For the 1st Open Data Ireland Meetup in 2014 (Meetup #12) which took place last Thursday 23rd January the OKF Ireland Team traveled to Cork, sparking the first Open Data Ireland Event outside Dublin. The event took place at University College Cork which kindly offered to host the meetup where everyone had a chance to catch up with with what’s happening in their jurisdictions. And we had 4 great speakers on the evening:
- Joonas Mäkinen (Finnish Maths Book Sprint)
- Marieke Guy (Open Knowledge Foundation)
- Darius Whelan (Creative Commons Ireland)
- Denis Parfenov (Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland, Ambassador)
The theme of this meetup was “Open Education”.
Tweets from the meetup have been storified at http://storify.com/OKFirl/open-data-ireland-meetup-12-open-education. Before we forget, please add your comments, tips, ideas for how we can drive open education in Ireland in the comments below.
Denis Parfenov started off our first meetup in 2014 by recalling what the OKF network does, what the local group does in Ireland, why we need an Open Data Movement in Ireland and how you can get involved and support that movement (last slides). You can access these slides by clicking on the picture below.
This was followed by an inspiring story by Joonas Mäkinen of how a group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students wrote an upper secondary mathematics textbook in a weekend book sprint. Click the picture to follow the link to the life size video conversation we had with Joonas.
Following that Marieke Guy shared her expertise about working on the LinkedUp project which is all about pushing for public, open data to be be used and exploited by educational institutions. Marieke had some great insights on how to use open data for educational needs.
Finally it was good to learn from Darius how open education and open publishing ties in with with the objective of Creative Commons that the local group is promoting in Ireland. Mainly a Creative Commons license “helps you share your knowledge and creativity with the world” by choosing the right licence that meets your goals but also enables re-use and thereby “maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.” This is how Finnish student in Finland are now able to use an open source mathematics book and free of charge.
Darius recommended to look up the below mentioned 30 min video to learn more about this.
We finished up with conversations and discussions around open education and how to overcome obstacles to it in Ireland getting some great ideas and thoughts for our Open Education Hackathon in February. The general consensus was that it was great to see that there is a demand for Open Education both outside and inside of Ireland and it was great to learn from Joonas and Marieke how they organised book sprints and open education projects in Finland, the UK & Germany.
Next up for OKF Ireland, Open Data Ireland and Open Education:
Our next event will take place on 22nd February, 2014 in Facebook and we will stage the first Irish book sprint for an easy to follow course book ‘An Introduction to Computer Science” that is looking to prepare our secondary students for the future – details available on the Open Data Day Dublin registration page.
Thanks to everyone who attended and participated, to Flora Fleischer, Shawn Day and Denis Parfenov for making the event happen. Many thanks to Joonas Mäkinen, Marieke Guy, Denis Parfenov and Darius Whelen for sharing their valuable insights and expertise. Very special thanks to Gavin Russell in the Computer Science Department of UCC for sponsoring the venue and being invaluable in setting up technology for us!
NOW: Stay up to date and share ideas by tweeting:
Tweets about “#OpenEdIRL OR #okfIRL OR #opendataIRL OR from:@OKFirl”