Education and A2K - Day 1/General final draft/Summary
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In this link you can read the full general document of the Education & A2K group
Learning is a process of social construction of meaning that takes place by sharing knowledge, experience and cultural nuances. Culture evolves as knowledge permeates society. We understand education as a social process that involves a wide range of educational actors, technologies, entities and activities, not just the official and formal ones. Our vision of education is to foster a culture of knowledge sharing and educational innovation that is efficient and sustainable, based on the foundations of this Charter.
[edit] Freedom to Learn and Knowledge for All
We aim to advance a global culture of sharing to transform education in public, private and civil sectors. The culture of sharing is indisputably beneficial for society at large; we encourage institutions to promote the culture of sharing, especially in the field of education and reflect cultural diversity included in our societies. The mission for education is to foster a culture of knowledge sharing and educational innovation that is efficient and sustainable.
The next elements outline the essential foundations for the process of free cultural development and knowledge creation:
- Free Software
- Free Software (also known as Open Source or Libre Software) allows people to become active participants in its development rather than being passive consumers of "black box" software. Free software enables transparency of informational processes, assures competition and innovation, provides independence from corporate interests and increases the autonomy of citizens.
- Educators should facilitate the learning of and ability to apply concepts, rather than train people on the use of particular (proprietary) software. Therefore Free Software should be used, promoted and implemented in educational institutions and other places where educational processes take place. Also, all software developed in educational environments with public funding should be released as Free Software.
- Open Educational Resources
- Educational resources are a basic educational tool; their open publication in the public domain or under a free license facilitates access, stimulates improvement and participation and caters for cultural diversity, while maximising reuse and efficiency.
- Therefore text books, course materials and other kinds of learning materials should be published as Open Educational Resources that assure the right to use, copy, adapt, translate and redistribute them.
- Open Access
- Open Access publications assure the access to the results of scientific research, for scientists as well as the general public, boost the possibilities for learning and enable diverse research disciplines to discover each other's results.
- Therefore universities and research centres should embrace the Open Access model for the publication of research results. The application for patents on the results of publicly funded research should be discouraged. Patents held by public institutions should be irrevocably released under royalty-free terms and free of any other restriction.
- Open Standards
- The use of open standards and open formats is essential to ensure technical interoperability, provide a level playing field for competing vendors, enable seamless access to digital information and the availability of knowledge and social memory now and in the future.
