[Oer-community] OER Funding and Sustainability

Poncelet Ileleji pileleji at ymca.gm
Thu Oct 7 05:48:40 MDT 2010


Dear Paul,

Greetings from The Gambia, your write up is well noted, in fact as you
rightly said in Capacity building is still an issue especially within the
African continent, I have been involved in ICT teacher training for teachers
during the program cycle of the World Links Organisation in Africa and other
parts of the world.

I belief through OER community more can be done to develop the capacity of
professionals working in developing countries to help bridge the divide, so
that institutions within these developing countries especially Africa can
become key stake holders in producing material that will help a lot in
driving their education developments through OER.

I will like to know if support for practitioners in terms of more
professional training exist in terms of grants or fellowships and what the
community in general can do, the sooner it becomes a main agenda the better,
we can see 2015 is not far away can a lot of developing countries really
reach the UN MDG objective by then?

Regards

Poncelet

On 6 October 2010 21:28, Paul Silva <professorpaulsilva at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>   Dear All,
>
>
>
> In furtherance to the issue of funding and sustainability for the OER/OCW,
> may I remind in the most humble and non-parasitic way that this OER
> community was founded to be a movement kind of community, which by
> implication would mean many communities with shared core principles and
> practices such that have always underpin progressive movements –core
> principles such as equity and fairness - practices that value the
> contribution of “everyone” whilst giving tangible importance to the
> producers and users of the OER in the recognition that the role played by
> producers and users are generally interchangeable. Users do become makers
> and producers also do use the available open contents. The collaborative
> nature of the OER viewed from this point has been one of the key elements
> necessitating inter-operatability of the OER model. It is therefore
> gladdening to see that this new phase of discussion starts with razor-sharp
> teething problems, which have beset most if not all of the older progressive
> movements; the contentious issue of funding and sustainability:
>
>
>
> Without going over the grounds already covered by Paul Lefrere, Jacques du
> Plessis, Rory McGreal, Paul Bacsich, Chris Yapp, Bassem Khafagy, and Zaid
> Alsagoff, I would just state that I share in the view that the global public
> good of the OER outweighs any narrowly defined funding application criteria
> such as cost, etc. Since the OER is global so is the OER Movement and it is
> now for our UNESCO OER Community to join with the users and producers of OER
> in advocating for Open Educational Resources forming part of the R&D budgets
> of Education and Training, globally. This in my view is the first step
> towards the advocacy of the OER as both educational and cultural platform, a
> platform to bridge inequality of access to qualitative and quantitative
> educational materials, knowledge skills and expertise within education and
> training and a most useful trans-national cultural tool that can help reduce
> poverty and illnesses in the world. After all, we now truly live in a global
> village and in the Information Age where access to meaningful data does
> empower even those in the remotest part of the world.
>
>
>
> So, funding can come from working to the global nature of the OER/OCW both
> in its education and training as well as its cultural capacity and
> potential. We can also increase and change the nature of membership in the
> OER Community by working with User/Producer to formally join the community,
> but we must be able to make interactive global membership work for the world
> and the movement by providing meaningful purposes for membership such as
> basic training for all members to be better at accessing and contributing to
> the OER repositories. The more voice we have and the more interaction
> between members at all levels the greater impact and positive changes we can
> effect in the world in support of the global public good.
>
>
>
> Funding can be a headache in real terms, not for the lack of it, but for
> the incestuous relationship surrounding the funding entities and their
> interests in which it has become a common practice that the overhead cost
> usually match the amount spent on the ground especially in cases of
> expatriate remunerations and development projects in developing economies. I
> think the OER communities would need to transform this regressive, colonial
> and imperialistic practice if we are to impact the notion of equity and
> fairness in any constructive manner.
>
>
>
> The MIT OCW statistics as of today reveals one percent record for Africa,
> so one is reminded of the need to still build capacity for ICT in different
> regions in the world and OER becoming an R&D budget may help with capacity
> building if we mount strong and unrelentless advocacy for it.
>
>
>
> Lifelong Learning, Advocacy of Global Equity, Fairness and Standards in
> Education and Training and the Reduction of Poverty and elimination of
> terminal Diseases are central to the global nature of the OER as are the
> needs to foster and promote indigenous knowledge through translation into
> English and other languages and from other languages and English into
> indigenous languages. Such a bridge will be the best advocate for world
> peace and prosperity in the long run. Though, the problem will always remain
> as to how the politics of the OER Movement will play out in the end… but for
> what it is worth, what the OER Movement has achieved to date has been
> significant and cannot die.
>
>
>
> Paul A. SILVA PhD
>
> Professor, Literary Arts & Education
>
> www.uie.edu.es
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Oer-community mailing list
> Oer-community at athabascau.ca
> https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community
>
>


-- 
Poncelet O. Ileleji MBCS
Coordinator
The Gambia YMCAs Computer Training Centre & Digital Studio
MDI Road Kanifing South
P. O. Box 421 Banjul
The Gambia, West Africa
Tel: (220) 4370240
Fax:(220) 4390793
Cell:(220) 9912508
Skype: pons_utd
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/private/oer-community/attachments/20101007/82153b49/attachment.html 


More information about the Oer-community mailing list