 8: Completion Phase

Please note that this is a first attempt to design a project proposal for building a FOSS Education Solution targeting universities. It needs further improvement and elaboration. It could also be envisaged to build a FOSS Education Solution for secondary education (or K12).

Responses

6 Responses to “FLOSS, OER, Equality and Digital Inclusion”

1. ken udas – june 28th, 2007 at 4:38 am

Jean-Claude, I want to start by saying that I find your posting very exciting. UNESCO is clearly committed to FOSS and has developed an impressive portfolio of interrelated activities in support of FOSS in education. It is also obvious that UNESCO is committed to a watershed vision of global importance. I have a number of questions, and I am trying to work out where to start. So, I have decided to start at the beginning.

In your needs analysis statement you state that

There is a strong demand for Free and Open Source Software solutions based upon open standards from developing and emerging countries who want to initiate secondary school and/or higher education computerization programs, as well as to computerize public administration.

Could you expand a little further on this? That is, what needs are driving the demand for introducing computer technology into education and government?

Thanks Ken

2. jean-claude dauphin - june 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am

Thanks Ken for your comment.

We have identified different types of needs for introducing computer technology into education:

• The need to introduce computer technology into school and university administrations to improve their overall performance (teaching, administration, student information management, etc). This would also increase their effectiveness and efficiency and thus making a positive impact on the education system in general
• The need to use computer technology for implementing open distance learning (HE).The need to introduce computer technology in schools he need to introduce computer technology in schools
  • so that all students become familiar with it at school as a tool for everyday use, thus “demystifying” it for them. (social role, computer literacy)
  • for better access to the job market. Basic teaching of computer applications or programming is providing skills vital for employment in the information technology society (vocational role)
  • as a pedagogical help – computer technology assists the teaching-learning process and enhance the instruction of traditional subjects in the curriculum. (pedagogical role)

Ministries of education and other actors in the policy-making process will base decisions to introduce computer technologies into the education sector on one or more of these issues, which can be seen to overlap in some respects.

The introduction of computer technology is a very expensive resource for schools even in industrialised countries where the necessary infrastructure for their installation is in place. The price of hardware although constantly decreasing remains high for school budgets as does software.