The Network for ICT in Education will host a free webinar on Open Educational Resources – textbooks and other academic materials that are published online for everyone to use, adapt and share freely targeted towards educators, students and librarians.  

Participants can learn more about the resources and discuss both the advantages and barriers, and how they can get involved.

Isabelle Turmaine (Director, Information Centre and Communication Services, International Association of Universities) will begin the webinar with an introduction to Open Educational Resources.

Associate Professor Laura Czerniewicz (Director, (openuct.uct.ac.za) OpenUCT Initiative, The Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town (UCT) will present Open Educational Resources from the institutional perspective.

She will also explain how the OpenUCT Initiative aims to make freely available as much as possible of UCT’s research, teaching and community-focused scholarly resources to those with internet access.

Associate Professor Maha Bali, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo, will talk on how to find Open Educational Resources and how to use them in teaching and learning.

Date: June 17, 2014

Time: 10:00 CEST / 8:00 GMT

Target audience: educators, students, librarians and other interested.

How to register: please register online here or email iryna.kuchma [@] eifl.net with the following details:

• Your name:
• Your job title:
• Your institution:
• Your country:

How you participate: once your place is confirmed, you will receive a URL and password for the session.

All you will need is an internet-connected computer with sound (and maybe headphones if you are in a busy room).

To check if your computer will be able to access the session successfully, please go to: instantpresenter

About Open Educational Resources

• Open Educational Resources are "teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." (UNESCO)
• Open Education "... is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge." (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)
• "[O]pen educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Whenever possible, they should also be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who do not yet have access to the Internet." (The Cape Town Open Education Declaration)

About the Network for ICT in Education

The network was established to facilitate a collaborative platform to share knowledge, experience, good practices and resources and currently consists of six organisations – Makerere University in Uganda (a network facilitator), EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries), Fundacion La Paz in Bolivia, OLE Rwanda, the Open University of Tanzania and ITIDO, Tanzania.

The network is funded by the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (Spider) which is a resource centre for ICT for Development (ICT4D) based at Stockholm University that focuses on three thematic areas including education, democracy and health.

Learn more (networkict4edu.org) here.