Latest Post - Category: Free and Open Source Software
A research and innovation perspective on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
742 days ago
My talk at the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) conference in Durban, 2011 06 08
A research and innovation perspective on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
This post has not been tagged
Previous Posts
Possible boost for open access out of the G8 gathering - Academy of Sciences, South Africa a signatory
752 days ago
Thirteen national academies of science delivered a joint statement at the May 2011 G8 gathering. The document is entitled "Joint G8+ science academies’ statement on Education for a Science-Based Global Development." While most of the document is concerned with creating an educated public in science and technology, a number of statements pertain to open access. Most significant among these is:
Support international collaboration to set up quality e-learning facilities, accessible to all, including students worldwide, and promote open access to scientific literature and databases.
-- Joint G8+ science academies' statement, page 2
Kudos to the Academy of Sciences, South Africa (ASSAf) for being one of the thirteen signatories. ASSAf was inaugurated in May 1996 by the former President of South Africa and patron of the Academy, Nelson Mandela. It was formed in response to the need for an academy of science congruent with the dawn of democracy in South Africa – activist in its mission of using science for the benefit of society. Its legal foundation is the Academy of Science of South Africa Act, Act 67 of 2001, which came into operation in May 2002. ASSAf is the official national Academy of Science of South Africa and represents the country in the international community of science academies. Their signature on this document will hopefully boost both public education about Science a Technology in South Africa, and encourage others to take open access seriously.
Download the statement here:
http://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Politik/Empfehlungen/G8/G8_Statement_Education_2011.pdf
The Academies which signed the statement are:
- Academia Brasileira das Ciencias, Brazil
- Royal Society, Canada
- Académie des Sciences, France
- Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
- Indian National Science Academy, India
- Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
- Science Council, Japan
- Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, Mexicana
- Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
- Académie nationale des Sciences et des Techniques, Sénégal
-
Academy of Sciences, South Africa
- Royal Society, United Kingdom
- National Academy os Sciences, United States of America
Attribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Science_of_South_Africa
open access
New challenges for digital scholarship and digital curation in the era of ubiquitous computing - slidecast
764 days ago
New challenges for digital scholarship and digital curation in the era of ubiquitous computing and knowledge networks
Derek Keats, Deputy Vice Chancellor – Knowledge and Information Management, The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
derek.keats@wits.ac.za
ABSTRACT
Established aspects of digital scholarship and digital curation take place within the boundaries of institutions, with key areas contained in these concepts being the digitisation of existing library resources, the capturing of academic papers in preprint or post-print form into digital repositories, the capturing of theses and dissertations into ETD (electronic thesis and dissertation) systems, the digitisation, archiving and preservation of historical materials in a variety of source formats. More recently, this has included the capturing, archiving and preservation of research data, and mining this information and raw data as a new form of research. Much of this has been carried out on a personal computer, with the products being stored on a single physical web server with a database connection, and it was accessed by a web browser running on a personal computer. Recent developments in hardware devices and software, including the proliferation of mobile computing devices, the advent of cloud and grid computing, various free and open licenses, open APIs (application programming interfaces), and more importantly - emerging new patterns of behaviour - are creating challenges for this still relatively new discipline. Digital scholarship also includes the location and organisation of research output relevant to one's own research, including digital reprint collections and citation databases that may be used in writing papers. In this area in particular, academic users are taking ownership of aspects of digital scholarship that would have traditionally been handled by libraries. The presentation discusses these challenges, and some of the opportunities they contain. In particular, there is a focus on opportunities for collaboration and synergy that exist within South African higher education institutions.
4th African Digital Scholarship and Curation Conference (see: http://www.nedicc.ac.za/test/Programme.aspx), 16 2011 at the CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria
Audio only:
digital scholarship digital curation ubiquitous computing library
Smart City Lab short report
770 days ago
A workshop was held with the City of Johannesburg on Friday of last week. It followed a brainstorming approach, and quite a bit of progress was made. The next step is that a small workgroup has been selected to draft a mandate and terms of reference for the lab. I will chair this work group, following which another session of the full group will be held. If anyone at Wits would like to be part of this initiative, please contact myself (Derek Keats) or Rene Schutte (of CNS).
citylab
The University of the Witwatersrand and the City of Johannesburg: Towards a Smart City Lab
778 days ago
This week Friday, KIM is hosting a workshop between the City of Johannesburg and Wits, towards the creation of a a Smart City Lab. The workshop will adopt a brainstorming format, and will address questions that have practical implementations for the establishment of a lab. In particular, we will focus on developing a vision leading to some practical projects that will have measurable impact on the six components of a smart city: smart economy, smart people, smart mobility, smart environment, smart living and smart governance. More information will be posted here after the workshop.
This post has not been tagged
Reviving this blog
778 days ago
When I started this blog, it was meant to be the goto place for things that we are working on, especially at the strategy level, within the KIM portfolio. For the past six months I have let this blog and the site fall into disrepair due to the time and effort needed for other things. I do believe that an IT Savvy University uses technologies such as this to keep an open communication channel going, and that interested stakeholders should know that they can come here to find out what is happening. I will therefore make use of this blog and the KIM site for this purpose, and will ensure that we make it more widely known through various marketing efforts within the university. More later....
This post has not been tagged
A reprived "code is law" by Lawrence Lessig
799 days ago
Prof Lawrence Lessig 11 April 2011, Chicago: Keynote at the ABA-Tech conference. He says he was reprising his "code is law" meme, with some updated examples, tied ultimate to the ultimate and key need. The idea is still highly relevant.
Wonder what the Wits law students think?
This post has not been tagged
Visit the Wits Library
838 days ago
Video made by Wits TV for the library orientation.
This post has not been tagged
Open source hardware and creative young minds
852 days ago
This reminds me of me when I was the same age, going through thrown out magazines looking for diagrams to make crystal radios. Nowadays, kids can go beyond that by printing their designs in 3D thanks to open source hardware.
Computer Science for High School project funding available
864 days ago
On the Google research blog, Terry Ednacot, Education Program Manager noted
"Recent statistics have shown a decline in the number of U.S. students taking computer science AP classes, which also leads to a decline in students declaring computer science as their majors—a concerning trend in the U.S. as we try to remain competitive in the global economy. With programs like Computer Science for High School (CS4HS), we hope to increase the number of CS majors —and therefore the number of people entering into careers in CS—by promoting computer science curriculum at the high school level."
For the fourth consecutive year, Google is funding CS4HS to invest in the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. CS4HS is a workshop for high school and middle school computer science teachers that introduces new and emerging concepts in computing and provides tips, tools and guidance on how to teach them. We had a modest project under this programme when I was at UWC, and there are opportunities for Wits Compute Science and/or Electrical Engineering to participate.
Applications will only be accepted between January 18, 2011 and February 18, 2011 - so if we are interested, we have to react quickly.
computer science
Blog Links
