Open sourcing education in South Africa

South Africa has tremendous potential, with a new generation of young people poised to become global leaders and innovators. Unfortunately, most of these young people are attending schools that are underfunded, lack teachers and have poor access to educational materials. Tapping into South Africa's potential will require dramatic improvements -- and innovations -- in how education works. The question is: can open source thinking spark these innovations? Would free, editable textbooks for every grade make a difference? Could students teach logic and analysis skills to each other? Can schools and local entrepreneurs team up to make sure students have access to the Internet? These are some of the questions that South Africa's Shuttleworth Foundation is asking. This talk will provide an overview of three Shuttleworth Foundation initiates that apply open source thinking to the challenge of radically improving education in South Africa.

Mark Surman, Open Philanthropy Fellow, The Shuttleworth Foundation Mark Surman is in the business of connecting things: people, ideas, everything. A community technology activist for almost 20 years, Mark is currently Director of telecentre.org, a $21 million program that invests in grassroots computing networks around the world. He is also an open philanthropy fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation and co-convenes conversations about open cities in his hometown of Toronto. Mark's biggest fetishes are community, conversation and collaboration. He has facilitated over three dozen participatory workshops and unconferences, including Hollyhock's Web of Change, CopyCamp, PenguinDay.ca and countless telecentre.org events. Mark likes to write about community, technology and changing the world. He's written: From the Ground Up (why telecentres matter), Commonspace (web 2.0, before there was web 2.0) and Appropriating Technology for Social Change (activism on the Internet). When he was an idealistic student, he wrote From VTR to Cyberspace, about Gramsci, community television and the Internet. He also blogs.