1/22/10

Archives of my postings related to OCW are listed below.
For up-to-date postings, see you over at my new "Learning Ecosystems" blog!

Special addendum on 9/16/11:

Online College Classes -- with special thanks to Abby Ledford for this resource
A free compendium of educational multimedia content from around the web.

1/5/10

The Decade Ahead in Higher EdTech -- by Mark Smithers
Having said all that I think we are likely to see the rise of a simple, free, open global LMS that will mashup open education resources, social learning and real time and asynchronous discussions [emphasis DSC] between 2012 and 2015. Think of it as an open, searchable combination of user contributed content and social networking, using Twitter, Facebook and open educational resources.

1/4/10

More on the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative -- from Tony Bates
Kolowich, S. (2009) Hybrid education 2.0 Inside Higher Education, December 28. An interesting article that provides more information about the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative, particularly the instructional design behind the initiative.

12/31/09

Open isn’t so open anymore -- from George Siemens -- and David Wiley's response Response to George on “Openness” -- from iterating toward openness

Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network -- from ineducation.ca by Jon Mott and David Wiley
Abstract: The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process. The open learning network (OLN)—a hybrid of the CMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)—is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to dramatically improve learning.

12/5/09

2010 Horizon Report: Preview

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

 Mobile Computing
 Open Content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

 Electronic Books
 Simple Augmented Reality

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

 Gesture-Based Computing
 Visual Data Analysis

World's largest open university goes mobile -- from pr-inside and above report from the NMC
The classroom of the future is moving to mobile phones, and reaching farther into India thanks to a new partnership between Ericsson and The Indira Gandhi National Open University.

12/2/09

50 Fascinating Lectures for Music Lovers -- from onlineuniversities.com

11/19/09

100 Excellent Open Courses for International Businessmen -- from onlinecolleges.net

Open Science at Web-Scale: Optimising Participation and Predictive Potential | Consultative Report -- by Dr Liz Lyon, UKOLN/ Digital Curation Centre, University of Bath, 11/6/09; resource from Stephen Downes

Virtual Classrooms Could Create a Marketplace for Knowledge -- from the New York Times
Teacherless or virtual-teacher learning is described by enthusiasts as a revolution in the making. Until now, they say, education has been a seller’s market. You beg to get in to college. Deans decide what you must know. They prevent you from taking better courses elsewhere. They set prices high to subsidize unprofitable activities. Above all, they exclude most humans from their knowledge — the poor, the old, people born in the wrong place, people with time-consuming children and jobs.

From DSC:
Students will demand better in the future. If we don't give it to them, they will go elsewhere. Our offerings must be relevant, accessible, affordable, and engaging.

11/16/09

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators -- from onlinecollege.org

11/13/09

11/7/09

IRRODL special edition on openness and the future of higher education -- from Tony Bates

Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education -- from IRRODL.org by David Wiley, John Hilton III
Abstract:
Openness is a fundamental value underlying significant changes in society and is a prerequisite to changes institutions of higher education need to make in order to remain relevant to the society in which they exist. There are a number of ways institutions can be more open, including programs of open sharing of educational materials. Individual faculty can also choose to be more open without waiting for institutional programs. Increasing degrees of openness in society coupled with innovations in business strategy like dynamic specialization are enabling radical experiments in higher education and exerting increasing competitive pressure on conventional higher education institutions. No single response to the changes in the supersystem of higher education can successfully address every institution’s situation. However, every institution must begin addressing openness as a core organizational value if it desires to both remain relevant to its learners and to contribute to the positive advancement of the field of higher education (emphasis DSC).

From DSC:
What are our plans here? What are your plans here? If they haven't already, the conversations better begin soon...

11/6/09

GoingOn Announces First Community Platform for Education at EDUCAUSE 2009 -- from B2E
The GoingOn Community Platform leverages social web technologies to create online communities for collaboration, learning and social knowledge management
November 4, 2009/San Francisco, CA – GoingOn provider of the first open source community platform for education, will showcase its cornerstone technology, The GoingOn Community Platform at EDUCAUSE 2009, November 3-6, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

11/5/09

10/26/09

Yale Adds New Batch of Free Open Courses -- from OpenCulture.com
A quick update for you. Yale University has added its third batch of courses to its open education initiative, bringing the total number of courses to 25. (Find the complete list here.)

Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education -- -- September 22, 2009 | The Committee for Economic Development Digital Connections Council -- original resource from Stephen Downes

...colleges and universities have been faced in the last decade with significant trends: the rapid increase in globalization, the arrival of students who were “born digital” and who may never have experienced an educational institution without the Internet, and a transformation of the Internet itself from a curiosity to a means for gaining access to information and now to being a fundamental element of a more “participatory” culture that encourages everyone to make their own contribution. "e research function of the university, which aims to produce and disseminate new knowledge, has become so intertwined with the Internet that it is almost difficult to recall what research was like before the World Wide Web.

For hundreds of years, personal interactions between teachers and students and printed texts have been at the heart of teaching in colleges and universities. But changes in the openness of the educational materials being used and in the vehicles for the delivery of these materials have the potential to fundamentally reshape teaching and learning.

But the development of more open digital materials known as “open educational resources” (OER), combined with our growing experience with digital materials suggest the possibility of far greater gains in the future.

With the extraordinary connectivity provided by the Internet, we can, using OER, provide free digital educational materials to millions of people in institutions of higher education and to the many millions more unable to attend such institutions. Everyone has the opportunity to participate in a global effort to improve and extend these materials, to customize, even personalize, them.

10/21/09

Action Steps Towards Open Access Higher Education -- from Learning & Teaching at BCIT
The second Open Educational Technology Summit wrapped up yesterday with the adoption of eight action steps or goals that define a vision for open access education. The event brought together 40 participants from around the world with expertise in different areas of education. We we worked in teams of ten to brainstorm around four themes...

10/19/09

10/9/09

Income Models for Supporting Open Access -- from SPARC
Developing a sound business model is a critical concern of publishers considering open-access distribution. Selecting the model appropriate to a particular journal will depend not only on the expense hurdle that must be cleared, but also on the publisher’s mission objectives, size, business management resources, risk tolerance, tax status, and institutional or corporate affiliation. This Web site and accompanying guide provide an overview of income models currently being used to support the open-access distribution of peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journals. These resources will be a useful tool both for publishers exploring new potential sources of income and for libraries weighing where to direct meager library funds.

10/8/09

FOTE09 - Peter Robinson: A Pocket University: Open Content and Mobile Technology - Oxford on iTunesU Peter Robinson's talk at ULCC's Future of Technology in Education conference on October 2nd, 2009

10/2/09

9/18/09

How I approach teaching a new course – the state of my art. -- from Dave Cormier

9/16/09

9/9/09

Open Source in K-12 -- Two Great Conference Opportunities -- from Steve Hargadon
OK, here are two great opportunities around Open Source Software for K-12 that are coming up SOON!

9/2/09

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists
From BestCollegeOnline.com: “Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world.”  via @openculture

8/17/09

20 Quick Points from "The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education" -- from TravelinEdMan by Curt Bonk

...
...
20. Online Language Learning (Opener #10): Have you ever wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi, Russian, or Farsi? Millions of people are using resources such as Livemocha, ChinesePod, SpanishPod, Mixxer, KanTalk, ECpod, and dozens of other online resources to learn or teach languages. Much of this is free. One company, Livemocha, has gone from start-up to 3 million users in less than 2 years. At the same time, free podcasts from ChinesePod, a product of Praxis Language, are downloaded around 300,000 times per month. These free podcasts are available at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.

-- from Curt Bonk

8/14/09

Models of open education -- from Leigh Blackall

Curriki Calls on California Teachers To Open, Share and Collaborate To Enhance Education -- from B2E
On the heels of the governor's free text book initiative, non-profit offers teachers unprecedented opportunity to help shape education and drive out costs; announces participation of San Jose USD teachers. (Curriki is a not-for-profit organization committed to eliminating the education divide. Through an open source platform, Curriki delivers free and peer reviewed K-12 curricula as well as collaboration tools to teachers, students and parents around the world so teachers can teach more effectively and students can learn at their own pace. By increasing teacher engagement in curriculum development, Curriki drives teacher effectiveness and student performance. Spun off from Sun Microsystems in 2006, Curriki has more than 80,000 members and over 30,000 learning assets. To learn more, please log onto www.curriki.org.)

8/12/09

How to participate in the Open Ed conference even if you can’t get to Vancouver -- from EdTechPost

Collaborative webbased video editing -- from Leigh Blackall

Kaltura -- Leading the Open Video Revolution
Home of Kaltura’s open source video platform, the fastest growing platform on the web - used by over 35,000 sites worldwide.

8/10/09

7/31/09

Communal Webcasting platform to beef up campus's popular educational content -- from UC Berkeley by Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | 28 July 2009

Dubbed "Opencast Matterhorn" and funded with grants from the Andrew W. Mellon and William and Flora Hewlett foundations totaling $1.5 million, the project will bring together programmers and educational technology experts from an international consortium of higher education institutions, including ETH Zürich in Switzerland, University of Osnabrück in Germany, Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and Canada's University of Saskatchewan.

7/6/09

Utah State OpenCourseWare
"We believe that all humans beings are endowed with a capacity to learn, improve, and progress. Educational opportunity is the mechanism by which we fulfill that capacity. Utah State OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational material used in our formal campus courses, and seeks to provide people around the world with an opportunity to access high quality learning opportunities."

6/24/09

The Master List of Free Language Learning Resources -- from UniversitiesandColleges.org

Link from Open Culture
Looking to learn a new language this summer? Then give this list a good look. The folks at Universitiesandcolleges.org have created “The Master List of Free Language Learning Resources,” which pulls together materials found across a range of different media. Here, you’ll find podcasts, open courses, iphone apps, and more. And the list notably includes our ever-popular collection of Free Foreign Language Lesson Podcasts, which will teach you about 40 different languages. Just download the podcasts to your computer or mp3 player and you’ll be learning new languages on the go, at no cost.

6/18/09

100 Open Technology Courses You Should Have Taken in College -- from OnlineUniversities.com

6/5/09

Scholarly Open Access: The Debate Rages -- from HASTAC - Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory by Cathy Davidson
Scott Jaschik has a new piece in INSIDE HIGHER ED on "The Split Over Open Access." Here's the url: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/04/open

6/3/09

Related item:
Intelligent Video: The Top Cultural & Educational Video Sites -- from Open Culture by Dan Colman
Looking for great cultural and educational video? Then you’ve come to the right place. Below, we have compiled a list of 35 sites that feature intelligent videos. This list was produced with the help of our faithful readers, and it will grow over time.

5/27/09

Six articles that will teach you more about Open Source -- from royal.pingdom.com

5/26/09

Wikipedia Goes Creative Commons -- from HASTAC - Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory by Cathy Davidson

Wikimedia Foundation announces important licensing change for Wikipedia and its sister projects
Adoption of Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License will support greater interoperability and re-usability of Wikimedia content. The current GNU Free Documentation License will continue to be supported.

Wikimedia -- a licensing update
The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation invites the Wikimedia community to vote on this proposal to license Wikimedia material so it is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA), while retaining dual licensing with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The Board has evaluated possible licensing options for Wikimedia material, and believes that this proposal is the best available path towards achieving our collective goal to collect, develop and disseminate educational material, and make it available to people everywhere, free of charge, in perpetuity.

5/11/09

50 Terrific Open Courseware Classes for Innovative Educators -- from Learn-gasm; includes:

The Art of Teaching
Teaching is an art form in itself, so take these classes to continue learning and shaping the talent you already share with your students.

1. The Nature of Constructionist Learning. Learn about education and learning within a constructionist framework in this course. [MIT]
2. Gender Issues in Academics and Academia. Gender differences in learning and how it impacts the classroom experience is the focus of this class, as well as how gender issues affect those in academia. [MIT]
3. Thinking about how I work with other professionals. This course allows self-exploration as you examine the ways you work with other teachers and administrators. It also allows for self-reflection on how to improve your working relationships while maintaining your values and beliefs. [The Open University]
4. Introduction to Teaching and Learning Mathematics and Science. This course takes the student through the experience of teaching and offers hands-on opportunities to learn about both teaching and the students’ learning in the classroom. This may be a good refresher course for teachers who have been out of school for a while. [MIT]
5. Working with young people: roles and responsibilities. Learn about the different roles adults play in the life of young people, discover the role you play as a teacher, and learn to develop the role model you wish to be for your students. [The Open University]
6. Teaching for good behaviour. This course explores the ways you can set up your lessons to engage students while minimizing problem behavior. Learn to adjust lesson format, delivery, and content for great results. [The Open University]
7. Evaluating school classroom discussion. Discussion is an important part of the classroom experience. Find out how to successfully implement discussion in your classroom to better facilitate the learning process for your students. [The Open University]
8. Enhancing pupil learning on museum visits. It’s no big news that students learn in different ways. This class helps you embrace these differing learning styles while on museum field trips. [The Open University]
9. Teach Global. Learn about the Teach Global program in this course where you can also find resources about the program and learn about other similar courses. [The Open University]
10. Introducing observational approaches in research with children and young people. Observation and research are the focus of this class where you will learn about observation as a research tool, the differences between quantitative and qualitative research, and learn the difference between describing and explaining in a research study. [The Open University]
11. Exploring K-12 Classroom Teaching. This course takes a look at methods of teaching student-centered classrooms while examining various student needs within those classrooms. [MIT]
12. How to Learn (Almost) Anything. This class looks at learning as a process through hands-on activities. You will participate in a variety of learning situations as a part of the class. [MIT]
13. The Creative Spark. This course teaches about the creative process–what it is, how it’s valued, and how it grows. Students will create journal writings and study artists of various media to explore creativity. [MIT]

5/6/09

How much does open source cost schools? -- from ZDNet
Obviously, there is money to be saved by using open source software in schools. Even merely substituting OpenOffice of Microsoft Office on student computers can save thousands in licensing costs. However, a Twitter comrade (I just can’t bear to call him one of my Tweeps, but thanks to @weemoosius) brought an article to my attention last night that I thought was worth highlighting.

The article was from Tech & Learning and was entitled “When Free Isn’t Free: The realities of running open source in school.” It provides a nicely well-balanced look at the real costs behind free software. In short, what one saves on licensing may end up (at least initially) being spent on training or dealing with the learning curve associated with a new environment.

4/29/09

Wawasan Open University is Malaysia's first private, not-for-profit,
open learning institution, a lifelong learning community without borders.

4/21/09

4/14/09

Learning Physics Through Open Courses -- from Open Culture by Dan Colman
There’s something compelling about physics. Almost every major open courseware collection features a well-crafted physics course, and these courses consistently rank high on iTunesU and YouTube Edu. Let’s give a quick overview of the favorites.

At Stanford, we’re putting together a six course sequence called Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum. Taught by Leonard Susskind, one of America’s leading physics minds, this course traces the development of modern physics, moving from Newton to Einstein to Black Holes. So far, we’ve made five of the six courses available online (get them here), which amounts to 100 hours of free classroom footage. Hard to beat. (And, in case you’re wondering, the sixth course is being taped right now, and it will be coming online during the months to come.)

Another program that has received a fair amount of attention is Walter Lewin’s series of courses at MIT. As The New York Times has noted, Lewin has long had a cult following at MIT, and now, thanks to his physics courses, he’s achieved a minor degree of fame on the internet. His lectures, delivered with panache, can be found here:

• Physics I: Classical Mechanics - iTunes - Video Download - YouTube 
• Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism - iTunes - Video Download - YouTube 
• Physics III: Vibrations and Waves - iTunes - Video Download - YouTube 

A third course to call your attention to is Richard Muller’s Physics for Future Presidents (Feed - MP3s - YouTube).  The course comes out of UC Berkeley, where it’s an undergraduate favorite. (It’s also the basis of a recent book by the same name.) And the whole point here is to give citizens the scientific knowledge they need to understand critical issues facing our society. Finally, another course worth reviewing is Fundamentals of Physics, which is taught by Ramamurti Shankar and it’s part of Yale’s Open Course initiative. All of these physics courses, and many more, can be found in our Free University Course collection.

NOTE: We have moved to www.openculture.com. Please spread the word and update any old links to our site. Thank you.

4/3/09

Edupunk: Open Source Education (podcast) -- from SXSW
DIY teachers around the world are using open source course management systems, open access textbooks, and other open source tools to buck the chains and limitations of corporate education software. This panel of edupunks will rock the show by discussing the movement, its challenges, and its future.

3/30/09

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education -- from lifehacker.com

Related posting:
Hacking education: Google U -- from Jeff Jarvis

3/26/09

YouTube EDU Brings Free Education to the Masses -- from Lifehacker: Top by Adam Pash
YouTube has just released a new sub-site called YouTube EDU, aggregating thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and oh-so-many more.

5 Fascinating Video Lectures from Academic Earth -- from Universities and Colleges

3/12/09

Recently updated "Free Online Courses from Great Universities" page

3/11/09

2/26/09

The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset: 60+ Directories, Search Engines, and Web Tools -- from The .Edu Toolbox
Open courseware has expanded to the extent that directories, lists, search engines, archives and Web tools are available free to anyone who chooses to learn through the Internet. The following list contains some individual tools, but on the whole, this list is filled with links to sites and pages that offer more links to even more resources. So, if you’re looking for an open source tool to create a video, go under “tools” below to find two links to sites filled with open source software resources.

2/13/09

The WGBH Forum Network -- my thanks to William Overbeeke, T&L Digital Studio, for this link
...is an audio and video streaming Website dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leaders. These events are hosted by world-class cultural and educational organizations in Boston and beyond. Through this online service hundreds of thousands of people worldwide listen to these talks wherever and whenever they choose. We are proud of the role we serve in our community, of protecting and projecting the public voice; and of informing and inspiring that public voice toward greater civic engagement around the important issues of our time.

WorldWide Classrom -- my thanks to Daniel Laninga, T&L Digital Studio for this link
As a ministry of Covenant Theological Seminary, our Worldwide Classroom offers God’s people everywhere free access to biblically-based, grace-centered theological training materials for the benefit of the church. Our hope and prayer is that no matter where God has stationed you in his Kingdom or how he has gifted you to serve, you will find that these resources encourage you in your Christian walk and strengthen you in your ministry.

The free courseware available on this site includes every class you need to help you in life, ministry, discipling and equipping others, and taking your biblical understanding deeper. Our lectures are presented in English in MP3 format; transcripts and study guides are available as PDFs. Anyone may download, use, and share these courses at no charge for non-commercial purposes.

2/10/09

Introduction to Open Education -- IPT 692R: Introduction to Open Education - a course taught at Brigham Young University's Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology during the Winter 2009 term by Prof. David Wiley

Podcast #004: Open Access and the Institutional Repository -- from Academic Evolution by Gideon Burton

In this interview with BYU Scholarly Communications Librarian Jeff Belliston, we discuss how Open Access can bring broader impact and exposure for scholarship--especially if scholars will preserve copyright so they can deposit their work in an institutional repository like BYU's ScholarsArchive or the more developed DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I play devil's advocate with my librarain friend, suggesting that however noble the goal of spreading one's scholarship to the world, the practical reality is that scholars are really only motivated to reach that small but influential audience, their peers. Listen to the episode here (or subscribe to the podcast here). I've blogged quite a bit about Open Access, and Jeff Belliston and I have given many presentations about Open Access to the leadership and faculty of Brigham Young University (under the auspices of University Librarian Randy Olson and with the encouragement of BYU's Academic Vice President's office). It has been exciting to see this new and vital way of thinking about scholarship starting to take root on our campus. You can view one of our presentations on SlideShare. Those wishing to keep tabs on Open Access should subscribe to Peter Suber's Open Access News blog.

2/6/09

Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Arturo Toscanini, 1952 -- from Open Culture by Dan Colman

Here’s a nice vintage clip that comes out of a YouTube Channel called The Great Performers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Collections. The video features Arturo Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the second movement here.

For more classical music see:

• Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast
• Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 - Karajan or Muppet Style
• The Ten Best Classical Music Recordings of 2008

Columbia Interactive -- link from William Overbeeke, in the T&L Digital Studio
"Columbia Interactive is a gateway to selected electronic learning resources developed at Columbia University. Browse our database of digital resources, including faculty interviews, learning tools, semester-length e-courses, and more than 100 shorter e-seminars. The e-seminars are free to Columbia students, faculty, and staff, and are available to the public through fee-based and licensing arrangements."

Open Culture -- link from William Overbeeke, in the T&L Digital Studio
"Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best cultural and educational media. He finds the books you want, the classes you need, and plenty of enlightenment in between."

1/28/09

AcademicEarth.org -- my thanks to Daniel Laninga, in the T&L Digital Studio, for this link

1/22/09

Less is Moore -- from The Economist; my thanks to Travis LaFleur, Multimedia Specialist, for this link
Suddenly there is much more interest in products that apply the flip side of Moore’s law: instead of providing ever-increasing performance at a particular price, they provide a particular level of performance at an ever-lower price.

1/21/09

Top 100 Open Courseware courses -- Everything is Miscellaneous
A site called Christian Colleges has posted a list of top 100 open courseware courses in theology and philosophy. Open courseware, of course, are real world courses recorded for distribution over the Net. MIT has blazed this path, and this particular Top 100 list is dominated by courses from that school, with Notre Dame showing heavily as well. The Online Education Database has its own, more generic, Top 100 list.

The Educational Audio & Video Library on openculture.com

1/19/09

Aluka: Building a digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa -- from Ignatia Webs

1/10/09

Open Model of Education: People Power -- from Education Innovation by Robert Jacobs

1/7/09

Taiwan Higher Ed Consortium Launches Free Online Course Initiative -- from CampusTechnology.com, by Dian Schaffhauser
A consortium of colleges and universities in Taiwan has launched the "Open Course Ware Consortium," with the goal of sharing its resources with the public. The program is modeled after the OpenCourseWare Consortium originally developed by an MIT faculty committee wishing to share their course materials openly on the Web and now involving 200 institutions and organizations.

From DSC:
This article includes two very possible ways things could go in the next 5-15 years: the development of consortiums in order to pool the necessary resources to create high-quality educational content as well as the trend towards creating open source content.

How do we react to this? Should we, as a Christian College, participate and give content to this type of thing? What will this open content movement mean for colleges and universities? Consider Sears and the Extreme Home Makeover -- it has been a great thing for that company. (Not that Calvin is a Sears, but one gets the point.)

12/11/08

Inflection Points -- from the human network by Mark Pesce
I have to admit that I am in awe of iTunes University. It’s just amazing that so many well-respected universities – Stanford, MIT, Yale, and Uni Melbourne – are willing to put their crown jewels – their lectures – online for everyone to download. It’s outstanding when even one school provides a wealth of material, but as other schools provide their own material, then we get to see some of the virtues of crowdsourcing. First, you have a virtuous cycle: as more material is shared, more material will be made available to share. After the virtuous cycle gets going, it’s all about a flight to quality.

When you have half a dozen or have a hundred lectures on calculus, which one do you choose? The one featuring the best lecturer with the best presentation skills, the best examples, and the best math jokes – of course. This is my only complaint with iTunes University – you can’t rate the various lectures on offer. You can know which ones have been downloaded most often, but that’s not precisely the same thing as which calculus seminar or which sociology lecture is the best. So as much as I love iTunes University, I see it as halfway there. Perhaps Apple didn’t want to turn iTunes U into a popularity contest, but, without that vital bit of feedback, it’s nearly impossible for us to winnow out the wheat from the educational chaff.

11/10/08

Cloudworks.open.ac.uk/
Cloudworks allows you to find other people's learning and teaching ideas, designs and experiences as well as sharing your own. You can also get access to many learning design tools and resources to help you create learning designs.

• Clouds - notes and information about learning and teaching ideas and activity designs you have tried
• Resource Bank - methods and approaches to doing design and repositories of learning and teaching case studies or learning objects
• Tool Bank - interactive learning design tools

Opening Up Education -- from Gardner Writes blog

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's OPENCOURSEWARE (OCW)
...project provides access to content of the School's most popular courses. As challenges to the world's health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public's health and their potential solutions.

11/4/08

IACE-T Presentation: eLearning promises and practices -- Peter Tittenberger, Learning Technologies Center, University of Manitoba
... a blended course where traditional learning activities are moved online (e.g. bulletin board discussion, simulation ... . Marshal McLuhan...PowerPoint, audio, video, podcasts, simulations to augment lectures...)

 

10/25/08

The 4th Way For Education -- from Education Innovation blog
This posting includes the following recommended reading:

• PODs
• The Ugly Side of Open Education?
• Is there such a thing as “too open”?
• Failure Is An Option In The Open Model of Education
• The Open Model of Education
• 14 Trends Of The New Educational Reality Part 1
• 14 Trends Of The New Educational Reality: Part 2
• Open Education blog

10/17/08

OpenOffice.org 3.0 Now Available -- from Steve Hargadon

OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released on Monday. A full review from PC Magazine makes a good case for considering it:  "...if your company or agency has been buying Office for thousands of desktops, or if you work for or with a government that requires open-source formats, download OpenOffice.org and don't look back."

 

Seminar in Information Science:
Course Outline for the Open Movement and Libraries for Fall 2008

The Open Movement and Libraries
"Openness" which has become a hallmark of the new Web has long been a mission in libraries. The philosophy of free and open access to information and technology has become a critical subject for information and technology leaders and practitioners. This course will explore the role and participation of library science and librarians in this movement. This course will give an overview of open-source technologies (such as content management systems and ILS programs) which are being used by libraries today, as well as exploring the open access movement which advocates free online access to scholarly research and journal articles. During the course we will also discuss open courses and learning, open conferences, and open licenses (like GPL and Creative Commons). This practical knowledge will be taught with an eye towards students understanding the implications of open access and what it means for libraries and librarians.

New Open Yale Courses -- from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT)
Eight new courses in history, economics, literature and biomedical engineering taught by leading faculty have been added to “Open Yale Courses,” the University’s free online education initiative.

Also see: http://www.oculture.com/2008/10/yale_open_courses_the_new_lineup.html

Invitation to the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory -- from the Social Medium Classroom
Welcome to the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory.  It’s all free, as in both “freedom of speech” and “almost totally free beer.” We invite you to build on what we’ve started to create more free value.  The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools.  The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos.  The Collaboratory (or Colab), is what we call just the web service part of it.  Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMB materials freely, and we host your Colab communities if you don’t want to install your own.  (See this for an explanation of who “we” are).

10/15/08

SocialLearn: Web 2.0 and the New Meanings of “Open” -- from Martin Weller
Exploring new ways of being open -- from Martin Weller

10/11/08

Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge -- from Educause

10/6/08

Another book that's "Opening Up Education" some more -- from Will Richardson on the TravelinEdMan blog

“Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge."
A few of the contributors to this book include:

1. Richard Baraniuk, Professor and Founder of Connexions at Rice University.
2. Trent Batson, Communications Strategist in MIT's Office of Educational Innovation and Technology and Editor of Campus Technology.
3. John Seely Brown, Chief of Confusion.
4. Tom Carey, Professor of Management Sciences in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo and Program Director of the MERLOT ELIXR program.
5. James Dalziel Director of the LAMS Foundation and Professor of Learning Technology and Director of the Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
6. Bernadine Chuck Fong, president emerita of Foothill College and a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
7. Gerard Hanley, Executive Director of MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) and Senior Director for Academic Technology Services for the California State University.
8. Diana Laurillard Chair of Learning with Digital Technologies in the School of Mathematics, Science and Technology from the London Knowledge Lab in the UK, Marilyn Lombardi.
9. Phil Long, Associate Director, Office of Educational Innovation & Technology Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education at MIT.
10. Anne Margulies, Executive Director, OpenCourseWare at MIT.
11. Diana Oblinger the President and CEO of EDUCAUSE.
12. Marshall Smith the Program Director for the Education Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
13. Candace Thille, director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University.
14. David Wiley, Associate Professor from BYU and, Chief Openness Officer (COO) of Flat World Knowledge.

These are just 14 of the authors; there are many more! It is quite an impressive group of people. It is so impressive that this week the Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article (dated October 17th) from John Seely Brown. This article is basically the foreword to the “Opening Up Education" book. Bravo! Note that it is dated for mid October and is already out.

You can read more about this book at the MIT Press Website. MIT Press has a description of the book. In addition, you can download the entire book or sample chapters.

There are at least a dozen (12) ways to explore this book. You can:
1. Download and explore individual chapters.
2. Download the entire book.
3. Read the whole document as iPaper in Scribd. (Note: this book is now listed in "What's hot right now" in Scribd.
4. Read about the copyright licensing at Creative Commons.
5. Read the abstract at Educause.
6. Read the MIT Press log.
7. Print or read an 18 page Executive Summary.
8. Read "Open Education News" from MIT.
9. You can also buy the book from Amazon for $16.47 (down from $24.95 list).
10. Also highly interesting and becoming increasingly common these days, the book editors and John Seely Brown had an online discussion about this book on October 2, 2008, which you can watch.
11. There is another site wherein you can hear the above discussion as well as from some of the authors about their respective chapters. There is even a YouTube video of at least one of these author presentations. I see many more are also posted, including an interesting one from John Seely Brown and another from my friend, David Wiley from BYU.
12. Finally, you can get involved with the authors and anyone else about the book.

9/30/08
Open Educational Resources October 2008 -- from elearning papers.eu
This issue of eLearning Papers is dedicated to the thriving work around Open Educational Resources (OER) by committed individuals, institutions and user communities. Five selected papers by the guest editors investigate the organisational, social, cultural, pedagogical and technical aspects of implementing OER.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning and teaching materials that are offered freely to anyone under licenses that allow to use, modify and distribute the items. But that's not all. Through the world-wide movement of OER, magnified with user-generated content and underlying Web 2.0 technologies, the advantages and opportunities are numerous for teachers, authors, eLearning practitioners, developers and content providers, researchers and decision-makers, and last but not least: learners.

9/23/08
UC Irvine Extension Partners with Brazilian College for Free Online Courses -- from CampusTechnology.com

9/22/08
GCFLearnFree.org -- my thanks to Niko Solihin, T&L Digital Studio for this link

9/11/08
101 Open Educational Resources -- fom ZaidLearn by Zaid Ali Alsagoff

Open Education Videos - from 2007 Conference

From Zaidlearn
OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER)

UNITED STATES

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  - MIT OCW
  - MIT OCW - Audio/Video Courses
  - MIT OCW - YouTube
  - MIT World
  - MIT TechTV
• Harvard University
  - Harvard Business Online (Podcasts)
  - Harvard - Homeric Odyssey..Justice (Podcasts)
  - Harvard - Kennedy School of Gov (Podcasts)
  - Harvard Law School (Podcasts)
  - Classics Podcasts (Harvard)
  - BerkmanCenter's Channel (Harvard Law School) (YouTube)
  - BokTube - BokCenter's YouTube Channel (Harvard) (YouTube)
• Berkeley
  - UC Irvine (OCW)
  - University of California, Berkeley (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley on iTunes (Podcasts)
  - University of California (Berkeley) (YouTube)
  - University of California Television (UCTV) (YouTube)
  - Berkeley YouTube Lectures
  - U California eScholarship Repository
  - CalTech Today (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley Resources (Podcasts)
• Princeton
  - UChannel (Princeton) (YouTube)
  - Princeton U's Event SM (Podcasts)
  - Princeton U's New Media Center (Podcasts)
  - Princeton University Channel (Podcasts)
  - Princeton University WebMedia (Podcasts)
• Stanford University
  - Stanford on iTunes (Podcasts)
  - Stanford University (Edu. Corner) (Podcasts)
  - Stanford University Audio/Video (Podcasts)
  - Stanford on YouTube
  - Stanford Center for Professional Development Free Engineering Seminars
• Yale University
  - Open Yale Courses (OCW)
  - Yale University (Podcasts)
• Johns Hopkins University
  - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (OCW)
  - Johns Hopkins U (Podcasts)
• Rice University
  - Connexions (OCW)
  - Rice University (Podcasts)
• Carnegie Mellon University
  - Open Learning Initiative (OCW)
  - Carnegie Mellon (YouTube)

Other OCW:

• Tufts University
• UMass Boston
• University of Notre Dame
• Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance
• Utah State University
• SOFIA Project

OpenCourseWare Consortium
The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.

OER Commons
A global teaching and learning network of free-to-use resources – from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware – for you to use, tag, rate, and review.

Open Courseware Directory
You will find 7 groups of subject-specific open courseware, including specialized resources for each subject. It is an annotated listing of publicly available courseware (lecture notes, handouts, slides, tutorial material, exam questions, quizzes, videos, demonstrations, etc) from the world's universities, colleges and other educational institutions.

Top 100 Open Courseware Projects -- my thanks to William Overbeeke in the T&L Digital Studio for this link
"Open courseware projects provide a head rush for many autodidactics because those projects often offer lecture notes, chapters or entire textbooks online, illustrations, charts, and other tools that help the reader learn a given subject. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) gained notoriety for its online open courseware (OCW) offerings and many other colleges have followed this example; however, the self-learner probably knows that many college professors have offered their course outlines and materials online for years before MIT laid claim to this effort."