Synopsis



Talk by Two WikiEducators of Gargi College at a meet: Freed.in – Getting There Together, to be held on Feb.20-21, 2009 at Jawaharlal Nehru University Campus, New Delhi. 

Focus Area: Unfettered access to knowledge, especially for Education 

Title: Developing Open Educational Resources: WikiEducator-Gargi 2009 – A Step Forward

Dr. Gita Mathur and Dr. Promila Kumar

Gargi College(University of Delhi), Siri Fort Road, New Delhi – 110049.

 Synopsis:

WikiEducator, a website for educators and teachers, launched by the Commonwealth of Learning in 2006, has grown into a dynamic and exciting worldwide community of educators who believe passionately that learning materials should be free and open to all. This effort builds on experiences of the free software movement and licensing options like Creative Commons and GFDL designed to protect the freedom of content resources. 

Gargi College, University of Delhi, organized a WikiEducator-Gargi Workshop on Open Educational Resources recently for arts, science and commerce faculties of the college. This jumpstarted thirty one educationists as WikiEducators commited to contributing educational content, and led to establishment of a WikiEducator-Gargi College Multi-Disciplinary Academic Advancement Hub. All contributions by Gargi academia are being linked to this hub, which in turn is linked to WikiEducator-India. Emphasis in the workshop was on the use of free and open source software. This resulted in formation of Gargi College Linux User's Group of Gargi faculty. 

In this paper we will talk about the objectives, challenges, community participation and technical hurdles in this project. We will also discuss need of support from the free software user's community for the long-term success of this open knowledge initiative. 

 Dr. Gita Mathur Reader (Associate Professor) in Botany http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Gita_Mathur 

Dr. Promila Kumar Reader (Associate Professor) in Mathematics http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Promilakumar

Email: <Br.> Gita Mathur <gita.mathur@gmail.com> <Br.> promila kumar <kumar.promila@gmail.com> <Br.>