In the year 2000, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with other world leaders signed the MDG declaration aim at improving the lives of individuals across the world. After 15 years, the goals achieved great success as evident in the reduced infant and maternal mortality rates across Africa, increased enrollment of children in school and a general improvement in the standards of living. This gave the world a peek at what could be achieved if the world leaders are united behind a common goal, the SDG announced by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Mon was as a result of global leaders wanting to sustain the growth and improvement achieved by the MDG’s. The 17 global goals are equally important to the continual progress and advancement of humanity, but goals number 1 and 4 resonate with me and hence my continual advocacy and support for their actualization.

Open education is important if the world is to push forward in its bid to attain quality education for all. Education is the foundation on which everything else rests: our economy, our democracy, our heritage, and our future. To accomplish anything as a society, whether that be protecting the environment, addressing inequality or eradicating poverty, we need an educated, literate citizens that can reason systematically, comprehend knowledge-based principles, and work collaboratively to solve the big problems that confront us. My interest in education reform stems from a desire to foster these kinds of abilities in people and to begin from a young age, hence I believe free and open access to knowledge can have a profound impact on the lives of people around the world.

In 2010, the Commonwealth of Learning reported that:

“Nearly one-third of the world’s population (29.3%) is under 15. Today there are 165 million people enrolled in tertiary education. Projections suggest that participation will peak at 263 million in 2025. Accommodating the additional 98 million students would require more than four major universities (30,000 students) to open every week for the next fifteen years. (Daniel, 2011)”.

Our traditional campus-based model of higher education cannot conceivably solve this problem.

Open Education is a movement in education to take advantage of the power of the Internet to dramatically increase access to knowledge and It’s inspired by the wild success of Wikipedia and the proven impact power of the Open Source software movement. We all endorse the notion that teaching, learning, and research are improved when educational resources are made open and more accessible, and this has been made possible by the merging of education with the ICT revolution. Open education increases access to millions of learners while simultaneously improving the productivity of the educational system.

Education is the launching pad for development, and is required if we hope to create rewarding or meaningful work for the bulging population of young people across the globe.

The world’s fate, future, and vitality depends on the quality of education we can pass on to the next generation..

IF YOU WANT TO CAUSE A CHANGE IN EDUCATION REGISTER FOR THE OPEN EDUCATION CONFERENCE HERE

A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online . A number of micropayment systems were proposed and developed in the mid-to-late 1990s, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful.

While micro-payments were originally envisioned to involve very small sums of money, practical systems to allow transactions of less than 1 USD have seen little success. One problem that has prevented the emergence of micropayment systems is a need to keep costs for individual transactions low, which is impractical when transacting such small sums even if the transaction fee is just a few cents.

Micro-payments were initially devised as a way of allowing the sale of online content and as a way to pay for very low-cost web services.

They were envisioned to involve small fractions of a cent, as little as US$0.01 to a few cents. Micro-payments would enable people to
sell content on the Internet and would be an alternative to advertising revenue.
Micro-payments are especially well suited for buying digital products that can be downloaded directly from the Web, including data, music, services, and software. By looking at theories of Internet commerce, new web technologies, and current examples of micropayment marketing strategies, one can see that micropayment will likely find a niche that incentivises content producers to market innovative new ideas.

Micro-payments have had a long infancy, but the technology is now accelerating to the point where content providers should take another look. A number of new players aim to address micro-payment’s perceived shortcomings by giving consumers the choice of paying with fiat, crypt-currencies or something of less-tangible value, such as their attention or feedback.

Going further, Michael Goldhaber argues that “the currency of the New Economy won’t be money, but attention,” and therefore businesses should focus on eyes rather than dollars if they want to succeed on the Web. Since attention is limited to 24 hours per person, per day, it is the ultimate scarce resource that should be harnessed. Attention is also a zero-sum commodity, If one company has a consumer’s attention then no one else can at the same time. Therefore attention transactions — instances when a producer and consumer are interacting — will become the currency of the web. Eventually, Goldhaber maintains that communities of attention will build up in which goods and services are bartered for returns of someone’s focused time. The more attention a person attracts, the more goods or services she can receive in return.

To begin with, attention addresses a fundamental human desire and we cannot live without feedback. This is the major concept on which taskcoin is built.

Taskcoin is a micro-payment processor that is powered by surveys.
The target audience is users who spend or receive less than $1.99 for product or services, examples include the mobile app industry, digital content (news, music, videos, eBooks etc.) and gaming communities that are in need of instant, on the spot micro-payment solution.
For example, in the media industry, publishers would have the option to unbundle their products or services, which could be offered individually for fractions of the current cost as per user’s request, this would allow content providers reach vast audiences with affordable, original contents.

Taskcoin as an advanced micro-payment solution plays a key role in fueling the growth of cheaply available intellectual property, which ultimately means better content for consumers, because no matter how much free content businesses give away to attract attention, they will always have a reason to hold something back for paying customers.