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Conference by Richard M. Stallman at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society in Barcelona (Spain), 15 July 2008, on the production and sharing of free educational and training materials about Free Software. Stephen Downes, Institute for Information Technology’s Internet Logic Research GroupThe Future of Education The Public in Public Education Public education, education for everyone, is an important concept not for the “education” part, but for the “public” part, as its impact goes far beyond the acquisition of knowledge, but the shaping of the whole society. Stephen Downes presents gRSShopper. Besides the most evident uses of the tool as a resource harvester, the main purpose being...

Conference by Richard M. Stallman at the First International Conference Free Knowledge, Free Technology - Education for a free information society in Barcelona (Spain), 15 July 2008, on the production and sharing of free educational and training materials about Free Software. Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software FoundationFree Software and Beyond Free Software is about giving freedom to the user and respecting the work done by the community of programmers. The analogy with cooking recipes is clearly the best way to help people understand the four freedoms of Free Software. Electronic book readers are evil The key to promote Free Software is not software in itself, the possibility to be able to “cook”, but: as long as software is needed to do more and more things...

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.Here come my notes for session XI. Round Table: Chairs: Jacinto Lajas Jose María Olmo Free Software penetration in the Administration still low. This also means (cause or consequence?) that bidding processes don’t usually include free software in their requirements, either as a condition or as a possibility. Consequences of this situation: Lack of cooperation and collaboration between administrations Interoperability made more difficult There is a lack of communities of free software for the Administration in which developers and users can meet and exchange impressions and design common strategies Francisco Huertas Free Software as a strategy to develop the Information Society. Free Software avoids: A...

Teemu Leinonen posted on Monday at FLOSSE Posse both an acknowledgment and a critique to the One Laptop per Child project: Thank you OLPC - Maybe now we may start to talk about education again. While I’m no unconditional defender of the OLPC initiative — i.e. there are things I like, things I don’t, so I still don’t have a strong position for or against — I believe there are some statements Leinonen makes in his post that, IMHO, are not absolutely fair with the project. I share most of his arguments but I don’t agree with some of them: On one hand, I don’t think the project pretends that children “own” (in the sense of exclusive ownership he talks about) a computer. I honestly think is a matter of identifying the main user. Actually, the...

Student research seminar: Cindy Shen Two metaphors– “the cathedral and the bazaar” – are widely used to characterize the organizational structure of the development model of commercial software and that of OSS. While “cathedral” represents rigid hierarchy and centralized control, the “bazaar” model of OSS represents an egalitarian network of developers free of hierarchical structure. Powerful as they are, these two metaphors may help to spread a rather stylized image of the OSS. Empirical studies of OSS show highly skewed distribution and power law relationships of project sizes, project membership, and cluster sizes of the OSS community, but the underlying mechanisms of those power law relationships remain under explored. This on-going project extends knowledge on OSS by...

These days is taking place the virtual forum of the UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Third International Seminar. OER: Institutional Challenges. My colleague Julià Minguillón (and, BTW, now assistant director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute: congrats!) pointed the participants in the forum to Carmel McNaught’s keynote speach at Webist 2006, entitled Are learning repositories likely to become mainstream in education? (3.19 Mb) Her main conclusions are that successful learning repositories: are developed out of a genuine need within a community have a core of committed promoters with sustained enthusiasm articulate a clear direction and focus consult with their user community(ies) establish a good management process are open access facilitate easy addition of resources...

On April 6th, 2006, professor César Córcoles and me gave a seminar entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research (revisited and improved). Now, the review of the seminar has been published in IDP review. The abstract in English goes: Review of the seminar held in April 2006 -within the framework of the UOC’s UNESCO e-Learning Chair- on the so-called “Web 2.0″ applications and new ways of working in the field of research, education and diffusion -i.e. a University’s quintessential activity-, based on a participatory and open spirit, on-line applications and a great wealth of data. The full text is only available in Catalan and Spanish. Web 2.0 i difusió de la recerca: ressenya del seminari (109 Kb) Web 2.0 y difusión de la investigación: reseña del seminario...

My colleague and friend César Córcoles (UOC professor in the area of multimedia) and I have imparted today a second version of a previous speech of mine entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research. Today’s seminar, scheduled as an activity of the UNESCO Chair of e-Learning, has really been improved by César’s participation, which has resulted not in an actually new version but a new presentation in its whole (César pricelessly helped me through the former seminar and was thus cited as main reference there — he was long due to appear on stage and get his due recognition :). You can find here the presentation in Catalan (original version) and English. Abstract: Buzzword or not, the Internet is changing and the so-called Web 2.0 applications might mean new ways to work in...

My colleague and friend César Córcoles (UOC professor in the area of multimedia) and I have imparted today a second version of a previous speech of mine entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research. Today’s seminar, scheduled as an activity of the UNESCO Chair of e-Learning, has really been improved by César’s participation, which has resulted not in an actually new version but a new presentation in its whole (César pricelessly helped me through the former seminar and was thus cited as main reference there — it was far time for him to appear on stage and get his due recognition :). You can find here the presentation in Catalan (original version) and English. Abstract: Buzzword or not, the Internet is changing and the so-called Web 2.0 applications might mean new ways to...

Update: Added English version of the presentation. Download it here. Thanks Peter for linking: this version goes to you :) On March 10th I imparted a seminar entitled Web 2.0 and diffusion of research here in Barcelona, at the headquarters of the University. Please find here the presentation (in Catalan). Hope I’ll find time and translate it into English and/or Spanish. Abstract: Buzzword or not, the Internet is changing and the so-called Web 2.0 applications might mean new ways to work in the research-education-diffusion field (i.e. the University field). This presentation’s goal is raising a reflection and showing a “good” practice in difusion of research, after Ismael Peña’s experience in the area of Public policies for development and ICT4D at the Open...