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Deadline for the June edition will be June 10, with publication on or around June 17. Send your contributions along to newsletter@apereo.org!
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From the Executive Director
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Open Apereo 2019 Keynotes
There's still time to register for Open Apereo 2019, June 2nd to 6th at the Omni Los Angeles at California Plaza!
Register here conf.apereo.org- and don't forget to book your hotel place by 1700 PDT, Friday 17th to get the special rate!
Tannis Morgan:
The Future of Ed Tech in Higher Education When Open Source is a Radical Solution
There is no shortage of futurists speculating about innovation, disruption, and the future of educational technology in higher education. Yet, those responsible for leading edtech strategies and academic innovation are often faced with institutional realities and considerations that don't align with the visions being pitched by futurists and vendors.
In this talk I will take us through some examples of ed tech absurdities from the perspective of a public college administrator responsible for the academic innovation strategy. I will dive into the importance of institutional control in an environment where it is increasingly critical to understand issues of privacy, surveillance, and big tech business models; our tendency to recreate problematic structures rather than rethink the models; and the need for alternative visions of NGDLEs driven by teaching and learning and not tech. I will suggest that open source educational technology is critical to a future where open education practices and flexible teaching and learning are established, and the importance of models such as Apereo, Domains of One's Own, and OpenETC in shaping that future.
Tannis Morgan is the Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning, & Innovation at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC). She is a key champion of OER at the JIBC, including conceiving their Zed Cred initiative several years ago and systematically working towards it even before BCcampus put out a call for grants. Tannis has helped steer the Justice Institute towards leveraging open source tools such as WordPress and Learn Dash to create affordable and open resources used by students and by the community. Click Here to read more about Tannis.
Ian Dolphin: Platforms and Privacy - Open Approaches
Privacy is currently a big deal in higher education IT. The topic entered the EDUCAUSE “Top Ten IT Issues” list this year at number 3. So what’s new? High profile legislation such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has both upped the compliance ante, and done much to generate awareness. These developments have been accompanied by high profile data breaches with international ramifications affecting millions of users at British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Starwood, amongst others, and a daily diet press stories of egregious misuse of user data by large technology platforms. Higher education is in danger of being caught in a web of multiple conflicting agendas. Ian Dolphin will survey the privacy landscape, and draw some preliminary conclusions about the location of open source software in relation to privacy.
Ian Dolphin is Executive Director of the Apereo Foundation, and has been involved with open source software in higher education for almost twenty years. He is former Heady of eStrategy at the University of Hull, in the UK, and has also worked for the UK's Jisc.
Conference Website - https://www.apereo.org/conferences/open-apereo-2019
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Join Friends of Apereo!
The Apereo Foundation and its projects have been at the forefront of creating and sustaining software in service of education. Apereo extends membership to individuals through the Friends of Apereo program. This program allows individuals to support our community programs and activities.
By making a small contribution that will be dedicated to our support programs, Friends of Apereo can help make a difference. In return, we'll help you stay in touch by providing discounted access to Apereo events and by giving Friends a say in how Apereo is run by voting for a reserved Friends of Apereo board seat.
Apereo's work has touched countless learners, teachers and researchers worldwide, helping to both extend access to learning opportunities, and enriching them. Please help us sustain and extend that by becoming a Friend of Apereo today.
Individual memberships are available for $100. Joining is easy at https://www.apereo.org/Friends
Individual membership supports the work of the Foundation as a whole. If you'd like to direct your gift to a specific Apereo Project, please specify the details using the special instructions section in PayPal.
Thank you for your continued support of the Apereo Foundation!
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2019 Apereo Fellows Announced
The Apereo Foundation is pleased to announce the Apereo Fellows for 2019, individuals who have made outstanding contributions to Apereo projects and their communities.
Many thanks to the Apereo Fellows Selection Committee: Wilma Hodges, Matt Jones, Stephen Marquard, Janice Smith, and Anthony Whyte, chair
Julien Gribonvald: Julien works for the online education software service at GIP RECIA - a public interest group serving the Center-Loire Valley (France). He develops, manages, and deploys several services (including uPortal) to more than 200 middle and high schools on a common and centralized platform.
Greg Logan: Greg is a developer, board member, and consultant working with Opencast.
Misagh Moayyed: Misagh has been working as a senior software engineer and a member of Unicon's Identity and Access Management team since 2011.
Martin Ramsay: Martin is the Managing Director of the LAMP Consortium (www.lampschools.org), a community of colleges, universities, and other educational organizations that shares a single instance of Sakai.
Jolie Tingen: Jolie is a Product Manager for the Kits platform at Duke University. She has been a contributing member of the Sakai community since 2008, participating in the Quality Assurance, User Experience, and ATLAS working groups.
For complete bios on our winners, read more here
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European Commission launches quiz to assess knowledge of open source software
The European Commission is an enthusiastic user, producer, and contributor of free and open source software (FOSS). Freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change in any way, open source code is publicly shared to encourage people (anyone) to voluntarily improve the design and features of the software.
Many people already use FOSS without knowing they are benefiting from it. This is about to change. To spread the message about the benefits of FOSS, the EU-FOSSA 2 project has created a simple quiz in an effort to assess the level of understanding of FOSS among the general public. In addition, the quiz covers issues such as the safety of FOSS, how often it is used, and which European institutions use FOSS.
The benefits of increasing the level of FOSS usage are undeniable. According to recent studies, the European economy saves around EUR 114 billion per year by using open source software solutions. The overall contribution of FOSS to Europe’s economy is estimated at almost EUR 450 billion.
Public services that procure free and open source software solutions generate significant future benefits that are, by their nature, available to everybody - citizens, companies and public sector organisations. Open source contributions create a virtuous loop, and are a key component of the European Commission’s free software strategy.
About EU-FOSSA 2
The quiz is part of the EU’s Free and Open Source Software Auditing project, EU-FOSSA 2. The project aims to ensure and maintain the integrity and security of key open source software. EU-FOSSA 2 has set out to improve FOSS security and raise awareness of its many benefits which, amongst others, include lower software costs and increased security.
To find out more about what the Commission is doing to improve the security and usage of open source software visit the EU-FOSSA 2 website.
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New Directions for OAE
