open content

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7 Resources for Open Education Materials

Shrinking school budgets and growing interest in open content has created an increased demand for open educational resources. According to the FCC, "The U.S. spends more than $7 billion per year on K-12 textbooks, but too many students are still using books that are 7-10 years old, with outdated material." There is an alternative: openly licensed courseware. But where do you find this content and how can you share your own teaching and learning materials? This month I've rounded up a list of seven open educational resources for K-12 and higher education...

Convening Public Benefit And Charitable Foundations Working In Open Domains

Press Release | Open Source Initiative (OSI) | July 12, 2023

The public policy team of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) has launched the Open Policy Alliance (OPA), a new program aimed at building and supporting a coalition of underrepresented voices from public benefit and charitable foundations. The OPA, has been created in response to increased demand for public dialog and stakeholder engagement in the Open Source software community as well as adjacent areas such as open content, research, AI and data. Open Source ecosystem veteran Deborah Bryant, OSI US policy director, will lead the program. “While Open Source is a global, borderless activity, public policies are developed locally,” said Bryant. “The OPA will focus on education in the US while exchanging and sharing information with like-minded organizations globally. The OPA seeks to empower these voices and enable them to actively participate in educating and informing US public policy decisions related to Open Source software, content, research and education.”

HLN's Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) chosen as a Digital Public Goods Standard

Press Release | HLN Consulting | November 1, 2021

HLN Consulting is thrilled to announce that the Immunization Calculation Engine (ICE) project has been chosen by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) as an innovative openly licensed technology and listed in their Digital Public Goods registry. Technologies included in the list are considered to be digital public goods in alignment with the Digital Public Goods Standard. ICE now appears in the Digital Public Goods registry where it is discoverable as a digital public good and reflected on a growing network of catalogs and aggregated lists of digital public goods.

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Kahn to MIT Graduates: Open Content is the Future

Stephen Carson | OpenSource.com | June 11, 2012

Open education innovator Sal Khan, MIT alumnus and founder of Khan Academy, gave the commencement address at MIT graduation ceremony on June 8, a speech that included both a nod to the power of open education as exemplified by MIT's OpenCourseWare program and Khan's own web site, and an homage to the importance of the unique academic community that is MIT.

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Kids on Computers Establishes Computer Labs in Five Countries

Linux and open source software are not just fueling charities, they are gifting the freedom of education and knowledge to the people the charities are helping because of the low cost, yes, but also the exceptional technology. This sentiment is proven when you look at the work the Linux Foundation does supporting a variety of community initiatives and organizations that are using Linux and open source software. While attending LinuxCon NA 2016 in Toronto I learned of Kids on Computers, one such organization...

Open Content at the Getty: Three Years Later, Some Lessons Learned

Mikka Gee Conway, Marissa Clifford and Nathaniel Deines | The Iris | August 16, 2016

Three years ago this week the Getty announced the launch of our Open Content Program, making available 4,600 high-resolution images from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute collections for anyone to use, modify, and publish anywhere for any purpose. In his announcement, our president Jim Cuno hinted that more content would be made freely available for reuse in the months to follow, including digital publications and other knowledge resources...

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Open Policy Alliance: A New Program To Amplify Underrepresented Voices In Public Policy Development

On behalf of the Open Source Initiative and the public policy team,  I’m very pleased to share early news of our new educational program – one aimed at building and supporting a coalition of underrepresented voices from public benefit and charitable foundations. This new program – the Open Policy Alliance – seeks to empower these voices and enable them to actively  participate in educating and informing US public policy decisions related to Open Source software, content, research, and education.  The OPA is created in response to increased demand for public dialog and stakeholder engagement in these adjacent and related “open domains”.

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Open Source Initiative Joins The Digital Public Goods Alliance

Press Release | Open Source Initiative (OSI), Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) | February 4, 2023

OSI to contribute to Digital Public Goods Alliance’s mission to address world’s most pressing economic challenges by furthering adoption of Open Source software...The DPGA is part of the response to the United Nation’s call to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere.  The announcement was made as part of the opening keynote at the Free and Open Source Developers Meeting (FOSDEM) and celebration of OSI’s 25 year anniversary.The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of and investment in digital public goods. Digital public goods are Open Source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm by design and help attain SDGs.

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Setting A Standard For Digital Public Goods

In June 2020, the Secretary-General of the United Nations published a "Roadmap for Digtal Cooperation." In this report, he expanded on recommendations made a year before, calling on all actors, including the Member States, the United Nations system, the private sector, and others, to promote digital public goods. He says to realize the benefits of increased internet connectivity, open source projects in the form of digital public goods must be at the center. While the term "digital public good" appears as early as April 2017, this report offers the first broadly accepted definition of digital public goods...The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DGPA) translated that definition into a nine-indicator open standard that we hope will serve as a comprehensive, shared definition to promote the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods for a more equitable world.

Sharing knowledge: VIPS on exclusive UN list for open source digital goods - Nibio

Press Release | Nibio | February 19, 2021

A new international initiative the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), endorsed by the UN, aims to accelerate attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in low- and middle-income countries by investing and sharing openly licensed technologies. This includes open source software, data, AI models, standards and content that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices. VIPS, an open online free of charge forecast and information service for decision support in integrated management of pests, diseases and weeds - created by the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, NIBIO, is one of 22 technologies chosen from almost 500 nominees for the registry. The MET Norway Weather API also made the list from Norway.

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