Open Access Week

This week we are celebrating the fourth year of Open Access Week 18 - 24 October 2010, and we are celebrating everywhere.

This morning I joined Wayne Mackintosh in discussing: Crossing the OER chasm: From "sharing to learn" to "learning to share".

Open Access Week is

an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

I recommend you check out some of the events being held for Open Access Week, (the New Zealand schedule can be found here), check out the Challenge, and participate!

NZOSA Peoples Choice Award voting ends 26 October

A reminder that if you want to vote for the People’s choice award for New Zealand Open Source Awards being held 9 November, you need to vote by 26 October. There are some excellent candidates listed so I recommend you take a look and place your vote.

http://www.nzosa.org.nz/nominations

• The DAViCal project
• Lianne Dalziel – Member of Parliament and Chair of the Commerce Select Committee
• The Tumanako Project – Greenstage Ltd
• Amie McCarron – Alcoholics Anonymous New Zealand websites – Bluebubble Design
• Albany Senior High School Use of Open Source – Mark Osborne
• Public Sector Remix -  NZOSS and John Rankin

San Francisco

I think it is time for an update on the San Francisco trip.


I fly out on Monday evening 18 October and will meet with Pablo Flores at the airport. That is pretty exciting as Pablo is from Uruguay, has been working with Plan Ceibal, and is a researcher. Lots to talk about with Pablo.

Alex Kleider is picking us up from the airport and hosting us – thanks Alex!

I will try to find time each day to blog about what I did and share photos

You can read about the olpc Community Summit by visiting http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/

Manaiakalani

This week the Manaiakalani project team meet at our house for a change of scene. I think that was the fourth or fifth big meeting with somewhere between 15 and 20 people in attendance.

So what is Manaiakalani? It's an elearning and literacy strategy that is being coordinated out of Pt England School but includes a lot of schools in the Tamaki region of Auckland.

The plan is to get one netbook per child (almost like one laptop per child but not quite?) for students from year five through to year thirteen, and to distribute wireless broadband into homes in the community, increasing family engagement in education. The netbooks will run Ubuntu and they will use Google apps for managing their work. Software in the build includes GIMP, Scratch and TuxPaint.

Four of the olpc volunteers in Auckland are helping Manaiakalani. To see how it all fits together you might want to check out the Tamaki Achievement Pathway website.

New Zealand Open Source Awards

This week is pretty exciting as I found out that I am a finalist for the New Zealand Open Source awards, and in three categories. That is pretty amazing as I never dreamed of seeing my name up there with all the wonderful, amazing, talented people contributing to open source in New Zealand. The news was made public on the NZOSA website today. On the 9 November the winners will be announced.

There are peoples choice awards that you can vote for from tomorrow so do check out the options so you can place your vote:

• Mark Osborne, Albany Senior High School
• Lianne Dalziel, MP, for her work as Chair of the Commerce Select Committee
• DaviCal – a server for calendar sharing
• Amie McCarron for the Alcoholics Anonymous NZ websites
• NZOSS Public Sector Remix – a project to demonstrate the viability of free open source software on public sector desktops
• The Tumanako Project – produces components for several high-power electric motor and battery applications