Open Source Webtools for Education and Research (OSWER'09)

Le Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires (CRI) and the Center for Theoretical biology (CTB) at Peking University will co-organized an interdisciplinary workshop about online tools and the emergence of learning communities.

The workshop will split into two parts:

• July, 6th–12th: Using Open Source webtools for education/research? (REGISTRATION AND PROGRAM)
• July, 29th–August, 4th: Developing Open Source webtools for the 21st century education/research (REGISTRATION AND PROGRAM)

This two weeks are part of a whole summer school in PKU. Check the overall program here.

The web is at the center of our daily academic life, that can be split into three main activities: storing ideas, sharing ideas, creating ideas. What are the tools we use to store information? What are the tools we use to share knowledge? What are the tools we use to spread new idea among researcher we want to reach? How do we strenghten collaboration opportunities through the web?

We also know too little about 1) open source tools that are available out there to help us learn and share knowledge 2) the way other people use the web to enhance their learning experience.

Nonethless we feel there is an amazing potential to offer a better and different education to students anywhere in the world through better shared online educational tools.

The aims of these two workshop are:

• to share about the tools we currently use as students/researchers
• to conceive tools that we, as scientists or students, would like to use
• to propose tools that people in developing countries could use to improve their education, and get something adapted to solve the challenges they have to face
• to propose tools that will induce real life learning communities to emerge, in universities or elsewhere. We consider these communities to be fundamental for learning how to be critical and for learning how to work collectively to face global challenges

We will gather users and developers around tools and functionalities we want to improve or create. Developers can ba web developers as well as social developers. We will gather also students, researchers and educators from the CRI and the CTB that have a great experience of putting students and researchers together, sustaining fruitful interdisciplinary interactions between them, thanks to informal real life meetings. Since a few years both communities wonders how we would use the web as a mean to create new such communities and still maintain such interactions?

See the workshops registration pages (week 1 and week 2) for detailed programs.

• click here to say what games will make our workshop fun and fruitful.

Contact: bastienguerry AT gmail DOT com

In the spring of 2008, CRI and CTB chose to gather their best mentors and students to create an international workshop.

• Here Is The Summary of It.

You can get a feeling about a workshop by review it, and expect what we can have in the next happy communication.

“We spent two weeks in interdisciplinary teams, working on scientific issues, and in par-ticular on handicap, while taking into account our different backgrounds and cultures, al-ways with a great sense of respect and the will to listen carefully to each other. We also took time to think about educational issues. As I view it, this workshop, besides being a great scientific adventure, brought us a better understanding of Chinese culture and way of life. A glance sufficient enough to realize the benefits we’ll have to work together in the fu-ture.”

—Irène Sérézal-Gallais, Medical Student, Ecole de l’INSERM - Liliane Bettencourt