Keynoter, Derek Keats African Region
“I am most passionate about the potential of ICT-based collaboration to unify expertise within Africa and stimulate development, and have established the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources project for this purpose.”
So writes Derek Keats, our Keynote speaker for the African Region. Nothing I could mention here would speak more intelligently about Derek Keats than a “working paper” just submitted entitled: The genesis and emergence of Education 3.0 in higher education: the potential for Africa. This is a serious paper which deserves close reading and appropriate comment and folowup. Click here for the html version. For the PDF version, please click here.
CURRENT TIME & TEMPERATURE, CAPE TOWN, SA
BIOGRAPHY OF DEREK KEATS
Derek is the Executive Director of Information & Communication Services at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, with a “mandate to use information and communications technologies to strengthen UWC as a national institution of higher education in a global context.“
Here are some important links where you can find out more about Derek
Derek’s weblog
Derek’s photos tell a lot about this man - both biologist and darn good photographer!
A few of Derek’s featured articles
Don’t miss Melissa and the Lions - It tells you a lot about Derek!
Collaborative development of open content: A process model to unlock the potential for African universities. First Monday,volume 8, number 2 (February), here
Open Content Licensing: A challenge and opportunity for African governments and the UN system. Electronic Commerce Strategies for Development: Promoting an International Dialogue. Regional High-level Conference for Africa, Tunis, 19-21 June 2003, 5 pp. PDF HERE
Keats, D.W., M. Beebe, and G. Kullenberg, 2003. Using the Internet to enable developing country universities to meet the challenges of globalization through collaborative virtual programmes, First Monday, volume 8, number 10, here
An opinion story in ITWeek on software patents. (short version here)
. (long version here)
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October 6th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Derek,
I enjoyed your paper, although I think that it only begins to expose a
much broader concept of education. Education 3.0 is a great concept, but
in the way that you have outlined it, it seems to me that it is a way
away still. This I don’t really agree with. The tabular format that you
have presented the differences between the educational theories I think
is too strongly delimited. I think that the way that we are moving ahead
in this sphere means that there will be a gradual movement towards an
Education 3.0 *type* of situation. There will always be simple consumers
of material as well as simple producers. That being said, however, the
generic student will fall within a continuum between the two extremes.
In order to facilitate Education 3.0, we need to facilitate change. It
is never a matter of “Hmm OK, this year we implement education 3.0″, it
is a gradual mindset change of institution and student. What the goals
of Education 3.0 should be focused on, is creating a vehicle to
facilitate that change, not the change itself.
On a slightly more technical slant, we can say that there are plenty of
opportunities that already exist to start facilitating this change. Of
the total student and lecturer population at UWC, how many are without
cellular telephones? I would wager not many! There we have a perfect
start to implement a more “Education 2.5″ or Education 3.0 like
scenario. Why are we not using this technology that is available to us?
The reason for this brings me to an even geekier point. We need to not
focus so much on the theory behind this concept - that is easy enough to
understand, but put it into reality, where tangible results can be
seen/felt/understood and built upon. What we need is a technical
specification to facilitate Education 3.0, which will enable the mindset
change that is needed for wider uptake.
Imagine a definition like this:
Joe Soap
Newtons theory of universal gravitation
Newton, 1856 Codec Gravitation
Physics 101
Prof. A Person
…
Sir Isaac was sitting under an apple tree,
English 101
Dr. S Body
Thesis published by me at UWC
….
http://…..
Other metadata
All of this encapsulated into a semantic framework that a system may
work out all of the metadata. That way, a student only need to worry
about it if he/she wants to. That way, I can create a type of online
community where students that do do more can be in contact with each
other and build momentum.
October 7th, 2006 at 9:34 am
I sent this by email to John, and he suggested that I poste it here. I hope it works, as the last post I made did not appear.
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Hi John,
I know how hard you are working to pull all this off, so this is not a criticism, but a suggestion for the next time, attached to some wild imaginings. The streaming is all using proprietary protocols. That means that I am unable to listen to them because I only use Free Software.
I think next year, it would be a good idea to consider doing this whole project with free and open tools, open standards and using only Free Software. I am not suggesting leaving out the majority of people who have paid for licenses to borrow the software they are using. Free Software tools can also provide streams that work with those proprietary tools.
Our team in Cape Town and spread around Africa would be more than happy to help make this happen, including integrating GIS type maps etc and contextual content, pulling in vitally important technologies such as FOAF as Paul mentioned yesterday. Just a thought, but we could make next year an education 3.0 voyage, where we use technologies and approaches that we are suggesting make up education 3.0, and where students play an important role.
Everything that we do could then be captured and packaged more or less automatically into a Free Courseware course (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license) and syndicated to any standards compliant e-learning platforms. That way, people could come into the voyage without space, time or technology constraints.
OK, I am getting a bit carried away, starting from non-proprietary streams and streaming on a train of thought, but I think it would be really cool to pull something like that off. And we have the technology and skills to handle the tech requirements here in Africa, and with your master mariner skills at the helm, I am sure we could make it happen. It would be awesome.
Regards
Derek
October 7th, 2006 at 9:37 am
John replied to my email with
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Derek, I knew you were a gem when we first started to communicate; obviously I “love” you for the remarks you make. I am sending a copy of this to my “Navigator” (who left me alone to take the boat out of the harbor, frightening thought!) Blaine Berger, one very smart dude. He and I have plans to visit Vancouver for two big reasons, one of which is to meet with Sir John to talk more about his requirements — and of course this project would clearly far right square into the kind of thing he talks of.
I have no idea where to get free streaming stuff, but that cost is very small at our end. Still, at you end, to the last mud hut, it is the most expensive and the largest challenge of all. The idea that I hope you will incorporate into all of this is to bring into this community radio….including the thought that the keynoters and panelists, like you, would actually sit inside a radio station for the real time event.
I believe we can use all the free stuff in the world, but if we don’t figure out how to use community radio, affordable text messaging on cell phones, all the work-arounds past the tele-coms and the Microsofts still wont get to the two billion that we desperately need to reach.
For Blaine, who won’t read this until Monday — thanks for the reminder about the Metaphor. Derek is doing extraordinary work in South Africa — where all the great sailors of the world have to pass if they ever want to be a great sailor.
Thank you Derek. I better get to work. The ship may be fairly ready to sail. But the Captain isn’t. I’m alone at the tiller as we pull out in nine hours…which is okay…the most fun sailing I ever did was alone, on fairly large ships, chute up, going like a bat!
My thought at this point is that I’m a pirate …. I go out looking for treasures, sail out of our first harbor fairly empty; by the time we dock - in the far western Pacific, if we make it, it’s full of gems.
What you say here almost certainly is the biggest gem of all.
P.S. Blind copy to Tom Dretler, and he will know why. Thanks Tom. Without you, this ship would lie at the bottom of the sea.
October 7th, 2006 at 9:39 am
To which I replied:
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Hope I don’t side track you from steering the ship, but I am quite excited about the possibilities.
Its not about the cost. The gratis part of Free is a trivial minor benefit. It’s about freedom, and choosing to live in freedom. But if you agree with my proposal, then that becomes our issue not yours
We would probably use Icecast for streaming, set up an Asterisk or Bayonne server to take incoming phone and SIP calls, and hook it up to the Icecast server for streaming out. You could still use the same call in service, and we could have our Asterisk or Bayonne server call in to that system just like any other participant. Our own Free Software already has most of the interfaces for doing this, as well as the other tools for text, blogging, podcasting, wiki, etc. This could then also be the basis for feeding into our Free Courseware which (by then) will be able to accumulate everything, package it and make it available online via our e-learning platform or syndicate it to any standards-compliant platform anywhere on the Internet, or zap it out to CD. This would not take much more effort (if any) than is going into the current approach. That is, of course, if the participants would agree to a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
Another thing that would be good to include would be setting up some global student remix projects that could produce some cool products that could be showcased during the GLD tour. That would require tapping into other networks well in advance in order to pull it off, but there must be someone who would put up some funding to get someone to coordinate such an initiative.
OK, enough for now.
regards
derek
October 7th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
[…] Derek Keats - Man of the hour http://ben300.com/GLDTEN/?p=40 Keats Recording Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere WHERE TO FIND THE AUDIO WEB STREAM? http://www.cottagemicro.com/gld10/livefeed.htm […]