Co-operatives & Technology
Co-operative Learning Centre
The CLC development team has now finalized the content for the launch of the website, including a translation of most of the site’s web pages into Spanish. This introductory information on co-operatives, for youth and others seeking to learn about co-ops, presents the co-operative model and features many case studies and other resources. These resources show the variety of ways people are applying the co-operative model to meet their social and economic needs around the world.
For those new to the Co-operative Learning Centre project, here is a little background. In 2004, BCICS joined forces with the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) and the International Labour Organization to develop a collaborative online resource centre for the international co-operative community, called The Co-operative Learning Centre (CLC). The CLC is a multilingual, multimedia, online database containing valuable information on the effective use of the co-operative model. It provides access to information, training, research, resources and networks in order to facilitate co-operative education and development for anyone with access to a web browser. All resources on the CLC are classified according to type, themes and geographical regions, making it easy to navigate and search for information. Visit the CLC at: http://www.learningcentre.coop.
As you may well already know, the Co-operative Learning Centre project was recently migrated to a Drupal-based system (http://drupal.org). Drupal is a popular Open Source project that continues to evolve at a fantastically rapid rate, meaning it continues to become more stable and feature-rich everyday. Using Drupal has many benefits for the CLC users as well as the CLC development team. Users and content managers can easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content and resources with ease through the online website management system. Perhaps the biggest benefit of switching to Drupal is how it handles translations. Our Language Partners can translate as they are browsing the content of the site. This means a language partner can find an interesting resource submitted to the website in another language and, if they would like to share this resource with others using their language, then the Language Partner can translate it to make it accessible.
If you are interested in becoming a Language Partner with the Co-operative Learning Centre then please email Robin Puga, CLC Lead Developer, at admin@learningcentre.coop.
Social Economy Student Network
The Social Economy Student Network (SESN)
serves as a forum for post-secondary academic dialogue, information
dispersal and education on the Social Economy (SE). It links together
students, researchers and comunity partners from across the globe and
facilitates the growth of knowledge and information-sharing among
members. The Network exists to bring together post-secondary students,
researchers and practitioners interested in aspects of the Social
Economy in order to facilitate the formation of intellectually
stimulating and diverse peer networks within and beyond the academic
and research environment.
The vision of the Network is to serve as a space for post-secondary
academic dialogue, information dispersal and education on the Social
Economy. It's purpose is to better
enable students, researchers and community practitioners to connect to
one another across geographic boundaries, and academic disciplines, to
break down and dismantle researcher-practitioner barriers and
dichotomies of practice and to help members acquire and share research
and related information that deals with aspects of the Social Economy.
This includes, but is not limited to: academic papers and research
projects, a SE bibliography, upcoming conferences and calls for papers,
online seminars and lectures on the SE, resources on conducting
SE-based research, existing university and college courses and programs
with a particular SE focus, employment opportunities or practicum’s and
community-based initiatives.
The SESN is also built using the Drupal Open Source framework.
Visit the Social Economy Student Network website and sign up today >>
Open Source Software Movement and the Co-operative Movement
BCICS is committed to the Open Source software movement because the values parallel those of the co-operative movement. Open Source programs are cooperatively developed by the communities that use the programs and are available to everyone free of charge. To be certified as Open Source, software must be distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software freely. All BCICS’s online projects and its web servers run entirely on Open Source software.
Robin Puga, B.Sc., is preparing a paper on the comparing the values of the Open Source movement with those of the co-operative movement.
Staff Training
BCICS trains and employs students and staff to help develop its online resources. BCICS has been fortunate to work with many brilliant and talented students. Although Open Source software development is quickly becoming a standard for web development, there are few courses offered in Open Source web technologies. BCICS is proud to train its students to use these technologies and has received positive feedback from its technology students.
“This past summer my duties at BCICS included web development for the Dr. Suren Saxena Library Online. The experience I gained in Open Source technology development, under the tutelage of Robin Puga, will be a valuable asset to me as I continue my studies and move out into the workforce.”
Christopher Luft – Computer Science Student