OZ 2012/4

COBISS OBVESTILA 1. Access to information and knowledge; 2. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content and 3. Ethical dimensions of the Information Society. Ladies and Gentlemen, During the three hours that we will spend together at this function, enough information will be consumed globally to fill 21 million DVDs, 36 billion emails will be sent, some 250,000 blog posts will be written, which will be enough to fill the TIME magazine for 256 million years, 22 million people would have visited Facebook, some 5 million would have visited Twitter and staggeringly 587 million minutes would have been spent on Facebook alone! Some 264 million minutes of this time would be from the mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones. We may rejoice in these statistics and be awed by them. However, in essence there are several "Knowledge Challenges", that require our concerted and synergized action. The new economic and technological environment has arisen concerns about the erosion of access to certain information and knowledge whose free-sharing has traditionally been seen as the very basis of scientific research and education. We must also understand that knowledge societies are not only about economic growth, but also about the role of ICTs in human development, and thus about issues of intellectual cooperation, lifelong learning and basic human values and rights. It is in this sphere that education and knowledge must both be considered as social capital, with strong societal implications of fundamental concern for public authorities. Most developing countries have thus far been unable to take full advantage of the advances offered by knowledge societies, especially of the "openness" that the use of new ICTs has to offer. Many countries suffer from the changing nature of the digital divide. This is no longer so much about simple access to infrastructure, but about the knowledge of running sophisticated information and communication systems, as well as the production of sufficient quantities of local content and services that ensure return on investment in the infrastructure. Ladies and Gentlemen, Today "Open" is the key term. With technological development educational materials in form Open Educational Resources offer vast potential on all accounts. These resources include any types of educational material released into the public domain, or with an open-license that freely and legally allows users to copy, use, adapt, and re-share them. The open nature of these materials represents a powerful opportunity for individual learners, teachers, Ministries of Education, and higher education and research institutions to increase the quality of and access to education. UNESCO has a special relationship with Open Educational Resources -- the term was coined at UNESCO in 2002 during a Forum of experts studying the impact of the release by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of their courses as openly-licensed materials. Today, this Open Way has been followed successfully by more than 200 educational and research institutions worldwide, many of which are members of international groups such as the Open Courseware Consortium . In June this year, UNESCO hosted the 2012 World OER Congress that brought together several hundred experts from all parts of the world and who adopted the Paris Declaration outlining the