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[school-discuss] [IIEP] Education can empower education, but how does one unleash its potential?



While in Uganda on a writing assignment earlier this year, I ran into
someone who has made a lot of interesting posts to this list. Guess
who... ? FN
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Education can empower education, but how does one unleash its potential?

By Frederick Noronha

Kim Tucker (45) is a soft-spoken South African, with a long
pony-tail, and extremely passionate about the potential of
Free Software and free knowledge in education. He comes from
the Open Source Centre at the Meraka Institute of the African
Advanced Institute for Information & Communications
Technology in Pretoria

"My job is that of Open Mentor. That's the job title,"
explains Tucker. "The big entity (where I work) is the (South
African) Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research or
CSIR, and within the Meraka Institute is the Open Source
Centre. That centre was created to accelerate Free/Libre and
Open Source Software (FLOSS) adoption in South Africa, Africa
and beyond."

This is where unusual terminology and concepts come in.

The centre has three focus areas. One is called Open Speak,
which is about advocacy and informing people about FLOSS. To
a point where they can make informed decisions about whether
they are ready to adopt it, and how to go about it.

The next focus area is Open Project which is enabling access
by facilitating, catalysing and stimulating projects. These
projects could be either by NGOs, individuals or governments.
The third is Open Mentor, which is concerned with empowering
people with the knowledge needed to be successful with Open
Source.

"Through these focus areas we try to achieve our mission and
vision: empowerment through appropriate FLOSS technologies,"
says Tucker.

South Africa really seems to be undertaking some impressive
projects in the world of FLOSS. When did this all begin?

"Something happened in 2001. Our (national) president was
involved, and I think Finland (the home of the Linux kernel)
was involved at that time. From that meeting there was some
statement made, and a loose policy process started evolving
from that," says Tucker.

At that time, the focus was that Open Source and Open
Standards were a critical issue for addressing the digital
divide in South Africa. That was a focus taken by the
National Advisory Council on Innovation. "Then came the
second NACI document, and the idea to set up a task-force on
FLOSS. The last big action that happened was a workshop
around August-October 2005," explains Tucker.

He adds: "We then came out with a declaration on Free/Libre
and Open Source Software, FLOSS. See
wiki.go-opensource.org/taskforce Now, we're putting together
working groups to implement this strategy. We also did a
survey of what's happening in the world in those areas."

Clearly, their priorities are training, and education and
skills. The where the role of the mentor comes in. In
facilitating, and inspiring the use of FLOSS. Both in
education, and also skills and training for using FLOSS.

In real life, Tucker sees these three focus areas supporting
each other. The first informs, advocates, raises the "hype
level", and tells people it's great stuff. It encourages
people to form the networks. The Open Project side involves
getting into projects where FLOSS is involved. "Right at the
beg ginning, we try to give FLOSS an equal chance in the
project," he says.

Tucker adds: "We do a lot of things. We get involved in the
government tender process for an ICT system; we get someone
in our team to be in the tender process, and just check that
Free Software and Open Source is getting its chance.
Essentially, the policy says, if all things are equal, then
take the Open Source route."

Tucker argues that his personal view favours a stronger
approach. "We should say, go FLOSS. If there isn't an
equivalent programme, then we should make one (in the world
of FLOSS). And do it with partners in India, Brazil, China
and other countries promoting FLOSS."

Interesting, the South African go-opensource.org campaign was
an attempt to really make people in that part of the planet
think in terms of FLOSS." It was really about advocacy and
awareness. We produced a TV series. There were 13 episodes
explaining different aspects of FLOSS, between 2004-05," he
adds.

There are a number of initiatives underway. First, this
network is looking at an Open ICDL (international computers
driving licence). They've launched a project called Free
Knowledge Communities, which believes in generating and
storing knowledge that is free to use for any purpose -- see
communities.libre.org

Explains the site: "Libre implies freedom to access, read,
listen to, watch, or otherwise experience the resource; to
learn with, copy, perform, adapt and use it for any purpose;
and to contribute and share enhancements or derived works."

As Tucker puts it, the whole copyrights, patents approach is
threatening progress in Africa.

"We've got people talking about the African Renaissance, and
a New Partnership for African Development. Some of us feel
that we'd make much more progress if we have free knowledge
policies. Where African communities can create their own
knowledge resources, they can take other free knowledge
resources from anywhere in the world -- such as the Wikipedia
(the free encyclopedia), which is free knowledge -- and
localise that to local conditions. And create their own
knowledge resources and, in turn, share them freely," he
adds. "Some of us feel progress and innovation would be much
higher if we do that."

These initiatives have got some official support in South
Africa. Now, they're looking for "partners across the world"
who would "buy into the mission and vision". 

Kim is a man of many talents and backgrounds.

He puts it modestly: "I often describe myself as one of the
most mixed-up people around. When I left school, I studied
psychology and computer science. I grew up in Zimbabwe. then,
I became a head of a department of computer science in a
school. We taught O and A levels, computer science."

His next move was to a University (of Transkei) in South
Africa. He was a lecturer in computer science, and lectured
computer students. Tucker was also involved in zoology and
botany, and curriculum design. Then, he did a Masters' in
conservation biology. Then he got a job with the CSIR as an
environmental scientist. Realising his IT skills, he was also
involved in that sector. After six years, he decided to make
a career in IT anyway. He stayed on in the South African
CSIR, but moved to its ICT-oriented business unit, now called
the Meraka Institute.

Meraka is a Sotho language term it refers to an open area of
land which the communities just share, mainly for commons.

"We intend to contribute to the digital important. The
Tragedy of the Commons was a tragedy because of the
finiteness of resources (in earlier times). In the digital
world, I don't think a tragedy would occur on account of lack
of resources," he adds.

"On a personal note", he's a runner and does triathlons.

One of the ideas that South Africa has worked on is the
'education out-of-the-box' concept. Tucker introduces it:
"It's a project to produce a set of CDs for use in learning.
Both in terms of software and content. Education is less
about content and more about the activities that students do."

So, they create our their own content. "If we get the
content, we can dump the Wikipedia on a DVD and take it to
some rural area where they don't have access (to the Net).
And they can enhance that."

There are other tools for education too. Including Moodle --
a course or learning management system, from the Free/Libre
and Open Source Software world. Then, there's the Future
Learning Environment (FLE3) from Finland.

KEWL, also a knowledge management system whose acronym spells
out as Knowledge Environment for Web Learning, is another
useful option. "It's much like Moodle but with a lot of nice
features," as Tucker puts it.

There are some digital library systems, like Koha, and
Greenstone. South Africa has also been looking at EXE, the
Elearning XML Editor, a tool that makes it easy for educators
to create educational content and store it in
standards-compliant formats. "Users don't need to understand
anything about XML or standards or anything. They just create
their learning designs easily. It's a nice idea," explains
Tucker.

South African initiatives have also been spread to other
parts of the continent. The next developer road show will be
in West Africa, probably around March 2006.

Says Tucker: "Education is of paramount importance in Africa.
But we had an interesting discussing, where we realised
there's a lot of energy around education in Africa. But
there's a critical shortage of teachers. And Education Out Of
The Box and Free Knowledge Communities are both aimed at
helping people in communities learn. That's independent of
the formal systems that might be there. It could help to get
everybody teaching everybody. We've got a slogan, 'Enabling
individuals and communities to enable theme selves with
knowledge'."

That's the dream. And, with determined individual like Tucker
around, they're slowly moving towards that distant goal.

Contact ktucker at csir.co.za
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Frederick 'FN' Noronha   | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha
http://fn.goa-india.org  | fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Independent Journalist   | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436
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