ISKME Hires Open Source Expert Greg DeKoenigsberg as Chief Technology Officer

May 19, 2010 - PRLog -- Half Moon Bay, Calif. – Greg DeKoenigsberg, the former senior community architect for Red Hat, Inc., will become chief technology officer for the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), effective June 7, 2010.  

An open source expert, DeKoenigsberg was the founder and chairman of the Fedora Project Board, the governance body for the Fedora Project, an open source software project which included more than 13,000 volunteer contributors as of January 2009. He was also the founder and former chair of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, and the founder and former chair of the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee.

He is also a founding member of the oversight board for Sugar Labs, the organization that drives development of the Sugar educational platform. Translated into 25 languages, Sugar is used in classrooms in 40 countries by over 1 million children and was designed with simple interface, built-in collaboration, and automatic backup to interest young learners. Previously, DeKoenigsberg worked as a senior engineer for Planet Portal and a webmaster for IBM and Trio Information Systems.  

“It was a difficult decision — the most difficult decision of my working life, in fact,” DeKoenigsberg posted on his blog. “But the time to make the fight for open source in education is right now, and I knew that if I didn’t join that fight, right now, with every ounce of my energy, I’d regret it.”

ISKME, a global leader in research on social learning, open education resources (OER), and research-based knowledge collaboration, explores how developments in open source, social networking, resource use, and social media can be used to positively impact educational practice and policy.

“Greg will be a major asset to ISKME, helping make open source education an even greater force in transforming schools and colleges to become more effective learning environments,” said Dr. Lisa Petrides, ISKME’s President and founder. “Greg’s expertise in open source technology and his passion for open source development will enable us to raise the bar in terms of turning students of all ages into cadres of learners and collaborative problem-solvers.”  

Since its founding, ISKME has conducted extensive research that has resulted in innovative education initiatives, including OERCommons.org and the Big Ideas Fest. OER Commons is an open source teaching and learning network that supports and facilitates the access, sharing, and collaboration of open educational resources. Equally significant, the Big Ideas Fest brings prominent innovators in education and other fields together with key stakeholders across the entire learning field to spotlight, challenge, and change the ways in which education can be made relevant to learning.

An independent, nonprofit research institute, ISKME was launched in 2002 by researcher and former professor Lisa Petrides who, along with a team of researchers and educators, has conducted a series of ground-breaking studies on data and information use in major urban school districts, community colleges, and other crucial parts of the education sector. Based in Half Moon Bay, Calif., ISKME conducts social science research, develops research-based innovations, and facilitates field building to improve the capacity for knowledge sharing in education. ISKME helps K-20 education and the organizations that support it to create a culture of continuous learning through the access and sharing of information and the facilitation of knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success.

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The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (www.iskme.org), located in Half Moon Bay, Calif., is a global leader in research and practice around data and information use and knowledge collaboration in the education sector. An independent, non-profit organization established in 2002, ISKME is well-known for its OER Commons initiative (www.oercommons.org), as well as its award winning international research on information and knowledge use in the education sector.