Miguel Helft at the New York Times is reporting that the Justice department has confirmed that they are conducted an antitrust inquiry into the Google book settlement. The Internet Archive is pleased with decision, saying that the DOJ “is taking the concerns that we have expressed seriously.” From the article:
Antitrust experts said the letter was the latest indication that the Justice Department is seriously examining complaints that the agreement would grant Google the exclusive right to profit from millions of so-called “orphan works,” books that are out of print and whose authors or rights holders are unknown or cannot be found.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: policy, openness, public domain, Google's Settlement
In a recent blog post David Wiley pays tribute to Marion Jensen, who has been the head of USU OpenCourseWare. Due to budget cuts, Jensen is moving to a different employer, and work on USU OCW has stalled. From the blog post:
It’s heartbreaking to see the project come to an end. Hopefully, as Justin’s dissertation demonstrates that universities can provide a significant public good AND generate revenue at the same time through OCW, USU will reconsider its decision to shutter the program.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: higher education, ocw, open content, Open Education
Knowledge Exchange has issued a press release announcing the results of cost/benefit studies for open access in Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The studies concluded that each country could save tens or hundreds of millions per year. From the press release:
The findings from this modelling suggest that open access alternatives are likely to be more cost-effective mechanisms for scholarly publishing in a wide range of countries (both large and small).
Given the potential benefits, it does seem worth while to ensure that there is a level playing field between alternative publishing models. This will reduce the barriers to innovation in scholarly publishing.
Thanks to Gavin Baker at Open Access News for the link.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: OATP
Norm Friesen has a new article about the opportunities and challenges in OER in the July 2009 Open Business Resource. The article provides an overview of wiki-based OER efforts and OCW-oriented projects. From the article:
Both wiki-based resource sets and collections of courseware must find long-term support or revenue. They must develop their particular work from the status of a project to become a program, organization or consortium. It is disquieting to read in a recent report on OER that “the majority of OER development” are generally still being “undertaken on a project basis”.
Thanks to Twitter users “hitthebutton” and “glynmoody” for the tweets.
Categories: Open Education
Eric Steuer has interviewed Caterina Fake, one of the founders of Flickr, on sharing. More specifically, Fake talks about changing expectations around sharing media and why websites need to adapt to those changes. Audio is also available. From the blog post:
If you go online today you will see stories about Obama sharing his private Flickr photos. So this is how far the world has come: our president is sharing photos of his life and experiences with the rest of the world, online. Our acceptance of public sharing has evolved a lot over the course of the past 15 years. And as people became increasingly comfortable sharing with each other—and the world—that lead to things that we didn’t even anticipate: the smart mob phenomenon, people cracking crimes, participatory media, subverting oppressive governments.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: commons, open content, openness
Nathan Willis at Linux.com has a new article on open source options in education administration. Willis discusses several programs such as Kuali and openSIS. From the article:
Like any organization, schools and universities need resource planning software to take care of everything from human resources to budgeting. They also have unique needs, such as integrating with government financial aid programs, and nine-, ten-, and twelve-month payroll cycles for different classes of employees.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: openness, higher education, open source
ccLearn’s tweeted that their presentation at the WhippleHill User Conference 2009 is now available at Slideshare. WhippleHill, according to the blog post by Jane Park, is a school website development company that encourages the use of open tools. From the blog post:
They [WhippleHill] also host an annual user conference where they invite cutting edge initiatives to lead sessions on new media and technologies pertinent to the changing world. ccLearn had the opportunity to lead one of these sessions entitled, “Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources: How the world is changing and what you need to know to keep up” targeted mainly at education around CC and copyright for high school students.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: cc, CC licenses, creative commons, e-learning, K-12, openness
Patricia Schlicht, from WikiEducator, is announcing that the New Zealand Ministry of Education is collaborating with WikiEducator on a national OER project. Details of the plan are available at WikiEducator. From the wiki page:
The strategy aims to start planning the co-design of a national OER initiative in collaboration with the sector, ultimately shifting to a project owned and driven by New Zealands’ teachers. During the initial phases the Ministry of Education and OER Foundation will support the sector in building capacity and an inventory of OER examples as the foundations for achieving an engaged national community of teachers. Ultimately, we plan to build a sustainable and active community of teachers empowered to transform learning in the classroom using digital OERs and shared experiences.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: higher education, oer, online learning, open content, Open Education
David Wiley is announcing that the full text of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 is now available. Wiley notes that there is an exemption clause for “works that generate revenue or royalties for authors.” From the blog post:
If enacted, this would give the public (us!) free public access to the results of the research we’ve paid to have conducted through NIH, NSF, the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Labor, Energy, and more. Passage of this bill will fully tip the scales of knowledge creation to the side of almost unrestricted innovation. As we all know, technology is seldom the impediment – policy generally is.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: oer, open access, open content, Open Education, openness, policy
Author Michael Nielson has a new blog post suggesting that scientific publishing is on the verge of disruption. Nielson suggests that the future of current scientific publishers is bleak, but does offer possible new directions. From the blog post:
It’s easy to miss the impact of blogs on research, because most science blogs focus on outreach. But more and more blogs contain high quality research content.
Categories: Open Education
Tagged: higher education, journal, library, open access, open content
