Open Source Tools in Distance Education Panel Held in Bilişim Vadisi

? Open source tools that can produce efficient, secure and economical solutions to the increasing demand in distance education all over the world were discussed at the Open Source Tools in Distance Education Panel held at Bilişim Vadisi.

Hacettepe University Information and Document Management Unit Lecturer Dr. Orçun Madran, Informatics Valley Information Technologies Manager Kemal Altıparmak, İzmir Planning Agency Geo AI Open Data Coordinator Orkut Murat Yılmaz and Artistanbul Founding Partner Ali Işıngör participated as speakers in the panel held at the Informatics Valley Gebze Campus Eren Bülbül Conference Hall.

Dr. Orçun Madran, Hacettepe University Information and Document Management Unit Lecturer and Creative Commons Turkey Representative, stated that educational resources and open licenses offer important opportunities for society to access public resources.

Madran explained that he supports open culture in the private and public sectors, as well as in academia and education.

Kemal Altıparmak, Information Technologies Manager of Bilişim Vadisi, explained the importance of organizations owning their own data and the advantages of open source software preferences in terms of sustainability.

Izmir Planning Agency Geo AI Open Data Coordinator Orkut Murat Yılmaz also made the following assessment: “When we use open source software, we open our own minds and work to the use of the entire world, as well as to the criticism and evaluation of the common mind. This offers a fast and good development opportunity for all people and humanity. I think the real value of open source lies here.”

Artistanbul Founding Partner Ali Işıngör emphasized that Open edX, which is used by universities such as Stanford, MIT and Harvard, offers great savings for Turkish universities, which have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees to foreign companies every year, as well as the opportunity to be the masters of their own infrastructure and data.

Işıngör, who also touched upon the Crowdstrike incident that recently affected millions of Microsoft-based systems worldwide, drew attention to the security risk posed by closed and proprietary systems, saying, “Last year, many closed source LMS and Distance Education Systems crashed in a similar manner in Turkey. Even the universities that trained the best software engineers in Turkey could not fix the problem in their systems. Because the source code of the systems they used was closed.”

Bilişim Vadisi Deputy General Manager Tuba Öztepe also stated that they are ready to take the necessary initiatives to establish an education working group under the Open Source Platform and to support the free software ecosystem.