The second meeting of the «For open education» coalition in Bishkek

December 18, 2014 -The second meeting of the “For open education” coalition occurred in the capital of Kyrgyzstan on December 18, 2014.

The meeting held discussions on the position and the action plan of the Coalition for the first six months of 2015. This meeting was attended by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Bermet Tursunkulova, representatives of educational institutions, as well as representatives of the commercial and non-profit sectors.

Former President Roza Otunbayeva noted the importance of consolidating forces fighting to promote open education in Kyrgyzstan and stressed the need to train journalists in covering these issues. In addition, it was proposed to consolidate the overall efforts to collect items for the Kyrgyz-language Wikipedia, which currently has about 25 thousand articles. In turn, the Chairman of the Board of the “Journalists” Public Association, Marat Tokoev, expressed readiness to assist in covering these issues in the media.

The meeting also touched on the problems hindering the promotion of open education in Kyrgyzstan. "Unfortunately, the idea of open access to information, knowledge sharing common only in very narrow circles. Teachers in schools refuse to use electronic textbooks because students master IT-technology more quickly than their teachers. The concept of open education has become well known in recent times. However, few know that education should be accessible and free," said Lyra Samykbaeva, coordinator of the program "Freedom of Information” of Soros-Kyrgyzstan.

The agenda of the next meeting of the Coalition includes discussions on the use of ICT and open educational resources in school educational institutions of the Kyrgyz Republic.