Stanford offers new open access MOOC - Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning

Open source, open science, open data, open access, open education, open learning -- This fall Stanford faculty and librarians are working with international partners to offer the innovative free (no-cost) course Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning on the OpenEdX platform.

The course provides an introduction to the important concept of openness from a variety of perspectives, including library and information studies, education, publishing, economics, politics, and more. Open Knowledge is international and multi-institutional, bringing together instructors and students from Stanford University (USA), Fordham University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Simon Frasier University (Canada), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (Mexico), and the rest of the world.

Learn more about the concept of "open", develop your digital literacy skills, and connect with peers from around the world.

For more information and to register:
(https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Education/OpenKnowledge/Fall2014/about)

Lauren A Maggio, MS (LIS), MA
Lecturer, Department of Medicine
Director of Research and Instruction
Lane Medical Library & Knowledge Management Center
Stanford University Medical Center
300 Pasteur Drive, L109, Stanford, CA 94305-5123
lmaggio AT stanford.edu
@laurenmaggio

HIFA profile: Lauren Maggio is Director of Research and Instruction at Stanford University in the USA. Professional interests: Information Literacy, Open Access, Open Data libraries.  lmaggio AT stanford.edu

[*Note from HIFA moderator (Neil PW): MOOC = Massive Open Online Course]

My source: HIFA2015

Over Here 2: Smart Thinking or Who do you think you are?

Of all the things that tend to merge, overlap, then appear discrete only to dissolve again we can see illness, health and well-being. To these we can add - self-help, intelligent self-help, various forms of literacy (3R's, emotional, economic, information, visual, health) and self-care.

I am sure that Hodges' model can help improve health literacy and general reflective abilities. There are some really difficult-to-reach audiences, clients and communities out there. The challenge is not just spreading the word:

A crude but generally accurate definition of what makes a smart thinking book is anything you could easily imagine being the subject of a TED talk. The recipe is to find a leading expert and get him (alas, still more often than her) to write about an idea in his field that is interesting to a wider audience and which he believes - or at least claims - can help us change our lives for the better. It has been called intelligent self-help, but since most potential readers would not appreciate the implied association with the dumber varieties, "smart thinking" has a certain advantage. ... FT Weekend. p.8

- but demonstration too.

My source: Julian Baggini, Wisdom set to work, Life & Arts, Financial Times. March 8-9, 2014, p.8.
Online: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/70365226-a3c1-11e3-aa85-00144feab7de.html#axzz2wiUqgpuw

[hifa2015] Wikipedia, Medicine and a Language of Your Choice

Wikipedians and Translators Without Borders have been collaborating for more than two years in an effort to improve access to medical information. [1] Over this time we have improved more than 30 key medical articles in English and are working on translating them into around 60 languages. This effort has resulted in more than 3 million words of translated text. [2]

The work is having an impact. Wikipedia’s medical content is the single most read medical resource globally, [3] receiving about 5 billion page views in 2013 for around 180,000 articles across 286 languages. It is also often re-used by other sources including university textbooks by Boundless.com which reaches more than 3 million students, [4] Google, and many others. Additionally the Wikimedia Foundation through partnerships with cellphone companies has secured Wikipedia browsing without data charges for more than 500 million people in the developing world (currently rolling out in many regions with more carriers being added). [5]

Most of these efforts are accomplished entirely by volunteers. Volunteers who believe that all people deserve free and easy access to high quality health care information in the language of their choosing. The number of people currently working on these efforts are however small. To expand our work we need more people to join us who share our dream. For many aspects of the project there is no formal registration required. One can simply begin editing on Wikipedia.

If one is interested in translating from English to their native language they can contact enrique at proz dot com. Currently we are primarily looking for people to help in non European languages as in major languages much content already exists. Additionally we need people who can help add already translated article to Wikipedia. It requires a bit of time to figure out the Media Wiki markup but not too much. We are specifically looking for help adding articles in Arabic, Polish and Dutch right now.

Please let us know if you would be interested or wish to learn more.

James Heilman & Lori Thicke

MD, CCFP(EM), Wikipedian Founder and 
President of Wiki Project Med Foundation Translators without Borders

References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force/RTT

[3] http://www.imshealth.com/portal/site/imshealth/menuitem.c76283e8bf81e98f53c753c71ad8c22a/?vgnextoid=ebc072cc270b3410VgnVCM10000076192ca2RCRD&vgnextchannel=ba11e590cb4dc310VgnVCM100000a48d2ca2RCRD&vgnextfmt=default

[4] http://blog.boundless.com/2013/12/marching-forward-boundless-settles-lawsuit-traditional-publishers-continues-change-education/

[5] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero

 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian

The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
__________

From December 2013 to March 2014, mPowering Frontline Health Workers is supporting an in-depth exploration here on the HIFA forum around the information and learning needs of Community health workers (CHWs), and how we can meet those needs more effectively and efficiently over the coming years. Further information: http://tinyurl.com/hifa97

ERCIM News No. 96 Special theme: "Linked Open Data"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 96 has just been published at
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en96

Special Theme: "Linked Open Data"
http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/en96/special/
Guest editors: Irini Fundulaki (Institute of Computer Science, FORTH) and Sören Auer (University of Bonn and Fraunhofer IAIS)

Keynote: "Linked Data: The Quiet Revolution" by Wendy Hall

This issue for download
pdf: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN96/EN96-web.pdf
epub: http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN96/EN96.epub

Next issue: No. 97, April 2014 - Special Theme: "Cyber-Physical Systems"
(see the call at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/call)

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Best regards,
Peter Kunz
ERCIM News central editor

--------------------------------------------------
An initiative for the ERCIM members: Call for Participation - identifying the emerging grand challenges in ICST http://kwz.me/74

mEDucator 3.0 | Open Linked Education - Melina+ (Drupal)

Checking through links yesterday I came across the mEDucator initiative and Melina+ which is part and noticed it is built using Drupal.

There is a thread on Drupal.org on science applications:

https://groups.drupal.org/science-applications

I posted in 2009 about the Science Collaboration Framework - SCF (for creating biomedical resources).

The link to SCF no longer works; there is an archive of this and other work that was part of Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC).

So it's important to consider these initiatives at least in terms of their longevity, their scale and number of participants, as examples of funded research and as Drupal projects.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

The 16 days ends on International Human Rights Day (December 10).

Image source email from: http://www.usaid.gov/

Drupal ScienceCamp Cambridge 20-21st January & Thoughtworks 13th Feb.

Next month I'm looking f/w to *ThoughtWorks' Quarterly Technology Briefing:

Is programming language
choice a good thing?

Before that I've booked for Drupal ScienceCamp in two weeks. It's a drive as the trains are not straight forward.

While there I'll post and tweet through proceedings. Being a DrupalCamp the program is still to be finalised. Leeds last May was excellent, as was Manchester. There are a few names for Cambridge that I recognise which is great.


I've cleared 1GB of old stuff off the laptop, three years worth that includes Drupal modules.

Time to update, focus, make use of the whiteboard, find and maintain some impetus...

I gather the title for the Camp derives from the venue - Cambridge Science Park. If there was a scientific theme now that would be a bonus. *Trademarks acknowledged also.