Symposium on
APEC Symposium on Open Source and Open Course
for E-Learning
Hanoi, 4 - 6 December 2006
SUMMARY REPORT
1. General
The Symposium has lasted for two days and a half and aims to
- To inform the different beneficiary groups on the possibilities and
advantages of Open Source and Open Course for E-learning with
regard to good governance.
- To introduce the philosophy of Open Source and Open Course to all
target groups and illustrate why it should be used instead of
proprietary software and content in general and more specifically in
the field of E-learning.
- To bring together the national government, the administration and
universities with the software architects and thus promoting the
implementation of tailor-made Open Source and Open Course
solutions for E-learning.
- To promote the formation of an Open Source and Open Course for
E-learning community and thus fostering the diffusion, the further
development and the use of Open Source and Open Course for E-
learning.
The Symposium is organized by the Ministry of Trade of Viet Nam and the
Institute of Information Technology, Vietnamese Academy of Science and
Technology and has been held in the Horison Hotel, Ha Noi, Viet Nam.
There are more than 120 participants among them were 24 participants from
various agencies including government organizations, universities, insitutes
and enterprises in Australia, People‟s Republic of China, Chinese Taipei,
Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, United States and
Vietnam.
During two days and a half, there are 25 talks in which two keynote
presentations. The remaining presentations are categorized in four main
sessions:
Section 1: Policy and strategy in the e-learning systems development and
open courses sharing
Section 2: Advanced technologies and new researches in e-learning
Section 3: Application of E-learning in universities and other organizations
Section 4: Experience sharing and lessons learned
2. Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony was moderated by Prof. Luong Chi Mai, Deputy
Director of the Institute of Information Technology, Viet Nam. The
distinguished guests he introduced include Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan,
Deputy Minister of Trade of Viet Nam, Prof. Nguyen Khoa Son, Deputy
President of Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology, Ms. Tran Thi
Thu Hang, Viet Nam SOM Leader.
In his welcome remark, Prof. Nguyen Khoa Son pointed out the importance
of E-learning systems as well as its challenges to the development of a
knowledge-based society and the global integration of APEC member
economies. He highlighted that government organizations and enterprises
are interested more and more in the capacity building, while sciences and
technologies science and technology growths rapidly and constantly. Prof.
Khoa Son indicated the attention of APEC to this issue in mentioning that
the Joint Statement of the 17th APEC Ministerial Meeting held in Busan,
Korea, 15-16 November 2006, APEC Ministers have welcomed the
APEC e-Learning Training Program as a systematic and sustainable
initiative to expand digital opportunities for education policymakers,
school administrators and teachers in the region. Especially, Prof. Khoa
Son referred recent Joint Statement of the 18th APEC Ministerial Meeting
organized in Ha Noi, 15-16 November 2006 in which APEC Ministers have
encouraged the Human Resource Development Working Group to consider
building on work already underway to describe research-based promising
practices through the Knowledge Bank project in the Education Network of
this Group. As president of the Vietnamese Academy of Science and
Technology, Prof. Khoa Son raised the role of technology in the support of
E-learning system open courses development. He also believes that the true
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power of e-Learning will be in its ability to bring the right information to the
right people at the right time.
The opening address was delivered by Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Deputy
Minister of Trade of Viet Nam. She stated that the Symposium is an effort of
an APEC economy in responding to the theme of APEC 2006 "Towards a
dynamic community for sustainable development and prosperity" in which
developing of knowledge-based economy, strengthening of human resource
capacity, fostering of information and communication technology and
reducing of the development gap are important points to be highlighted. Ms.
Kim Ngan referred the reaffirmation of the APEC Ministers and Leaders that
the human resources play a pivotal role for the sustainable development and
prosperity in the APEC region. She also emphasized that Vietnam has
supported the Human Resources Development Working Group in the
implementation of this project in the year of APEC Vietnam 2006 and the
Human Resources Development Working Group has been an important
agent in education strengthening, improving of qualification and skills for
employment, labor in particular and for competition capacity of economies
in general.
3. Keynote presentations, chaired by Dr. Campbell Wilson
The Promise of Open Educational Resources
Speaker: Dr. Marshall Smith, Director of Education, The William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, USA
Dr. Smith has given a perfect overview of open educational resources (OER)
in four aspects: the promise, the progress, the obstacles and the future. He
introduced briefly the promise of OER by introducing its advantages that
comprises of high quality educational content and tools, openness on the
Web, multi-languages, usableness/re-usableness and availability on any
device. Then he reviewed the progress of OER made in universities,
particularly in some typical organizations such as MIT, Fulbright Economics
Teaching Program, Open Courseware Consortium, Harvard Library Open
Collections, etc. The progress in the commercial sector is referred to some
famous IT companies who have initial success in building OER: Hewlett
Packard, Yahoo, Microsoft, Xerox, Open Content Alliance,... Regarding the
obstacles for OER Dr. Smith outlined four main difficulties to overcome:
intellectual property, localization and translation, interoperability and
sustainability. The speaker finished the talks by giving a perspective for
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OER. NOW is the TIME. The progress in research of cognitive science,
pedagogy and possibilities from brain are leading to new applications of
technology in education. Also, more bandwidth, increasing processing
power, ubiquitous connectivity, rapid growth of mobile devices, decreasing
costs… are increasing capacity to access, collaborate, personalize, and create
effective OER. People are going towards universal open world libraries that
support accelerated learning, provide open materials for supplemental &
lifelong learning and will be attractive by immersive teaching and games.
Recent trends of applying e-learning to educational organizations and
business organizations
Speaker: Prof. Toshiya Ando, Director of Research Center for Distance Learning,
Japan Advanced Institute of Science & Technology
Firstly, the speaker introduced the e-learning types in both broad and narrow
sense, referring to distance learning in educational organizations and
organizational learning in business organizations and showed the recent
status of e-learning application in Japan. In comparing the usage between
the educational organizations and business organizations, the speaker stated
that in the the usage is still in trial stage and the objective is mainly focused
on substitute for face-to-face teaching while in business organizations, the
rate of e-learning in use is increasing but some difficulties such as shortage
of contents are encountered. Also, basic skills of business organizations are
targeted and applications to the knowledge for business competency are still
in trial stage.
Prof. Ando pointed out the approaches to overcome this situation, such as
pursuit of open source and open course, educational reform type approach
and gradual accumulation of good practices approach. In educational
organizations on face-to-face teaching base, their „reason for existing‟ will
be lost if their face-to-face teaching classes are replaced by e-learning and/or
distance learning. Therefore, big changes might not be realized unless the
reform type or top-down governmental strategy should be put in practice.
In business organizations, there are no such obstacles. Rather, they must be
changed, otherwise they cannot survive in this rapid changing business
environment. In business organizations, e-learning in a broad sense should
be applied to not only basic skills but also advanced knowledge for business
competency. From the viewpoint of e-learning, the speaker presented a
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conceptual model of integrated evolutionary learning and practical
experiences of e-learning in JAIST: lecture archive system, live lecture
delivery, self-learning type and the type of international dual university
between JAIST and Asian countries.
4. Session 1: Policy and strategy in the e-learning systems
development and open courses sharing, chaired by Dr. Marshall
Smith
Connexions - Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities through
Open Educational Resources
Speaker: Dr. Catherine Casserly, Program Officer for Education, The Hewlett
Foundation, USA
Firstly, the speaker introduced the Connexion, an educational organization
of the Rice University, and its challenges in solving three important
problems facing authors and educators worldwide:
- textbooks and course materials tend to disconnect ideas
- textbooks and course materials tend to disconnect the learning materials
from the practice of the field
- it can be difficult to build collaborations on a large scale around course
materials, meaning that educators are constantly reinventing the wheel rather
than building on each others‟ work.
The purpose of the Connexion strategy is to build an education environment
with the features: vibrant interactive community, connected, innovative, up-
to-date towards the world of education, textbooks, and educational materials
by enabling everyone worldwide to create, rip, mix, and burn their own
educational materials.
The speaker explained in more detailed the four main lines of the
organization strategy:
- create: anyone can become texbook's author
- rip: anyone can translate, customize texbooks
- mix: customized courses would be assembled
- burn: anyone can print their own textbooks
Human Capital Investment, Innovation and Globalization
Speaker: Dr. Li-Chieh Lin, Digital Education Institute, Taiwan
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The speaker began the talk by introducing the five-year national science and
technology program for e-Learning launched by the Taiwan government.
The main goals of Program are: (i) to establish the e-learning industry, (ii) to
create enterprise competitive advantage, (iii) to promote Taiwan‟s
international status, and (iv) to increase social welfare. The program has
dealt with many problems of demand (lack of typical examples, standards,
materials, laws and regulations, high cost of courseware development) as
well as problems of supply (small market size, unclear value chain, new and
small suppliers, insufficient expertise and technologies.
In the next part of his presentation, Dr. Lin touched upon the government
strategies to stimulate the e-learning development. The strategy scheme is of
the following model:
- Government rewards Demand and consults Supplier
- Demand creates successful cases to promote Supplier
- Supplier provides Demand
This model was followed by a executing methodology for demand side,
supply side and general service.
The talk was finished by discussion on the purposes of e-learning adoption
and its major challenges.
Open Sharing: Vision, Actions and Sustainability - Perspective from
China
Speaker: Prof. Liu Meifeng, School of Educational Technology, Beijing Normal
University, China
The talk discussed on the global actions of open sharing of knowledge
because their necessity for society progress. According to the speaker, the
main actions are followings:
- Developing their own OCW and open sharing,
- Translation and localization of OCW and open sharing,
- Utilization of quality OCW and doing comparative study,
- Developing course management system for OCW (including other tools)
and open sharing,
- Community mutually developing opensource software, and open sharing,
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- Providing technology/infrastructure, working with content owners/
creators, collecting various types of content and open sharing, such as
Internet Archive.
The last part of the talk shared experiences for actions of open sharing in
China in the national level, area level, provincial level and university level.
Finally, the speaker listed the facts for the Sustainability of Open Sharing,
namely:
- Participation of content owners/ creators: their ideas and concerns,
- Copy right: creative common,
- Technology Issue: easy access, easy adapt, easy made,
- Utilization,
- Quality: technological aspects, academic aspects, and
- Funding.
Strategy for Sharing Educational Resources in e-Learning
Speaker: Prof. Supannee Sombuntham, Director of Thailand Cyber University
Project, Thailand
The presentation was about the project of the Commission on Higher
Education of Thailand. Firstly, the talk introduced the beginning phase of the
project that initiated an inter-connection (UniNet) between universities
network and founded the central body for cooperation among the higher
educational institutions in the beginning phase. The UniNet network is an
important infrastructure to connect 176 government universities and enable
them to communicate with each other as well as to the world outside. Also,
the talk spoke about the central academic resources system that was created
by the Commission and provides academic resources to all government
universities. The academic resources include E-book, E-journal, and E-
library that every university can use via UniNet.
The next phase of the project is the establishment of Thailand Cyber
University (TCU) that operates e-Learning with efficiency and cost-effective
approach. One of TCU‟s strategies is to create the cooperation among
universities for offering e-Learning, an online teaching and learning method.
The cooperation among the universities is to create the curriculums,
courseware and contents that can be shared with each other.
The following phase of the project is the creation of open and sharable
courseware. The successful result of the project is to provide more than 300
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open courseware courses (mostly in Thai language) that have been accessed
by more than 1 000 people/day.
The recent phase of the project is the sharing of educational resources
among universities in cooperation of offer of online teaching and learning
and experience sharing.
Prof. Sombuntham closed her speech by presenting Long-term goal of the
TCU that includes the using of latest technologies to provide further
education for all, for both formal and informal education; the increase of the
number of people accessing higher education, gaining knowledge; and the
educational standards of the courses with the expectation of sharing
resources to the world.
Open Source and e-Learning: Considerations of Strategies, Policies and
Standards
Speaker: Dr. Seow Hiong Goh, Director of Software Policy ( Asia), Business
Software Alliance, Singapore
Dr. Goh introduced Business Software Alliance (BSA), an organization of
leading developers of tools based on a range of approaches. BSA takes a
balanced view of the issues and each model forms part of healthy, diverse,
competitive software marketplace.
Regarding the software development strategy of BSA, the talk focused on
the three main issues: cost, security and flexibility. In addition, the BSA
policy relies in the software anti-piracy, against digital divide, promotion of
domestic software industry development, innovation in a free market
competition and sovereignty.
The presentation was finished by discussion on the standards and
interoperability. According to the author, the standards development should
be market-driven. The interoperability is driven by consumer demand and
market forces. It should not pick winners but should promote innovation in
interoperability and refrain from legislating/regulating technology in name
of interoperability. The role of Government was highlighted in the main
aspects:
- Distinguish being a policy maker from being a consumer of technology,
- Policies impact long term industry development and growth, and
- Market driven process has best track record.
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5. Session 2: Advanced technologies and new researches in e-
learning , chaired by Dr. Catherine Casserly
Can e-Learning equal e-Inspiration?
Speaker: Dr. Campbell Wilson, Caulfield School of Information Technology,
Monash University, Australia
Dr. Campbell gave an attractive presentation about the inspirational e-
teaching and e-learning that was highly appreciated by audience. Began with
the inspirational teaching, he discussed on the topics:
- Teaching is more than content delivery.
- Ideal teaching should also: engender enthusiasm, encourage participation,
Stimulate interest, provide external motivation to students
- How much does e-learning contribute to fulfilling these ideal
characteristics?
- How much does e-learning detract from the ability to fulfill these ideal
characteristics?
- Another factor to consider in the deployment of e-learning infrastructure?
After reviewing some notions for e-learning and e-learning online/offline
ways, the speaker indicated what threatens inspirational e-learning, namely:
- Technology gets in the way,
- Conformity of the courses
- Lack of interactivity
- Lack of engagement of students
- Lack of provision of student support
Finally, the speaker presented personal experiences in Monash University on
how to have attractive teaching as well as how to have attractive open source
e-learning. Some examples were showed for illustration purpose. The talk
was closed with impressive conclusions:
- E-learning can be “e-inspirational”,
- It requires careful consideration of the rationale for the e-learning
framework with regard to providing learning experiences, and
- It is necessary for aggressive adoption of results from other research areas
such as adaptive web personalization, multimedia indexing and retrieval,
semantic analysis, convergent technologies.
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Knowledge Management and e-Learning
Speaker: Prof. Ho Tu Bao, School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced
Institute Science and Technology
The presentation is research result carried out for many years, in cooperation
with a Vietnamese group. The speaker touched upon two basic topics :
- About concepts of knowledge management and e-learning
- Relation between knowledge management and e-learning
The first topic relates to fundamental notions: systems science, management
science and information science that were clarified in the talk. After
introducing some concept of knowledge, the speaker indicated the places
where knowledge can reside: human mind, document, organization and the
Internet and defined the knowledge management is processes of creating,
capturing, and using knowledge to enhance organizational performance.
Depending on view of knowledge, the theory of knowledge creation can be
defined in different ways: a machine for information processing (Western)
or body and spirit work together through the whole personality (Oriental).
Regarding the knowledge management there are three main components:
- Ba: place for knowledge conversion
- SECI: process of knowledge conversion
- Intellectual capital: basis of knowledge creation
The second topic was initiated by learning related issues: knowledge worker,
life-long learning, learning organization and e-learning. Prof. Bao gave an
comparative analysis on traditional learning in classroom and e-learning and
then highlighted the differences between them. The significant research
results consist in the relational table of e-learning and knowledge
management: from one side to the other side and vice versa.
To conclude the talk, the speaker stated that
- Knowledge sharing is power,
- Knowledge management is crucial for APEC member economies, and
- Strong relation between knowledge management and e-learning.
Design of Mobile Learning Applications: A pedagogical approach
Speaker: Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut, Director of intERlab, Asian Institute of
Technology, Thailand
Prof. Kanchanasut presented a research on a new approach to software
application for mobile learning with virtual classes. The design of mobile
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learning application is guided in four components: common mobile learning
issues, mobile learning contexts, mobile learning experiences and mobile
learning goals. A mobile class is performed in VClass E-learning platform
that comprise three components: content creation, lectures on demand and
mobile classroom.
An illustrative demonstration was given with the features: course presence,
audio conferencing, video conferencing, shared slides, shared folder, group
chat, multicast white board and error reporting.
The speaker finished her talk by discussing the future implementation of
mobile virtual class with the case scenario: use of mobile VClass in MBA
and DBA programs in the School of Management, AIT, Thai land.
Affordable PC with Puppy Linux and VIA PC-1
Speaker: Dr. Rufino S. Mananghaya, Institute of Development Management and
Governance, UPLB, College, Laguna, Philippines
The talk was about the first-ever event bringing together educators/
development professionals and cutting-edge PC solutions providers VIA
Technologies (for hardware) and Puppy Linux (for GPL/free software) in
Philippines. This is the first time that solutions providers got their wares put
to test by the e-learning professionals. The event will pave the way for
affordable computing to be disseminated ASEAN-wide using the experience
from the workshop."
Dr. Mananghaya presented cutting-edge developments in bringing about
affordable (cheap) computing for e-learning using VIA's los-cost PCs and
Puppy Linux. The event described will be conducted on November 27, 2006
in Manila.
Toward a Semantic Proposal for Open Education in e-University
Speaker: Dr. Nguyen Thanh Binh, Hue University Information Technology Center
Vietnam
The purpose of presentation is to introduce a knowledge-based approach in
which Semantic Web technology has become the core of semantic
information portal that can integrate different kinds of information and
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knowledge resources, available in the educational institution. This is a
research result which was motivated by the emerging need for effective
interoperability in e-University environments. The speaker showed in detail
an ontology-based framework that enables the successful implementation of
a reliable semantic portal is also presented and emphasized the outstanding
potentials of Semantic Web in developing e-University environment.
The main contribution of the presentation is to focus on the need for an
innovative virtual study environment through providing a strategy and
technological framework to support open education developed in accordance
with the Semantic Web idea. According to Dr. Binh, the e-University
strategy is to help the universities to effectively apply current technologies
and best practices for a modern and productive academic and administrative
environment. Also in this talk, he gave an overview of a semantic
information portal and highlighted its potential uses for sophisticated open
education in e-University, i.e. the dissemination of information,
communication, collaboration and access to the University services.
In his conclusion, the Dr. Binh pointed out future works to be done for
completion of research approach. Description Logic should be studied and
integrated into the research framework. Thus, the reasoning support over the
conceptual representation can be implemented with formal, logic-based
semantics, enabling a step further in providing intelligent means for
providing semantic portal, e.g. semantic annotation framework and semantic
extraction, intelligent navigation, personalization, or summarization.
6. Session 3: Application of E-learning in universities and other
organizations, chaired by Prof. Ho Tu Bao
National Research-Education Network TEIN2-VN/VINAREN and
Applications
Speaker: Prof. Nguyen Ngoc Binh, Vice Rector, College of Technology, Vietnam
National University
Initially, the talk introduced an international project for Trans-Eurasia
Information Network (TEIN) since 2000 by ASEM3 (TEIN1) and
then since 2004 by ASEM5 (TEIN2) in which the speaker focused on the
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TEIN2's implementation, activities and benefits for the member countries in
ASEM.
In the next part of the talk, Prof. Binh presented Vietnam's participation by
TEIN2-VN and establishing the Vietnam Research and Education Network
(VinaREN) with a number of applications, including e-learning,
telemedicine, etc. TEIN2-VN/VinaREN is evaluated as a good ICT
infrastructure for R&E institutions in Vietnam.
ICT in Education Intel
Speaker: Dr. Sean Cang Mai, Intel Customer Solutions Group - World Ahead,
Intel Vietnam
The talk was about solutions and infrastructure necessary for e-learning.
After talking about an overview of the E-education transformation, Dr. Mai
showed the feasible solutions for software in building e-learning systems
and integrated courseware.
Two software solutions were focused: MS e-learning solution stacks and
Linux e-learning solution stacks. The Microsoft solutions for higher
education includes two broad classification of solutions: E-learning solutions
that are to connect faculty, students and resources through portal services,
create a robust learning environment and discover mobile solutions that
support innovative learning. For the Linux solutions, the Intel integrated
solution kit for education was introduced. It's objective is to accelerate
adoption of OSS based solution in education market. This is a software and
hardware solution stack customized for education that puts well designed
tools in the hands of teachers, students and school administrators. A
learning/course management system in Moodle was demonstrated.
OSS and E-learning in the Computerization of State Administration
Management
Speaker: Dr. Nguyen Chi Cong, Chief Consultant, Steering Committee of the
National Project for Vietnam Digital Administrations, Vietnam
The talk relates to a nation-wide big project of Viet Nam that aims at
building of the Vietnam digital administrations by computerizing State
Administrative Management. This is the first step in building of the
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Vietnamese E-government. Main task of the Project is to deploy a digital
administration in whole country. Besides commercial solutions, strategic
choice of open source and open course aims to help public employees in
using and running their applications with E-learning and tele-maintenance.
Dr. Chi Cong presented the 112edu® Web-based e-learning system for
Vietnam public employees with 5 content categories
- Essential courses (for any learner),
- IT courses (for IT technician),
- Management courses (for manager),
- Office courses (for end-user), and
- Complementary courses.
The e-learning system was presented in the following aspects:
- Course list and course program and access to courseware
- System components
- Functional modes
- System services
- Common requirements
- Development procedure
- E-learning standards and platforms
Open Courseware: Experience from Chulalongkorn University's
Collaboration with MIT
Speaker: Dr. Manoj Lohatepanont, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Dr. Lohatepanont presented the experience from a collaboration project
between Chulalongkorn University, Thailand and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), USA on Open Courseware. Chulalongkorn University
recognizes the potential of Open Courseware movement in enabling the
societies to learn and the education institutes to share the knowledge through
the Internet. With this vehicle, educators can share their knowledge freely
and self-learners and even educators can learn and improve their knowledge
at their own pace. Chulalongkorn University is currently hosting a MIT
Open Courseware mirror site and a MIT Open Courseware Translation site,
and is constructing its own Open Courseware site offering subjects taught at
Chulalongkorn University.
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The speaker finished the presentation by his remarks on the educational
liberalization:
- Open Courseware is a liberalization of education system
- Higher education institutes have the responsibilities to education the
society and the nation in a non-discrimination manner
- Governments and NGOs should encourage and support educational
liberalization movement
- Governments should clearly differentiate open education from intellectual
property protection issues
- Open education is a vehicle for continuing education, thorough which
educational society can be built and sustained
Supporting Educational Development in Viet Nam through ICT
Speaker: Dr. Alex Stimpson, ICT and Education, UNESCO Vietnam
The talk was about the support from UNESCO Hanoi to the educational
development in Vietnam through Information and Communication
Technology. There are three main projects:
- ICT for Community Empowerment (for continuing education)
- CLC-Management Information System (for continuing education)
- Next Generation of Teachers (for formal education and teacher training)
The first project's (ICT for Community Empowerment) objective is to raise
the quality of life and educational attainment among disadvantaged
populations in Viet Nam through access to information and educational
activities using ICT.
The second project's (CLC-Management Information System) objective is to
improve the quality of management and support for increasing the quality of
learning offered by Community Learning Centres (CLCs) via the phased
introduction of a nationwide Management Information System.
The third project's (Next Generation of Teachers) objective is to build the
capacity of Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) to prepare pre-service
secondary and post primary teachers for ICT-enhanced classrooms.
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7. Session 4: Experience sharing and lessons learned, chaired by
Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut
Open Source and Open Course for E- Learning on Basic Education
Speaker: Ms. Gabriela Cáceres Girón, Ministry of Education, Peru
The speaker talked about the Huascaran Project of Peru. The general
objective of project is to improve the quality of education, through
strengthening of the Centro de Información Técnica (CIT) services and their
pedagogic advantage on the part of the students and teachers, in the mark of
a cross-cultural and bilingual politics.
The specific objetives are:
- To assist with contributions pertinent facilitators to the educational
institutions with problems of pedagogic advantage the CIT.
- To consolidate Huascarán Project like a generator of a sustained process
integration of CIT in the Education.
- To propitiate environments development of the technologies of information
and communication like support of the process of teaching-learning
- To strengthen the mechanisms of institutional administration
Crystal CAB Network Experience: Use of Open Source Possibilities for
Capacity Building
Speaker: Ms. Norma Vidal Añaños, ITACAB - Andres Bello Agreement, Peru
The presentation introduced Crystal CAB Network, a network for setting
up of an exchange service for hundreds of didactical materials of member
institutions in many Latin-American countries toward the strengthening of
capacity building components and the enhancement of the e-learning
processes of the network
Open sources in the network has been developed in Moodle and provides
- Courses for CRYSTAL-CAB Network Members
- Courses for users of others institutions
- Crystal CAB Virtual Consultation
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Networking of Spatial Approach
Speaker: Dr. L. Manik Mustiko Hendro, Center of Education Statistics, Ministry of
National Education, Indonesia
As expert in the education area, the speaker presented his point of view
regarding schools and training centers. From one side, they can be
considered as a construction of institution which is controlled under
boundary of public administration. From the other side, schools can be
viewed as service function for society which is controlled under density and
mobility of population.
Based on the spatial descriptive, spatial schematic and spatial analysis, a
Web-based database system for educational mapping in the Ministry of
National Education has been developed. To implement the system, e-
learning method has been used. Dr. Hendro spent a time to speak about
reasons using e-learning and the problem to be faced to, namely:
- High variance for Infrastructure of IT, between districts,
- High variance for human resource, between districts, and
- Commitment of local government (district level) for coordination
Open Sources in the Tax Administration
Speaker: Dr. Yuri Castañeda Pedroza, Tax and Customs Agency, Peru
Dr. Pedroza shared experiences in the use of open source in deverloping a
system for management of tax payers and tax collection. The system is
developed by SUNAT, the Peruvian government agency that manages tax
collections and customs control. The experiences were focused in the
BackOffice software, Desktop software and Tikiwiki Portal. The important
promotion is government policies to encourage Open Source that was
emphasized by the speaker:
• Open Source law
• Law 28612, that regulates the use, purchase and adequate of software
in the Public Administration (technological relevance, equality treat
for software providers and no limitations for providers)
• CODESI: multi sectored work team working to share the government
software
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Open Source software in Education: Experience from Francophonie
Institute of Computer Science
Speaker: Prof. Ho Tuong Vinh, Institut de la Francophonie pour l’Informatique,
Vietnam
Prof. Tuong Vinh presented on how the open source has been exploited in
his institute (IFI). The education in IFI has supported totally by open source
software system, including
- IT infrastructure (computer networks and servers)
- Administration (course management systems & library)
- Software tools for IT training (office, programming skill, etc)
- Software for software engineering training (tools for analysis, design,
implementation, test, etc.)
- OS software for research
The speaker also pointed out main partners in building the center for Linux
& OS software and theirs principal actions: propagate/stimulate the use of
OS software in universities & public, training and development of solutions
for OS software.
He concluded that the use of open source is the right selection of IFI and
recommended universities to try and embark in the OS movement.
DSD e-Learning
Speaker: Mr. Somchai Aujaruporn and Ms. Atita Akesomtaramet
Department of Skill Development, Ministry of Labour, Thailand
Mr. Aujaruporn and Ms. Akesomtaramet shared experiences in the
implementation of Competency-Based Skill Training (CBST) for efficient
skills development system in e-learning project of the Department of Skill
Development, Ministry of Labour, Thailand.
The way to implement CBST is to employ CBT (Computer-Based Training).
In their CBT, most of training materials will be converted into computer
multimedia (video, image,graphics, sound, animation, etc.) and the trainees
learn the lesson via computer. To implement CBST using CBT lessons in
form of CBST concept (in computer format, e.g. CD-ROM ) and computer
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support system for CBT which called Computer Managed Instructor(CMI).
It is used to manage both courseware and trainee in a training environment.
8. Closing ceremony
Prof. Luong Chi Mai, Deputy Director of the Institute of Information
Technology, Viet Nam delivered the closing remarks, wrapping up the
presentations and summarizing main contents of the Symposium.
9. Conclusive assessment
The Symposium has significant contributions that meet the need of the
participant economies on the main issues of Open Courses and Open
Sources for E-learning:
- Coming up with common language spoken about E-learning concept
- Sharing of experiences and lessons learned from APEC economies
- Stimulating of building E-learning systems using Open Sources
- Promoting of scientific and technological researches towards specific
topics on Open Courses in e-learning
- Motivating of implementation of the environment for sharing open courses
among APEC economies
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