The Science Council is a UK organisation that was established by Royal Charter in 2003. The principal activity of The Science Council is the promotion of the advancement and dissemination of knowledge of and education in science pure and applied, for the public benefit. The Science Council is the Competent Authority with respect to the European Union directive 2005/36/EC. It is a membership organisation for learned and professional bodies across science and its applications and works with them to represent this sector to government and others. Together, the member organisations represent over 350,000 scientists. The Science Council provides a forum for discussion and exchange of views and works to foster collaboration between member organisations and the wider science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medical communities to enable inter-disciplinary contributions to science policy and the application of science.
Openness is an overarching concept or philosophy that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency and collaboration. That is, openness refers to "accessibility of knowledge, technology and other resources; the transparency of action; the permeability of organisational structures; and the inclusiveness of participation". Openness can be said to be the opposite of closedness, central authority and secrecy.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is an independent body of the European Union with juridical personality, established in 2008 intended to strengthen Europe's ability to innovate. The EIT’s three “core pillars” of activities are: entrepreneurial education programmes and courses across Europe that transform students into entrepreneurs; business creation and acceleration services that scale ideas and budding businesses; and innovation-driven research projects that turn ideas into products by connecting partners, investors, and expertise.
Knowledge Forum is an educational software designed to help and support knowledge building communities. Previously, the product was called Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE). It was designed for a short period of time by York University and continued at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, to support knowledge building pedagogies, practices and research designated in this area. In 1983, CSILE was prototyped in a university course and in 1986 it was used for the first time in an elementary school, as a full version. CSILE was considered the first networked system designed for collaborative learning. The main contributors were Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter.
An open-source curriculum (OSC) is an online instructional resource that can be freely used, distributed and modified. OSC is based on the open-source practice of creating products or software that opens up access to source materials or codes. Applied to education, this process invites feedback and participation from developers, educators, government officials, students and parents and empowers them to exchange ideas, improve best practices and create world-class curricula. These "development" communities can form ad-hoc, within the same subject area or around a common student need, and allow for a variety of editing and workflow structures.
Eurescom is a private organisation for managing European research and development projects in telecommunications. Eurescom is based in Heidelberg, Germany, and currently has 16 network operators as members performing collaborative research and development.
Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.
Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, UK. It is incorporated in England and Wales as a private company limited by guarantee. Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named Open Knowledge International, but decided in May 2019 to return to Open Knowledge Foundation.
Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of functional work, work of art, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work, meaning "works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose."
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services.
metacoon is an open-source platform that can be used for online learning, cooperative work and for the creation of learning material. The system offers the functionality of a Learning Management System. The developer team also offers tools for the creation of learning and knowledge content(e.g. QTIquestions and tests or SCORM ). The software is published under the GNU General Public License. The offline authoring tools are freeware.
The Free Culture Forum (FCForum) was an international meeting of relevant organisations and individuals involved in free culture, digital rights and access to knowledge. It took place in Barcelona every annually from 2009 to 2015, jointly with the oXcars, a free culture festival. The oXcars are a non-competitive awards ceremony held at Sala Apolo in Barcelona, Spain, in October each year. They are a public showcase that puts the spotlight on cultural creation and distribution carried out under the paradigms of shared culture. Through presentations and symbolic mentions of works in a series of categories, real legal situations involving free culture are shown using parody.
Design for All in the context of information and communications technology (ICT) is the conscious and systematic effort to proactively apply principles, methods and tools to promote universal design in computer-related technologies, including Internet-based technologies, thus avoiding the need for a posteriori adaptations, or specialised design.
Gleducar is a free educational project emerged in Argentina in 2002. It is also an important NGO from Argentina in the field of education and technology.
Wouter Tebbens, is a Dutch activist, researcher and social entrepreneur on Free Knowledge.
edu-sharing is an open-source e-learning integration solution. The core of the system is a repository for the cooperative creation, management, and usage of objects such as files, links, instances of integrated tools and courses of connected learning management systems such as Moodle. Through open interfaces, different edu-sharing repositories can be connected to each other as well as to diverse repositories or repository networks. This enables the exchange of content and educational know-how across the borders of systems and organizations and between disparate learning management systems and other e-learning tools connected to such repositories.
The digital commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology. Resources are typically designed to be used by the community by which they are created.
Joinup is a collaboration platform created by the European Commission. It is funded by the European Union via its Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations Programme.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery.
