7.1 Floss, oer, equality and digital inclusion  (Page 6/10)

In partial response to your first question, “ Q1. Is the learning from and between FLOSS, OER and other peer production case studies applicable in“developing” economies? ” I believe that a curriculum that includes commons-based peer development principles would be more likely to thrive in“developing” economies than in developed economies that have a whole value system based on deformed information markets (artificial barriers that impede the freeflow of information and ideas).

2. Wayne Mackintosh -May 4th, 2007 at 12:03 am

Hey Kim, Its always a pleasure to read your postings on libre content! Your coverage of cutting edge projects across the globe is impressive and you always provide awealth of resources and links to what is going on in the field - particularly from the developing world perspective. South Africa is becoming a global leader in FLOSS and freecontent adoption, and I can assure you that we are learning much from your experiences. Thanks for an informative and challenging post!

The general public may not be aware of this — but your leadership thinking around the concept of “free knowledge communities'’which evolved to libre communities was an instrumental catalyst in the foundation of WIkiEducator. Thanks for the inspiration!

I’m very pleased that you raised the issue of bandwidth in your post. Sadly most of the industrialized world uses bandwidth as an excuse to focus onlegacy technologies for development at the expense of the potential of digital technologies for creating development futures.

For example - it’s relatively easy to develop wiki ==>pdf technologies that would provide access to learners in Africa who do not have connectivity. At COL we are working on funding solutions (with a very restricted budget ..;-( ) to achievethese objectives.

So I guess my question is how do we lobby the donor community and free content projects to collaborate on the technological solutions that will make a difference inAfrica?

In other words - how do we make the future happen for Africa using free content?

I can assure you that we’ll be collaborating with you to achieve these ideals

Cheers, Wayne

3. Kim Tucker - May 7th, 2007 at 7:09 am

Response to Ken:

I am glad you raise additional questions. Drawing out “good strategic questions” is one of the most significant things we can do in thisprocess.

Questions draw us towards the future (”which will be different from the past” to quote Wayne) … sowing the seeds of action in the now….

This is what we tried to do while discussing a research agenda for OER - (External Link) >

Re: Is there the need to develop curriculum around commons-based peer development?

Certainly include cbpp-like learning activities (among others) for most curriculi (learn by doing) - reminiscent of progressive inquiry and social constructionistactivities highlighted in FLOSS such as (External Link) and (External Link) [In both of these, developments in the software were inspired by learning theory (and not the other way round)].