The Open Knowledge Foundation has launched a new mailing list for open knowledge in development. Jonathan Gray writes:

We encourage you to join - whether you’re interested in:

• visually representing development related open data (a la OKF Advisory Board member Hans Rosling)
• sharing development information or making it easier to find and re-use (a la Aidinfo or PublishWhatYouFund)
• sharing practical information for development, e.g. on sanitation or construction (a la Appropedia or Akvo)
• open textbooks and open resources for education in developing countries
• or in any other open knowledge thats related to development!

The full post is on their blog: New mailing list for open knowledge in development

Edit: Note the new Appropedia wiki page, Open aid and development.

Looking at what One Laptop Per Child  is about highlights two aspects to knowledge in development:

• knowledge as development (OLPC's educational mission)
• knowledge for development, which they're happy to have included in the "content bundles" loaded onto the XO laptops (based on our conversations with them).

Both aspects of knowledge are essential - and so is collaboration to build this knowledge in an open way.

A fellow Appropedian asked if I'd written any articles on water treatment, as he wants to learn about it. Yes and no - most articles I've worked on have been collaborative efforts that remain open to improvement. That can work well,  as described in a recent post.

Putting that aside, where are the open resources that a learner should know about in water treatment?

• Appropedia's Water portal is a good place to start - it gives a map of Appropedia's water content and some highlights, as well as links to other key open resources.
• Akvo's Akvopedia (similar name, different site - but they're good friends of Appropedia). This has great, structured information about specific tech, with a development and appropriate technology focus.
• Wikipedia's Water Portal and Water_treatment pages, and the many others in the Water treatment category. There's also the water section of the appropriate technology article. It's topical info only, without the how-tos and designs you can find on Appropedia and Akvopedia, but the breadth and organization make this a great resource.
• Waterwiki.net is a United Nations project, which is less open in a number of ways. Much of the content is posted as PDFs attached to pages (are they covered by the open license too?); you need to jump through some hurdles to join and contribute; and although it's a polished looking site, it's not clear at first glance that it also welcomes non-UN contributors. It's good that the UN is taking steps towards openness - the best thing they could do, though, is make a policy of open licensing all their publications, past present and future.

OpenCourseWare resources are course materials such as podcasts and written materials, often from top universities, that are freely accessible online. The OpenCourseWare Finder yields results such as these:

• Watermanagement from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. (English language.) (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Water Sanitation Needs in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies from the Johns Hopkins OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. Lectures by Leslie Roberts, in MP3 (audio) format. (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Other courses from the Johns Hopkins OpenCourseWare (OCW) project deal with water and public health, e.g. Tropical Environmental Health. (CC-BY-NC-SA)
• Water and Wastewater Treatment Engineering from MIT, (CC-BY-NC-SA)

Then there are great resources which are copyrighted, which we hope will soon be open:

• CAWST - Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology - Akvo used some of their content in Akvopedia, which is how I found this great knowledge resource, but as there is no copyright or license statement on the site, it's technically copyright. (I assume Akvo got permission for the pages they used.)
• BioSandFilter.org - another great resource on a more specific area of technology and design for water treatment. From our conversations, we know they support knowledge sharing - we just hope they go the extra step and choose an open license.

Photo credit: Gaetan Lee, CC-BY. Chosen because: The glass is half full.

In the non-mathematical field there is wide scope for the use of [computing] techniques in things such as filing systems. It is not inconceivable that an automatic encyclopaedia service, operated through the national teleprinter or telephone system, will one day exist.

— Trevor Pearcey, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Australia, 1948. Quoted in Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age. Hat tip to the Downlode Etext Library.

Visionary thinking, 53 years before the launch of Wikipedia.

Let's do some visionary thinking of our own, and expand the kind and amount of knowledge available freely online, and the ways of making it available.

Do you have knowledge or tech skills? Do you want to help expand the freely available, open knowledge that will help build a thrivable world and give us a chance to get us through the climate crisis? contact us by leaving a comment below.

"Appropedia? That's so cool! My daughter built her rainwater catchment system from Appropedia." Another chance meeting, and a chance discovery of how this sharing of knowledge is impacting people's lives, and helping us live lightly but richly on our planet.

Looking at that rainwater category - there's some fantastic content, but it needs some serious work on organizing it. A good structure might be a main topic page, a general how-to page, and a number of specific design pages. (Any volunteers?)