kafui.com

The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), is helping to organise the Third African Conference on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and the Digital Commons – Idlelo 3 in Dakar, Senegal.

Interesting tracks and details of the ongoing conference can be found here http://www.idlelo.org/.

Kafui (Ghana), Nicholas (Kenya) and Jibril (Cameroon) are attending the event to address issues related to and present the WikiEducator (www.wikieducator.org) Initiative; and the Free/Libre Open Source Software for Education (FLOSS4Edu), www.wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu - an Africa wide eContent development initiative.

There will be a stand, a presentation and a hands-on workshop at the Conference venue, Université Cheick Anta Diop (UCAD) of Dakar, Senegal
Campus Numérique Français, Dakar, Senegal.

Its interesting to be the Project Coordinator for an initiative that uses Open Standards. The University of Education, Winneba, UEW, is pioneering the use of Open Technologies and or Standards in developing educational content. Wiki Technology is providing academics in UEW a platform to share their content openly and to allow for peer-reviewing in the not too distant future. These are hosted at www.wikieducator.org/UEW.

Coordinating the project involves some unique challenges including collecting content from the academics in a format that is not “web-ready”.  Materials uploaded here http://www.wikieducator.org/Content_Contributors have clearly depicted the willingness of African academics to begin and continue to share knowledge. Most of these materials

In the coming weeks, plans are far advanced for follow up workshops and to introduce the University of Cape Coast and University of Ghana to the use of the technology. Details of this will be posted at www.simpasummits.net - a website dedicated to the capacity building sessions to be held in Winneba, Ghana often at the Winneba Open Digital Village (0432-20270).

You may also call me 0244-429-448 if you wish to be registered in advance. Its all expense paid workshop except accommodation for  participants outside Winneba.