Global Education at the Scifest in Joensuu

We are at the Scifest in Joensuu, lots of exciting activities on science education - lets see how Finnish teachers are ready for going global...

more: http://www.scifest.fi/

and some pictures

Call for Papers

Well, some cool publication opportunities coming up:

1. As part of this year’s EBRF conference, the “Research Forum to Understand Business in Knowledge Society”, I am hosting the 1st Workshop on the Globalisation and Internationalization of Knowledge-Intensive Systems (GIKIS). The conference will be in Jyväskylä, Finland, from September 23rd to 25th. Due date for abstracts is April 30th, 2009.
See the call here: http://users.jyu.fi/~japawlow/EBRF2009_CFP_GIKIS.pdf

2. Special Issue of International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research (JITSR) on Learning Technology Standards, Abstracts due 30th of June, 2009, more here: http://users.jyu.fi/~japawlow/JITSR_call_for_papers_Special_Issue_Learning_technologies.pdf

Are we preparing our students for a globalized job market?

More and more discussion are held (outside this blog...) about outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and so on - but has our education system taken this into account? On the policy level, this might be the case - but in practice? Looking at curriculum frameworks in both, Higher Education as well as vocational training there is more talk than implementation...
A critical analysis on IT curricula and some potential solutions here: A paper on a global technology competency framework. It is a basis for discussion, e.g., in the IS community, not a proposal - suggestions and ideas are more than welcome!

Culture Profiles

A recent article about Culture Profiles to facilitate knowledge exchange in a global environment: Some ideas on how to facilitate the process of cultural awareness - it's about pretty simple stuff: getting to know about others, reflecting your own cultural background and showing it on the web and in networks...Feedback more than welcome!

Please note, this is a draft version!

Downlad the paper

Web 2.0 - is it truly global?

The next generation of internet applications is discussed widely - in friends networks, in business networks, for enterprises - but this collaboration does not seem to be truly global...
Wikipedia is mainly English speaking, other networks also are mainly in English and otherwise country-specific...so where are the good examples of truly global networks and maybe even collaborative networks? Which are the aspects which make a global web 2.0 environment successful - still looking for good practises and samples!!!

World Telecom and Information Society Day

Well, there seem to be days for everything whether it is mothers day, valentines day or world standards day...but this one seems to be of particular interest:
Ban Ki-Moon has addressed the issue of access to information globally: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=26751&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

His address includes the necessity for inclusion and access - and he specifically addresses researchers to achieve progress in this. My personal opinion is that the variety of global open education projects will definitely contribute towards better accessibility - but there is a need of harmonization and federation of existing offers...well, I will keep posting on global education & knowledge matters...just a good example for accessible open resources: The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) - here is an article on interoperability for repositories: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january08/ceri/01ceri.html

More to follow...

WSIS Follow Up

"Real" global activities on the information society are rather rare these days. In many cases, the Western world initiates events which are supposed to be "global" with a lack of input from developing countries...however, there are some events which should be observed quite closely-

WSIS Follow Up: The 2nd World Summit on the Information Society was held in Tunis in 2005 - it was quite an impressive event, bringing together stakeholders across the globe. But does it really have an impact? Well, the decision of the summit which cause most attention was about the internet domain administration but there are a number of activities which deserve some attention.

Especially the fields "access to information and knowledge" and "e-learning" are quite interesting - I recommend to check the activities on http://www.itu.int/wsis/follow-up/index.html
At least this might be helpful to see how other countries deal with information and corresponding systems as well as policies.

Lets see what is next on the agenda....