Brick of Knowledge on Open Models
The Brick of Knowledge on Open Models is a resource to learn and train on Open Science, Open Education, Open (Source) Software, Open Hardware... An open educational resource to understand these phenomena of sharing and collaboration around knowledge in the digital era.
The project is to continue building the Brick of Knowledge and nurture the ecosystem around open models education, properly produce a robust base and advance its internationalisation.
This corpus of knowledge would be a generic digital common for open models education, used as a tool to support the implementation of open models trainings within organisations. The aim is to emphasize on the scientific and academic community.
The consortium members will be the first pilot organisations, everyone working primarily on their own open models training while collaborating together to achieve this.
Given that each of us already has a project related to open models, the intention is to align our activities to support these implementations in other organisations and open model education more widely, possibly leading to contributions to the brick by consortium members.
The overall mission will be to contribute to the democratisation of open models by working on the educational axis.
Education on open models let people have a deeper understanding of available (open) resources online, knowing openness fields can help you to know what you can look for and where you can try to search. It empowers people for resource sharing and publishing, helping in their discoverability and in building a common digital heritage.
Open models knowledge shape digital strategies when creating and using digital resources.
Link: https://github.com/Open-Models/Brique
The Brick of Knowledge is an open educational resource under CC BY-SA/AGPL licences, all related open educational content will be open.
DRA is looking to build a digital library for their open educational resources, OKA for their open technologies.
We all have a culture of openness.
Link: https://zenodo.org/record/8021779
This is a pedagogical environment on open models used for a workshop during an event inside a third place(/makerspace).
It was deployed during an afternoon for a workshop called « Hacking the school », with external speakers and myself providing topics for discussion around education.
The aim was to draw on this pedagogical environment and, at the same time, bring in topics for discussion linked to open models in an attempt to fuel public debate on educational and digital issues.
No real technical contribution to a community/project specifically related to open models education.
On the other hand, the popular education work and interactions being done on social networks, for example, could be seen as a modest contribution to the various openness movements from a global perspective.
A contribution to help move forward the challenges of education in open models communities.
Open models are ubiquitous, they are part of the foundations of our digital world. There is Open (Source) Software in all modern applications, open science is becoming the norm in the scientific community, openness movements are growing in other fields.
Most people don't even know them, none of us really understand them.
Today, there is almost no formal education on open models. Few trainings for each open model, it does not even seem to exist a way to learn about these topics as a whole. Most of our education is self-taught, through reading and life experiences.
Open models education is hard to define, as it may widely differ from contexts and needs, ranging from very generalist to very specialised. It will differ if it's for people in IT, researchers, teachers, makers, students, citizens...
With their importance, open models are essential to a robust digital culture. Open models education could help us understand how the digital era is changing our relationship to knowledge.
The core of the project is the Brick of Knowledge, an Open Educational Resource (OER) to learn and train on open models. A relatively generic knowledge base with the intention of building a digital common usable for education on open models.
Around the Brick of Knowledge, the goal is to engage in different kinds of activities in favor of open models education inside various ecosystems. Because educational needs vary greatly from one place to another, it should be more about supporting formal and informal organizations in implementing their own training programs on open models, with the brick and other materials from the ecosystem as tools combined with the support of consortium members.
The challenge is to transmit theoretical knowledge on open models to help in the research, construction and sharing of digital resources in the open way. To enable people and organisations to act on this knowledge, shaping their digital strategies.
Considering all « open models » as a whole is a very emerging idea, these phenomena having evolved somewhat in silos, making it in some ways a new subject.
No organisation worldwide seems to be involved in open models education specifically. Overall, there are no specialised degrees in these subjects at universities.
Open education is an under-explored subject, an atypical approach in the training world especially outside the education sector, while open models education is underdeveloped, with multiple interests in view of their importance. In general, open education is not designed with a certain entrepreneurial approach in mind.
There is usually a lack of knowledge about these dynamics of openness for those running open projects. The idea is to draw inspiration from the world of open source software and apply methodologies and tools to educational content. For example, by seeking to build a service economy around a pedagogical common with a network of trainers.
Education on open models can take shape in more places than we imagine, with growing interest thanks to the democratisation of digital.
To focus first and foremost on higher education and research, open science policies are leading to open science training to support researchers to publish and collaborate on scientific work. Open models education can bring them a broader picture and understanding of openness, open science trainings would be an entry point.
All universities worldwide are concerned, a training interest that may be related to open science or more broadly to digital literacy challenges.
Open models training can be useful for teachers involved in open education, for people in fab-lab, makerspace or third place, of course for people in open software at least through Open Source Program Office... A few possibilities.
As a market demonstration, would you have an interest in improving education on open models within the NGI program and your consortium's universities?
As educational content, the business model in the traditional sense may not be essential for the sustainability of the Brick of Knowledge. The ecosystem could be driven solely by players in education and research, paid for by their institutions.
Because our society supports science and education poorly, especially citizen research coupled with popular education on emerging topics, while making entrepreneurship sacred, the project has been designed with an entrepreneurial approach and thought on business models.
The basic business model around the Brick of Knowledge would be about providing training to different kinds of organisations, the intention is to enable a network of independent trainers to make a living from open models training.
It seems possible to have more of a consultancy activity, to support projects that take up these issues of openness, as in supporting organisations to implement their training in open models.
What is the impact of the digital revolution on knowledge? What is the impact of this transformation on society in the Anthropocene era?
We still know so little, and these societal transformations are only just beginning.
Open models are somehow at the root of our understanding of environmental crises. IPCC reports are open access, disseminating knowledge throughout society, shaping our vision of the world.
Enabling researchers to master open models could encourage international collaboration on different issues, as was clumsily done during the covid crisis because of the immaturity of infrastructures and skills in openness.
Many people use open source software because they have limited means, many scientists do not have access to journal articles and benefit from open science, many students whose learning is limited by a lack of books benefits from « Zero Textbook Cost » open education campaigns in schools...
Where is the documentation for the Internet?
We are a consortium of 3 members: Digital Research Academy (DRA), Open Knowledge Association (OKA) and AbcSxyZ.
I (AbcSxyZ) have been exploring open models autonomously for some years now, convinced of the importance of open models education for mastering digital as a knowledge tool.
DRA is a nascent network of trainers for the digital skills of researchers, focused on open science and openness.
OKA is an eco-campus project for open technologies, following on from a master's thesis on open models.
It's an exploratory work on a new subject.
It's an experimentation of open models through open models education, enabling us both to seek to understand and to pass on this knowledge.
A long-term goal would be to bring together a community of researchers from a coalition of universities in order to build up our knowledge of open models.
Becoming an experiment in the relationship between science and education, an experiment in the way science and education are conducted.
Name: AbcSxyZ
Entity name (if participating as an entity): [Application as individual]
Role: Open Models trainer, Brick of Knowledge maintainer
Background (URL): https://open-models.org
Name: [personal information]
Entity name (if participating as an entity): Digital Research Academy (DRA)
Role: Project Management Support, Open Science contributor
Background (URL): https://digital-research.academy/
Name: [personal information]
Entity name (if participating as an entity): As EU resident for Open Knowledge Association (OKA)
Role: Citizen Researcher on Open Models
Background (URL): (unavailable the 11/01) https://www.swisstransfer.com/d/77e3ee4f-9449-4f69-afb4-a45b46b956f5
Milestone 1:
(AbcSxyZ) Brick: Internationalization, switch to english/multilingual
(DRA/AbcSxyZ) Detailed Project Management Planning and administrative set up of consortium
(OKA) Mapping of actors, (educational) resources, tools, etc.
(everyone) Brick: organization and tooling improvements.
Milestone 2:
(AbcSxyZ) Internationalization
(AbcSxyZ/everyone) Brick: construction of a robust base for the main open models + development of annex content (history...).
(OKA) Brick: Technical support for open standard/technology deployment.
(DRA) Internal development of a Train The Trainer (TTT) program and user testing of prototypes with DRA trainers.
Milestone 3:
(AbcSxyZ) Support for DRA and OKA's own implementations of open models education.
(DRA) Organization of full TTT program
(OKA) Development of a campus model
(everyone) Support implementation of open models education for the NGI community and universities of your consortium members ? And elsewhere.
150'000€, the maximum amount.
FTE: Full-Time Equivalent
PM: Personnel Months
Milestone 1:
(AbcSxyZ)
7000 EUR for 1 person for 1 FTE
3000 EUR for travel/tooling costs + Kickoff Event
(DRA)
7000 EUR for 1 PM for 1 FTE (DE Rate 7000 EUR/Month)
3000 EUR for travel/tooling costs + Kickoff Event
(OKA)
7000 EUR for 3 person for 0.5FTE
3000 EUR for travel/tooling costs + Kickoff Event
Total Milestone 1: 30.000EUR
Milestone 2:
(AbcSxyZ)
20.000 EUR for 1 person for 1 FTE
5.000 EUR for travel/tooling costs
(DRA)
22.400 EUR for 8 PM for 0.4 FTE
2.600 EUR for travel/tooling costs
(OKA)
20.000 EUR for 3 person for 0.5 FTE
5.000 EUR for travel/tooling costs
Total Milestone 2: 75.000 EUR
Milestone 3:
(AbcSxyZ)
13.000 EUR for 1 person for 1 FTE
2.000 EUR for travel/tooling costs
(DRA)
8.400 EUR 3PM for 0.4 FTE
5.600 EUR for organization of onsite TTT with deployment of MVP
1000 EUR travel/tooling costs
(OKA)
13.000 EUR for 3 person for 0.5 FTE
2.000 EUR for travel/tooling costs
Total Milestone 3: 45.000 EUR