Funding proposals

Turning the digital divide into digital dividends using free content and open networks is an ambitious project. We firmly believe that WikiEducator has the potential to facilitate and contribute towards building a sustainable ecosystem for Open Education and Open Education Resources in collaborating with the free knowledge community. This area is about funding proposals.

Solid technology foundations

Many of the "infrastructure" technologies we need to make progress with the realisation of this vision are already in place.

These include:

Mediawiki software for collaborative authoring of free content
A wide choice of open source Learning Management systems for online delivery of content
eXe software for local recontextualisation of free content that can be done offline.
Recent technological advances in producing print versions of free content developed collaboratively in wiki environments which is ideally suited to learners who may not have connectivity.
Most importantly, elements of the physical network are already in place which can be procured on a pay-as-you-go basis

Innovation and key priorities for developing proposals

Research on innovation suggests that the most successful innovations are to be found by applying technologies that have been successful in one area to new areas of implementation. For example, reconfiguring the success of Wikipedia in the creation of a free online encyclopedia for educational purposes. Notwithstanding the success of the "infrastructure" technologies listed above, there are however a few missing pieces of the technology puzzle that have the potential to make a significant contribution to education for all. These can be divided into the following categories:

Capacity and skills development on how to use relevant technologies for the authoring of free content. In other words free content resources on how to develop free content for education. For instance, this will need to include free content resources on how to use Mediawiki software for the authoring of free content;
Building and supporting libre communities that are committed to furthering the vision of education for all through free content.
Improving software for the particular needs of education. For example: building the technical capability to export Mediawiki content using interoperability specifications (IMS content packages and SCORM packages); enhancing the capability of eXe for seamless imports and exports to Mediawiki; and work on increasing the range of offline capabilities (e.g.to produce offline course formats, and the ability to refine and adapt Wikieducator content offline).
Refining the available suite of open source authoring tools to enable both offline content creation as well as offline delivery alternatives. For example, reconfiguring eXe to facilitate seamless imports from the "new" educational Mediawiki features and the ability to produce offline course formats like print.
Enhancing access to technology through smart and appropriate networks.

These aims are technically doable, but will require international collaboration in working on the different pieces of the puzzle. This will also necessitate collaboration on the development of funding proposals to achieve these objectives.