Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The coop movement maybe focuses a bit too much on how coops can best solve the biggest problems in society and not enough on identifying problems that coops are best suitable for solving.

There are many big problems that coops cannot do much about.

There are many boring but consequential problems that receive little attention and that coops could be an ideal fix to.

Yes, this is a real worry: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/472515/data-specialist-questions-where-his-personal-data-went-after-job-application our gov't is reckless with our data, and no one is holding them to account. Thanks for going public with this Dr Taiuru. I think we need a big dose of sunlight in the gov't IT sector, as I think there's some very very slip-shod/sloppy work going on there. And we NZers are paying handsomely for it. Not good enough.

Luxon has his head up his arse if he thinks being young and poor is easy. I was a beneficiary from the age of 16 until my early 20s through no choice of my own.

I’m grateful for the welfare state, it saved my sorry arse. But it was a grind every single day to get by. #nzpol #NZTwits

Many very good points. But I disagree with one thing: I seriously doubt that Bill Gates is a 'software genius'. https://www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/bill-gates-dumbest-idea-ever/ #nuclearfolly.

The question isn't whether people "care" about #privacy or not. Everyone does. The question is if they understand that less privacy is a #social issue, not just a #personal one. The question is if they understand what it actually means to be on commercial social media; who they're feeding & how. The question is if they have any other option.

It's the #capitalists we're fighting - not the "workers". So be kind, & keep #fighting, #thinking, #making, #feeling, #saying, #doing.

😽

We Are Not Freaking Out Enough About Climate Change
https://gizmodo.com/we-are-unprepared-for-worst-case-climate-change-1849361216 #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #LeadOnClimate

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) commissioned the OER Foundation (OERF) to deploy its open digital infrastructure to host a growing inventory of OER-enabled online courses for the Pacific Partnership for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning, thereby  providing an innovative and low-cost solution to widening access to the professional development of thousands of teachers.

The Pacific Partnership for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (PPODFL) is a 5-year project (2020 – 2025) funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to enhance the capacity and efficiency of education sectors in the Pacific through greater use of innovative delivery mechanisms and technology. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL), together with the Pacific Centre for Flexible and Open Learning for Development (PACFOLD) are implementing the initiative.

Building resilience in Pacific education systems is a key work stream that focuses on cloud-based services and open online courses to build capacity in online distance and flexible learning. The COL commissioned the OER Foundation (OERF) to deploy its Free and Open Source Software Digital Learning Ecosystem (FOSSDLE) for these courses. The OERF’s FOSSDLE (used for the design, development and delivery of OER-enabled open online courses) has achieved international recognition through the Open Infrastructure Award for Excellence conferred by Open Education Global. 

Over the past few months, the OERF has hosted the following  growing inventory of open online professional development courses:

Digital skills for OER Sharing (DS4OERS) – which supports teachers to improve digital skills using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to develop teaching materials for the classroom and to publish these as Open Educational Resources (OER)
Communication skills for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (CS4ODFL) – which assists teachers to improve their communication skills in ODFL contexts
Assessment skills for open, distance and flexible learning (AS4ODFL) – which helps teachers to design online activity-based assessment in support of teaching and learning
Empowered digital teacher for online learning (EDT4OL) – is an intermediate level course for educators to develop digital skills for designing and developing online materials using the FOSS digital learning ecosystem.

To date, these courses have provided free online capability development to more than 3,500 educators from Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS). 

Using cloud hosting services (at a cost of only US$46 per month) the server performance metrics derived from the first courses indicated that for the duration of the cohort sessions, the virtual server was operating well below its potential capacity. For example, the CPU percentage typically averaged below 2%, with machine memory at around 11%. These metrics confirm that there is considerable scope for growth;  this infrastructure could readily scale up to accommodate 150 courses serving up to 10,000 learners at no extra cost. 

As demonstrated in the PPODFL initiative, the potential deployment of shared open infrastructure and the associated reuse of OER-enabled courses in all Pacific SIDS will:  

enable Ministries of Education and institutions to host their own customised FOSSDLE installations,  each with the capacity to support up to 10,0000 learners for less than US$50 per month, 
provide teachers in the Pacific region with ready access to online publishing tools,
scale-up significantly the number of educators capable of developing and sharing context-appropriate local content for online learning.

Image attribution

Bridge with light streaks by Anders Jildén published under Unsplash license.

https://oerfoundation.org/2022/07/31/oer-foundations-open-digital-infrastructure-powers-the-pacific-partnerships-open-online-courses/

During 2022, the OER Foundation supported capacity development of staff at the Samoan Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC) to establish and maintain their own instance of the OER Foundation’s award winning Free and Open Source (FOSS) Digital Learning Ecosystem (FOSSDLE) which was showcased at the launch of the MESC innovative Lifelong Learning Lab (MiLLL), the Soifua A’oa’oina, on 30 June 2022 at the MESC Headquarters.

Working under the auspices of the Samoan Knowledge Society Initiative (a joint programme of the United Nations under its agencies, UNOSSC and UNESCO, and financed by the Indian-UN Development Fund) the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (MESC) launched its innovative Lifelong Learning Lab (MiLLL) – Soifua A’oa’oina on 30 June 2022.

Mr Nehru Mauala, Assistant CEO for ICT, Media Department, MESC; Ms Tuaopepe Perenise Tinei, Acting CEO, MESC; Hon Seuula Ioane, Minister of Education, Ms Nisha, Director and UNESCO Representative to the Pacific States; Mr Leonidas Apete Meredith Hon Consul General of India; and Professor Siaka Diarra, University of the South Pacific.

The MiLLL is a physical facility deploying a broad range of technologies for learning delivery to provide a multimodal hub for training and collaboration. Building on the country’s stated Development Strategy outcome of achieving universal access to reliable and affordable ICT services, the MiLLL initiative is aligned with Samoa’s vision of becoming a knowledge hub in the Pacific. 

In his opening remarks, the Minister of Education, Sports, and Culture, Hon. Seuula Ioane, noted that the launch marks another milestone in developing digital citizenship skills by improving access to online information and associated knowledge development opportunities through the deployment of Open Educational Resources (OER).  The MiLLL   also provides an innovation space for the training and mentoring of learners to quickly develop new digital skills that are relevant and sustainable.

Over the past few months, the OER Foundation has been working closely with MESC and the UNESCO Office for the Pacific States to select and support free and open source software (FOSS) tools for adoption by Soifua A’oa’oina, while building the capacity of MESC staff to self-host this open infrastructure. MESC selected and deployed a number of FOSS applications for their customised version of FOSSDLE, including:

BigBlueButton – an open web conferencing system used to support communication, collaborative project planning and implementation
WordPress Multisite – FOSS for hosting OER-enabled online courses and providing  each school in Samona with the opportunity to create its own customisable “sub-site” to publish their school information and to celebrate student and community activities in a digital form, with stories and pictures and other media
Mastodon – a federated social media site so that citizens can build knowledge and experience in social media without the corresponding risks of surveillance capitalism
Discourse – the leading online forum application will be used as a mailing list, forum, and long-form chat room to support learning and collaborative project planning and implementation
Moodle – the well-established and popular FOSS Learning Management System (LMS) will be self-hosted by MESC to save significant costs compared with a commercially managed hosting service
Vaultwarden – a cloud-based password manager enabling users to manage unique strong passwords for all websites that they access

MESC innovative Lifelong Learning Lab (MiLLL) showcasing FOSS tools on MiLLL hosted infrastructure.

Based on actual cost data from the project, the Samoan FOSSDLE installation can be operated by MESC for under $2,000 per annum, and can easily scale to support 150 open online courses for 10,000 learners. 

Through a series of training sessions, the OER Foundation has been helping to build the capability of local ICT staff to deploy and manage their FOSS digital learning ecosystem.  The training system includes a virtual server upon which to practise system administration skills, and the OERF has developed a range of technical instructions and supporting tutorials for setting up and hosting these cloud-based services. Published as OER, these technical training resources are available for reuse by any Pacific Ministry of Education.

A key advantage of the FOSSDLE is the ability to publish local versions of OER-enabled online courses. For example, the MESC has already published two short courses:

Digital Skills for OER Sharing (DS4OERS)
Communication Skills for Open Distance and Flexible Learning (CS4ODFL)

These OER courses were originally developed under the Pacific Partnership for Open Distance and Flexible Learning led by the Commonwealth of Learning in partnership with PACFOLD with funding support from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

About the Samoa Knowledge Society Initiative

The Samoa Knowledge Society Initiative is financed by the India-UN Development Partnership Fund, which is administered by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. UNESCO developed this initiative in close cooperation with Simona Marinescu, PhD, UN Resident Coordinator for the Samoa Multi-Country Offices’ cluster, and a range of national stakeholders. The OER Foundation was contracted to provide capacity building for MESC in hosting their own cloud-based instance of FOSSDLE. 

Image attributions

Flag of Samoa by OpenClipart-Vectors published under Pixabay License.

Lab images by Ministry of Education Sports and Culture used with permission,.

https://oerfoundation.org/2022/06/30/samoan-ministry-of-education-implements-the-oer-foundations-foss-digital-learning-ecosystem/

I wrote something: "More Than Ownership —How Open Source's Contribution to the Commons Goes Beyond Licenses" https://geo.coop/articles/more-ownership

Microsoft blocks #Tutanota users from own service: Tutanota users can't register a Microsoft Teams account and Microsoft won't change this. - https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/microsoft-blocks-tutanota-users-from-own-service/ unacceptable..

The anomaly of cheap complexity - Andrew Appel @ Freedom to Tinker: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2022/08/03/the-anomaly-of-cheap-complexity/

I see lack of standardization amongst hardware protocols as a leading cause of operating system complexity. That said when I look at Linux's code USB definitely seems to help... But that's by no means the sole source, and if like me you care about keeping not that old hardware in active this isn't an issue that's going away any time soon at all.

The Free Silicon Conference 2022 is over and most videos are available on:
https:peertube.f-si.org

Watch the keynote speech by Frank Karlitschek founder of #Nextcloud
"Why Open Hardware and Open Software are necessary for our future":
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/89a2e2d7-537f-443e-8996-eae6daace5c6

@Karlitschek thanks again for your contribution!

"If we remain addicted to wealth, status, influence and self-esteem, we are likely to promote problematic responses to societal breakdown."

https://jembendell.com/2022/08/03/dont-be-a-climate-user-an-essay-on-climate-science-communication%EF%BF%BC/