The overall theme of our programs is to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing and gender equity through strategic use of ICT and the use of Khmer language.
At present, the Open Institute runs six programs:

• Khmer Software Initiative
• Open Schools Program
• Women Empowerment for Social Change
• Open Learning
• Lexicography
• The River of Knowledge
• Publications

KhmerOS reduces barriers to economin development in Camboida by facilitating the technological development of the country in an egalitarian way. To do this, it uses Free and Open Source Software in Khmer language. The use Khmer allows the teaching of ICT in schools, its use in Small and Medium Enterprises, and to automate the government in its own language at a reasonable cost, providing better service to its citizens. KhmerOS reduces the digital divide by giving to those who do not speak English access to jobs that require the use of computers.
We also participate in the development of Open Source tools and methodology to facilitate localization of software in developing countries (WordForge project)
For more information and regular update, please visit KhmerOS

The Open Schools Program - Cambodia is a joint initiative of the the Open Institute and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Royal Government of Cambodia to use Information and Communication technology, ICT to improve the quality of education. The project develops ICT curricula and textbooks and does training of ICT teachers in schools, in order to provide students with computer skills that they will need in their profesional life. It also uses ICT to try to improve the quality fo education that the students receive in other areas. To coordinate all this work, the proyect is developing the 2009-2013 Master Plan for ICT in Education for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

Networking, through the strategic use of ICT, of all organizations working on women’s issues and gender equality in Cambodia. Its program activities include:

• To provide a women’s web portal as a channel for Cambodian women’s organizations to share their information, introduce their activities to other organizations, and network.
  • To organize editorial advisory group meetings​​​​ to review different aspects of women’s issues, and propose the direction on which the portal will develop, or the information that it should include, and the guidelines for the editorials.
  • To provide electronic tools such as mailing lists, blogs, forums, and to actively promote and encourage women and men to share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences related to their life styles and to gender equity issues.
• To organize women’s forums, as free spaces for open discussion on women-related topics.
• To provide training courses for women on the use of Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs). The training also will provide female participants knowledge on the rights related to ICT.

This joint Program of the Open Institute with the Ministry of Education has ensured the existence of all the necessary know-how and software infrastructure necessary for universities and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to start e-learning efforts and activities in Cambodia. Besides the translation and localization of a Free and Open Source course managment system to Khmer language (Moodle), and of a battery of courses for the different skills involved in e-learning activities, the project is providing training to the Ministry and to universities who are prepared to do the effort of starting e-learning activities, creating and managing their own courses.

Lexicography

Starting as a project to create electronic tools to support the use of Khmer lenguage (a spell-checker and an elctronic dictionary), the project has digitalized all the existing lexicographic resources for Khmer (old dictionaries, etc.), most of them almost lost after the Khmer Rouge genocide. Also, as the reference dictionary for the Khmer language only defines 17.000 of the almost 50.000 current words (without entering into specific fields), advacement on Khmer Lexicography must go through the writing of definitions for many of these words that still do not have them. This is a long process, but the projct has started it, hoping that in a few years, with this and other efforts, it will be possible to write a dictionary of the Khmer language with all 50.000 definitions.

The River of Knowledge

The low qualifications of its teachers is one of the strongest barriers to the development of Cambodia. The Cambodian Education system was restarted from zero in 1980, after the end of the Khmer Rouge genocide (in which 80% of the teachers were killed), and lived in war until 1993. After the sistem was restarted, those who knew how to write became teachers. New teachers come out of teacher training centers every year, but their background preparation is low, and they are not able to turn the theoretical classes that they received into practice that their students can profit from. This project uses video, a technology that can be used all ovr the country, to show teachers how other teachers around the country teach correctly, as examples that they can follow and copy, seeing the practice by themselves, instead of having to image what it should be like, and learning how education cn be used to give the students critical thinking and problem solving skills that will help them face life.

An open space on the internet with weekly editorial and news from Cambodia to encourage social and political discussion and the habit of communication.
The publication is accessible on the Internet at cambodiamirror.wordpress.com