eLobbyist VA has tweeted about legislation in the state of Virginia authorizing the creation of an Open Education Curriculum Board. From the summary:
The purpose of the Board is to designate qualifying entities as Open Education Consortiums and set the standards for submission of education materials and subsequent licensing of educational curriculum developed by the Consortiums.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: commons, ocw, oer, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks, policy
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice has announced its opposition to the revised Google Book settlement. The Department of Justice notes that the revised settlement is better than the original. From the post:
But it [the Department of Justice] said that “the United States has reluctantly concluded that use of the class-action mechanism in the manner proposed by the [Amended Settlement Agreement] is a bridge too far.” It also said that anti-trust concerns persist over pricing arrangements and a Google monopoly.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: google, Google's Settlement, policy, public domain
Briar Burley is reporting that the Open University is eliminating a program in which shopping at the store TESCO helped customers reduce fees for enrolling at the Open University. From the post:
Existing students writing on the site and in the OU’s online community pages complain that they had budgeted for their courses and now face a struggle to meet fees.
Thanks to Jon Rosewell for the link.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: e-learning, higher education, online learning, Open Education, sustainability
Timothy Vollmer writes about a professor at the University of Michigan who remixed a textbook on the Python programming language in 11 days. From the post:
The book, Python for Informatics: Exploring Information, is currently being used in his winter semester Networked Computing course. The textbook is based on the openly licensed book Think Python: How to Think like a Computer Scientist by Allen B. Downey.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: commons, oer, open content, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks
Karen Fasimpaur has a new post lamenting the focus on textbooks instead of curriculum as a whole. From the post:
There are many dynamics that affect learning in a classroom. Textbooks are not the most important of these. Teachers and the learning process they create and nurture have everything to do with how students learn.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: K-12, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks
Scott Leslie has a new post presenting several posters protesting copyright restrictions in the style of WWII posters. From the post:
…I am getting tired of people blindly accepting the official line of copyright and intellectual “property” as some sort of eternal right, rather than the modern (and increasingly faltering) invention it is.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: cc, CC licenses, commons, copy right, copyright, openness
The UK Centre for Legal Education has posted slides by Paul Maharg on why open educational resources matter.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: copy right, copyright, ocw, oer, open content, Open Education
David Bois is reporting that the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is releasing a dataset relating to Malaria. According to the article, the data will be released into the public domain with “no strings attached.”
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: commons, copy right, copyright, openness, public domain, research
Mike Caulfield has a new post pointing to Khan Academy and suggests that educators should stop capturing course, and instead capture explanations. From the post:
Forget the “lecture capture” vendors. Don’t worry about editing out false starts. Don’t spend any money on post-production.
Thanks to Judy Baker for the link.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: e-learning, higher education, ocw, oer, online learning, Open Education
Anya Kamenetz has written an article on possible effects of mass adoption of the iPad. From the post:
…costs won’t come down unless universities act boldly to replace the expensive texts and butts-in-seats classroom models with mobile, wireless, open-source education.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Open Education
Tagged: oer, open content, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks, openness
