Education networks

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There are networks at all levels, creating and sharing materials; looking for materials to meet existing needs; and providing feedback on existing materials.

The OER Movement

Open Educational Resources are defined as “technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.” They are typically made freely available over the Web or the Internet. Their principal use is by teachers and educational institutions support course development, but they can also be used directly by students. Open Educational Resources include learning objects such as lecture material, references and readings, simulations, experiments and demonstrations, as well as syllabi, curricula and teachers’ guides. (1)

Projects

OER Repositories

 Open Content Repositories

Open education programs and efforts

Open source textbooks:


I have been assigned the dual task of identifying aid partners and educational NGOs that could provide assistance to OLPC in our quest to find useful content and collaborate with local educational programs in each of our target countries, in this case our “Green” countries: Thailand, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Libya, Rwanda, and Nigeria. I have found a number of websites that hint at international procedures and relationships, but there is fairly little in the form of explicit lists of aid partnerships: e.g. “Who gives what, to whom?” The links provided here will be divided into those relating to educational NGOs, and those relating to broader information about the (economic) status of each country. Some of the included links may be protected (requiring a user ID/subscription), in those cases I have accessed them as collections purchased by Northeastern University or its affiliates.

About the countries and their conditions:

http://www.v-brazil.com/social/education.html - Brazil Travel - Education resource, comprehensive.

http://ciaonet.org/ - Columbia University International Affairs database.

http://www.jstor.org – Perhaps somewhat outdated for our purposes, but a lot about everything.

http://www.globalissues.org/ - Over 500 articles, mostly written by an Englishman of Indian/East African descent named Anup Shah. Claims over 7,000 external links to news articles, charity organizations, NGOs, and the United Nations. See http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp for a page specifically about United States foreign aid.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/ is a list of “background notes” on each of the world's recognized countries. http://www.state.gov/issuesandpress/ is a bit broader. http://iew.state.gov/ - International Education Week initiative http://exchanges.state.gov/ U.S. State Dept. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ - The one and only CIA World Factbook, with information about each of the world's countries.

http://www.eiu.com - The Economist Intelligence Unit. “The Economist Intelligence Unit provides a constant flow of analysis and forecasts on more than 200 countries and eight key industries. We help executives make informed business decisions through dependable intelligence delivered online, in print, in customised research as well as through conferences and peer interchange.”

http://www.wes.org - World Education News and Reviews. Comprehensive and useful country data, especially as relevant to education.

Communities developing learning materials

  • Academics : ed schools, universities
  • Educators: teaching colleges, administrators
  • Teachers : Associations, unions, PTAs
  • Parents : PTAs (again), support groups, childcare networks
  • Out-of-school support: Unschooling, groups of children outside school (who can't afford it, working full-time, &c)
  • Pop: authors, radio personalities targeting parents w/kids

Organizations looking into learning materials

including curricula, spreading books and libraries and tools and computers

Education supporters and ideas:

http://www.iadb.org/ - Inter-American Development Background http://adb.org/ - Asian Development Bank http://www.afdb.org – African Development Bank

http://www.usaid.gov/index.html. Let us not forget USAID. “USAID is an independent federal government agency that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State. Supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance. “

http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php?title=Main_Page is a wiki surrounding Yochai Benkler's work “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom”. Presents the full text of his book, and occasional extra notes.

http://www.imf.org/ - The International Monetary Fund. “The IMF is an organization of 185 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty.”

http://www.unesco.org – UNESCO - “UNESCO [the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] functions as a laboratory of ideas and a standard-setter to forge universal agreements on emerging ethical issues. The Organization also serves as a clearinghouse – for the dissemination and sharing of information and knowledge – while helping Member States to build their human and institutional capacities in diverse fields. In short, UNESCO promotes international co-operation among its 191 Member States and six Associate Members in the fields of education, science, culture and communication. “

http://pirate.shu.edu/~mirabero/NGO%20Study/Study%20Overview%20Page.htm: The Seton Hall NGO Education study. Offers a list of university level NGO education programs (those that train people to manage NGOs). Were we to get in contact with these departments, we should in theory have access to a substantial wealth of NGO contacts. Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, and Thailand are among our represented green countries. Other programs are in nearby regions that could possibly, through a longer trail, offer us information on other target countries that don't have similar university programs. The Study can be found at: http://pirate.shu.edu/~mirabero/NGO%20Study/Master%20List%20of%20Programs%20July%202006.doc

http://ngo.org/ is a somewhat outdated site that nevertheless maintains a fairly large compendium of links referring to specific U.N./NGO relevant issues, including education. Run by http://www.idealist.org/

Some of the featured links (under the Education heading) include: http://pathwaystopeace.org/ - Pathways to Peace NGO. Has a subgroup called PACEM (Pathways Consulting, Educating, and Mentoring), one of whose tasks is: “PACEM's range of services include:Consulting with international civil society organizations, developing internal peacebuilding practices and cooperation, mentoring and educating young people in Peace leadership.”

http://www.globaleduc.org/ - Global Education Associates NGO “GEA's mission is to advance global systems that will secure ecological integrity, peace, human rights, economic and social well-being, and democratic participation, with special care to include the voices and perspectives of poor and marginalized people and of diverse cultural and religious traditions.”

http://www.experiment.org/ - Experiment for International Living NGO (possibly not relevant, though could be very helpful in establishing an understanding of International educational norms).

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/index.php – Education International NGO. “Education International represents more than 30 million teachers and education workers. Our 348 member organisations operate in 169 countries, from pre-school to university. “

http://www.iearn.org/ - iEARN, the International Education and Resource Network

http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome - Time Magazine included this one on a recent article about education in the 21st century. "Our mission is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula, and it's all free!"

Resources

See Also

References

(1)Unesco 2002 as stated by David Wiley in Opencontent http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/247 visualized in 12/01/2007

(2)OER Grapevine http://oergrapevine.org/OER_projects visualized in 12/01/07

(3)David Wiley in Open Content Wiki in http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=WhereToFindThingsToRemix visualized in 12/01/2007

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