WikiEducator and FLOSS4Edu An African wide collaboration in the development of Open Educational Resources by Nicholas Kimolo,Kafui Prebbie and Jibril Touzi

What is the WikiEducator? The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative: ● planning of education projects linked with the development of free content; ● development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning; ● work on building Open Education Resources (OERs).. A mediawiki based platform for hosting of Educational materials that ANYONE can edit

WikiEducator Values... We believe in: ● In the social inclusion and participation of all people in our networked society (Access to ICTs is a fundamental right of knowledge citizens - not an excuse for using old technologies). ● In the freedoms of all educators to teach with the technologies and contents of their choice, hence our commitment to Free/Libre and Open Source technology tools and free content. ● That educational content is unique - and by working together we can improve the technologies we use as well as the reusability of digital learning resources. ● In a forward-looking disposition working together to find appropriate and sustainable solutions for e-learning futures.

The FLOSS4Edu An Initiative incubated by WikiEducator with the following vision: “Make available appropriate educational content and a set of easy to use FLOSS tools to educational institutions while building the largest community of educational practitioners collaborating on the development of Free and Open Educational Resources in Africa”

What are Open Educational Resources (OERs) Open educational resources, mean : ● that access to open content (including metadata) is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end-users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners; ● that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, is free from restrictions to modify, combine and repurpose; and consequently, that the content should ideally be designed for easy re-use in that open content standards and formats are being employed; ● that for educational systems/tools software is used for which the source code is available (i.e. Open Source software) and that there are open Application Programming Interfaces (open APIs) and authorisations to re-use Web-based services as well as resources."

Benefits to Educational Institutions  Provide a long-term conceptual framework for alliances in the creation, sharing and provision of educational resources based on a strong emphasis of reusability;  Allow for a higher return on investment of taxpayers’ money (public funds);  Promote digital competence for the knowledge society beyond basic ICT skills ;  Enrich the pool of resources (content and tools) for innovating curricula and teaching & learning practices;  Lead to a leverage in the educational quality of content through quality control, feedback and improvements;  Foster lifelong learning and social inclusion.

FLOSS4Edu – The Strategy  Build a network of Educational Practitioners (Individual and Institutions) willing to participate in the development of OERs - (Collaboration4Content)  Adoption of the Open Digital Villages concept and provide access “paid” through content development - (Access4Content)  Continue building capacity to Educational Practitioners in developing OER Content (Learning4Content)  Promotional Activities and Advocacy (Advocacy4Content)

FLOSS4Edu – Results so far...  Establishment of 4 FLOSS4Edu Regional Chapters in Africa (East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa and Francophonie)  Capacity Building Initiatives- 15 Capacity building Workshops and Learning4Content (To conduct 160 online workshops, train 2,500 teachers, develop 2,500 lessons in 52 countries - An Externally funded project within WikiEducator)  Over 300 African Educational content developed as OERs supporting Life Long Learning  Influenced institutional change in Educational Networks to adopt the development of OERs  Continued partnership with institutions (Universities and Educational Networks)

FLOSS4Edu – Our interests...  Collaboration with partners involved in capacity building in Education  Mass participation of every African in the development of ANY digital content  Localisation and Translation  Policy formulators (UN, Governments, Agencies, AU, ECOWAS, SADC, EAC etc) in policy formulation and advocacy  Content Consumers and Business people  EVERYONE

Contacts... International Co-ordinator Nicholas Kimolo - / Regional Chapters  West Africa – Kafui Prebbie -  East Africa – Prof. Henry Thairu - /  Francophonie – Jibril Touzi -