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Open Culture: From Knowledge to Action

Education belongs to everyone. We introduce the principles of open knowledge and explore how global movements for open science, open data, and open learning are reshaping access to education globally to make education more accessible and equitable.

By breaking down barriers of cost, geography, and institutional gatekeeping, OER create pathways for lifelong learning. They invite us into a commons of ideas, where learners can reuse, remix, and redistribute resources freely. Opening the gates of knowledge opens the door to innovation and social change.

What are OER & why do they matter?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any format—modules, syllabus, textbooks, lecture notes, videos, audio, animations— in the public domain or released under an open license (Creative Commons) that allows free use, reuse, adaptation, remixing, and redistribution. (UNESCO)

We start by asking: what knowledge is already out there, where do I find it, and how is it shared? Open Educational Resources (OER) offer answers. Freely available teaching and learning materials, they democratise learning as anyone can use, adapt, and redistribute them.

You can learn how to do and make just about anything!

Open Knowledge takes many forms, including (but not limited to): Open Hardware, Open Data, Science, Philosophy, Open Source Society, Open Learning and Open Systems. These OER resources are accessible for anyone to use, learn from and remix collaboratively.

Why OER matter:

• Break down barriers of cost, geography, and access.
• Adapt to local cultures, languages, and learning needs.
• Encourage collaboration across borders and communities.
• Support lifelong learning beyond the classroom.

Open licenses (like Creative Commons) make clear what you can reuse, remix, and redistribute—ensuring OERs remain a shared global good.

OPEN science opens up scientific knowledge without having to pay for expensive journals, offering equal access to academic, practical and hands-on skills around the world.

Makers Mobility Interview: Stephen Kovats, r0g_agency

MakersXchange (MAX)

How would you define “maker culture”?

“Maker culture really is about the culture of critical making. It is also about fixing things, to be efficient with your resources, about circular economy, low waste, upcycling rather than just recycling, repair culture, hacktivism in its positive sense, breaking things open and looking at how they work as well as creating and re-purposing things and making them more useful in new and creative ways.

The #ASKnet (Access to Skills and Knowledge network) program in South-Sudan and Uganda, with similar ideas being developed in Pakistan and elsewhere. Through #ASKnet maker type initiatives, programs and projects have been developed which are basically dealing with situations where you have little or no access to electricity, nor internet and a low infrastructure in general …. often combined with difficult political or administrative environments.

Together with the community of young makers that we have been working with for some years now, such as Platform Africa, a South Sudanese refugee run #ASKnet member hub in Northern Uganda, we developed a system called #ASKotec (Access to Skills and Knowledge open tech emergency case). It is a portable kind of maker lab in itself, orientated to learning about topics like simple electronics, solar power, mechanical systems, repair-culture and basic IT, with many common resources we usually take for granted but are not necessarily easy to find and access in the field or in remote locations. Our target is how to maximize situations with extreme minimal resources.”

#ASKnet Open Hardware Guide (#OHG)

The #OHG gives examples of hands-on skills possibilities and projects applying open hardware methodologies, introduces to resources and is as a tangible tool in the form of a rugged A1 poster for trainers, tinkerers and facilitators. Get the #OHG for anyone interested in exploring open technologies in a very practical way. Here are some practical OER examples from the guide.

Open Source Ecology

Open Source Blueprints for Civilization. Build Yourself.

Open source industrial machines can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, designs shared online free, to create an open source economy which increases innovation by open collaboration.

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Paper-Duino

Paper PCBs are Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) based on paper print outs combined with copper strip boards. With these boards one can easily build and modify real electronic circuits that could be used in any devices and applications. A compilation of Arduino clones CC-BY-SA 4.0 Int. by Wolfgang Spahn.

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Salvage Garden

Community Makerspace Singapore, SEA, and globally focused on Assistive Tech, low-cost bespoke solutions for persons with disabilities, and openSourced hardware. It is a volunteer-led community space founded on the principle of “People-first design”.

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Resource Box