globalgridforlearning.org
Cambridge University Press recognizes that the existing publishing industry can only provide one part of the content solution for global education. In Spring 2008, Cambridge University Press will launch globalgridforlearning.org, a separate not-for-profit initiative to support:
- educators in the creation of open education resources
- indigenous publishers in the creation of local professional content.
The objective of globalgridforlearning.org is to contribute to the overall Global Grid for Learning mission of connecting a billion digital resources to education in the next ten years.
globalgridforlearning.org will support this objective by working with governments, educational institutions and other projects through its 4C initiative.
The 4C Initiative – Content, Connectivity, Collaboration and Capacity
To support Global Grid for Learning’s overall mission, globalgridforlearning.org has specific goals to connect 1 million digital education resources per annum in each country in which the GGfL programme operates. This will be accomplished through the 4C initiative, namely:
- Content – the globalgridforlearning.org website and web service will facilitate the sharing of free resources within the education community. Registered users, part of approved educational institutions, can upload and download education resources for free, typically under an open content or Creative Commons license.
- Connectivity – the globalgridforlearning.org team will seek to (i) federate and federate to existing open content and Creative Commons repositories (ii) support interoperability by adopting common interoperability standards and making integration paths available to education stakeholders to integrate globalgridforlearning.org into their software systems. Globalgridforlearning.org supports OAI-PMH and specifications for the globalgridforlearning.org web service are available. In addition, a standard web part exists for Microsoft SharePoint.
- Collaboration – the globalgridforlearning.org twinning programme will seek to establish collaborations between educators and schools worldwide with a goal of jointly developing open education resources.
- Capacity – the globalgridforlearning.org capacity building programme will provide free online training opportunities for educators and indigenous education publishers and authors to develop their content creation and usage skills.
Multi-stakeholder Approach
Cambridge University Press cannot achieve the Global Grid for Learning mission in isolation. The 4C initiative is being lead by Dublin City University’s Applied Learning Technology Research Group and Arizona State University’s Applied Learning Technology Institute. Additional collaborators include SMART Technologies, GeSCI and the European Schoolnet.
Getting Involved
There are a variety of ways for you to get involved in globalgridforlearning.org:
- provide content
- review content
- create and/or deliver training
- participate in a research project
- sponsor infrastructure, research or training
For more information, contact theo.lynn@dcu.ie.