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December 19-21, 2006

ESCWA/ICTDAR - Cairo

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• Any kind of creative work including articles, pictures, audio, and video that is published in a format that explicitly allows the copying of the information.

• Content can be either – in the Public Domain

– or under a license like the GNU Free Documentation License

– can be modified by anyone.

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• The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, founded in 1660.

– One of the first documented aspirations toward OPEN CONTENT

– Imagined a network across the globe as a public enterprise, an "Empire of Learning".

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Principle

Fact

Process

Overview

ProcedureText

Audio

Summary

ConceptPrinciple

Process

Concept

Procedure

FactOverview

Summary

Objective

“Raw” Data & Media

Elements

InformationObjects

ApplicationObjects

(Learning Object, Support, Reference,

Marketing)

AggregateAssemblies

(Lessons, Support

Solutions, etc)

Collections(Courses, Stories,)

Animation

Simulation

illustration Objective Theme

EnablingObjective

TerminalObjective

Common Content Application Specific Profiles

REUSABILITY+ MOST + - LEAST -

CONTEXT + MOST +- LEAST -

Ref. Learnativity

CONTEXT

CONTEXTReUSABILITY

ReUSABILITYPicture

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Existing Content

Learning Content Authoring Tools

Learning Content Authoring Tools

Chunk

Create

Repurpose

Assemble

LMS

Import

Track

Deliver

Source: Eduworks 2002

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http://www.opencontent.org/ocwfinder

MERLOT (www.merlot.org)

Harvey Project(http://HarveyProject.org/)

Educational Object Economy(http://www.eoe.org)

OSsite SIG Open-Source Software for Education in Europe SIGOSSEE (http://www.ossite.org/)

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• Open Course with Open Standards and Interoperability

• Integration of Ideas from multiple sources

• Open content from different sources

• Distributed Metadata

• Collaborative Tools

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• Wiki (Wikipedia): Open Encyclopedia

• Blogs

• Social Networking Tools

• Collaborative Workspaces

• Personal learning Environment

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• Collective Improvement of Knowledge

• Chronological History and Evolvement of Knowledge

• Collaborative Work in an Asynchronous way

• Reusable Format

• Technically speaking: a collection of Hyperlinked Web pages assembled within a wiki software up to 5 lines!

• WIKI = (wiki-wiki: Haitian Taxi)

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• MySpace

• YouTube

• FaceBook ( estimated @$US1 billion !): networking of about thousands of schools with their students as members.

• StudyVZ (Launched in Germany 2005 by students: have about 1 million of German speaking members)

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• MiXi (Japan’s Biggest Social Network)

• Bebo

• XanGa

• Web 2.0

• Web 3.0(World Wide Database)

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• YouTube: Purchased by Google on Oct. 2006 for $1.65 billion in shares.

• Facebook : on/off negotiations with Yahoo! for $1.00 billion.

• Comparing Social Networking:Pls visit the website:

http://mashable.com/category/social-networking/

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• Social Networking Service for :

– High-Schools,

– College,

– University,

– Corporate,

– Non-Profit,

– Military and geographic communities primarily in ENGLISH-speaking countries.

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• Registered users among college-focused sites (at over 10 million US college student accounts created with an additional 20,000 new accounts being created daily).

• It is the number one site for photos, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with 2.3 million photos uploaded daily,

• It is the 7th most trafficked site in the United States,

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

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• “Facebook has struck a chord with millions of college students, drawing them in to an online world where they spend countless hours browsing profiles, meeting new people, and exploring relationships. Any technology that is able to captivate so many students for so much time not only carries implications for how those students view the world but also offers an opportunity for educators to understand the elements of social networking that students find so compelling and to incorporate those elements into teaching and learning.” (sic)

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• Web 2.0 : 2nd generation of internet-based services such as:– Social Networking– Wikis– Communication Tools– folksonomies (tags)

• O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since 2004 it has become a popular keyword (“buzzword”) among technical and marketing communities.

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Source: Tim O’Reilly. November 2005.

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FOUR LEVELS

• Level-3 applications, the most "Web 2.0", which could only exist on the Internet, deriving their power from the human connections and network effects Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness the more people use them: eBAY, WIKIPedia, del.icio.us, Skype, etc.

• Level-2 applications, which can operate offline but which gain advantages from going online: Flickr, which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database.

Source: Tim O’Reilly

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• Level-1 applications, also available offline but which gain features online: Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets) (gaining group-editing capability online) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion).

• Level-0 applications would work as well offline:

- MapOuest, Yahoo!Local, and Google Maps. Mapping applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as level 2.

– non-web applications like E-mails, Instant Messaging Clients and telephone

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• "Network as platform" — delivering (and allowing users to use) applications entirely through a browser.

• Users owning the data on the site and exercising control over that data.

• An Architecture of Participation and Democracy that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it.

• A rich, interactive, user-friendly interface based on Ajax or similar frameworks.

• Some Social Networking aspects.

• http://www.oreillynet.com/• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

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• Goal: Add a LAYER OF MEANING on top of the existing Web.

• First step of : “Semantic Web”

• Sort of “ World Wide Database”:

Web of connected Documents

Web of Connected Data

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• Horizontally, e-government, e-commerce and decision support systems are as an average either nonexistent or at their infancy.

• Government processes do not yet take full advantage of modern information processing technologies.

• Information delivery to citizens is severely limited, especially in rural areas. Even high-income sectors like tourism are only starting to take advantage of the Internet as a public relation and advertising mechanism.

(Source: Arab Human Development Report 2004, UNDP)

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• The languages used are primarily English and French, with Arabic developed to a much lesser extent. This exacerbates the hub-and-spoke effect.

• A number of initiatives are taking place to facilitate the use of ICTs in the Arabic language. They have not yet, however, acquired a substantial critical mass in order to mainstream Arabic language and culture through the Internet in a more pervasive fashion.

(Source: Arab Human Development Report 2004, UNDP)

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• Lack of standardisation limits the use of the Arabic language.

• Horizontal exchanges of knowledge are still not frequent among Arab State countries, where best practices and lessons learned are shared less regularly.

(Source: Arab Human Development Report 2004, UNDP)

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Source: Content and Usage of Arabic Online Forums and Groups: Helmi Noman http://www.helmionline.com/internet/

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Source: Content and Usage of Arabic Online Forums and Groups: Helmi Noman http://www.helmionline.com/internet/

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Source: Internet World Stats (www.internetworldstats.com)

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Source: GlobalReach. 2003.

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Arabic: 1.0 %

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• Content in Arabic is estimated around 100 millions Web pages that include: (Source: www.archimedia-me.com)

– Press media

– Culture

– Business

– Online banking

• Estimate to double every Year

• Arabic language Use is 1.4 % of languages used on the Web

• Many Data are available from ESCWA Studies Reports

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• Search Engines play a crucial role to get access to global knowledge.

• SAWAFI: Arabic Search Engine ( Source:

http://www.archimedia-me.com): joint venture between German European search technology provider Seekport and Saudi Arabia-based MITSCO Group to develop Sawafi (Arabic for 'sandstorm')

•. About 60 Arab Search Engines: http://www.arabsearcher.com

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• ESCWA Initiative / Regional Preparatory conferences for WSIS: Beirut February 2003/Damascus Nov. 2004

• (Recommendation adopted by the Arab Ligue):

Develop and increase the Arab content and electronic gateways to satisfy the needs of Arab users, achieve cultural diversity and maintain Arab identity.Projects Proposed: http://www.escwa.org.lb/wsis

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• Arabic Language Content on the internet – What are the barriers inhibiting Arab Content?

– What are the incentives to knowledge creation in Arabic?

– To what extent is Arabic content relevant to the people (inclusion)?

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• What is the impact of the Creative Commons initiative on knowledge creation in the Arab world? What are the suitable business models?

• How can new business models resolve issues of IPR in research and knowledge production?

• How to measure Access to Knowledge in the Arab countries (metrics for assessing Arabic content)?

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1. ESCWA Initiative / Regional Preparatory conferences for WSIS: Beirut February 2003/Damascus Nov. 2004

(Recommendation adopted by the Arab Ligue):

Develop and increase the Arab content and electronic gateways to satisfy the needs of Arab users, achieve cultural diversity and maintain Arab identity.

Projects Proposed: http://www.escwa.org.lb/wsis

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• Collaborative Tools and Social Networking Tools are in their infancy state.

• The future is for a shared and open knowledge envisioning a smarter internet that provides the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion.

• Fundamentals Pillar: PARTICIPATION

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Industrial Age Knowledge Age

The BAZAAR

PARTICIPATION

The BAZAAR

PARTICIPATION

From the Cathedral

ORDER

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