Monthly Archives: April 2009

Open Education News Contest!

Posted on April 30, 2009 by | 2 Comments

In this contest, your task is to design and logo and banner picture for Open Education News.

The blog authors have different backgrounds but something great in common: the passionate belief that Open Educational Resources are a great way to produce quality educational materials that are far more accessible and flexible than traditional, commercial materials.

Open Education News provides readers with a daily dose of the most relevant open education and open educational resources news from around the world.

We also thank the Open Society Institute and Shuttleworth Foundation for their support.

PRIZE

The winning entry as selected by the Open Education News team will receive Cape Town Open Education Declaration and a Creative Commons T-shirts!

CONTEST RULES

* Your design should be presented both with and without text. The text should read “Open Education News.”

* Your design can contain any number of colors and color gradients.

* We like the idea of playing off the themes of books, information, the Internet, and openness. But we’re ready to be surprised by your other great ideas, too. Your logo and banner image can be either photo-based or illustrated.

* Your logo design should be 300 x 300. Your banner image should be 770 x 140.

* All image sources must be public domain or openly licensed through a Creative Commons license (or similar) compatible with CC-BY and links to sources must be included in your submission email.

* Any openly licensed font or commonly available font may be used in your design.

GENERAL RULES

* Please send only one email with your vector file and/or high-resolution, with all layers and elements intact openeducationnews@gmail.com until May 31, 2009.

* By submitting your work to the contest, you agree to openly license your work under the most liberal license allowable by the components you may have remixed in your work. For completely original work, you agree to license your work under a CC-BY license.

* If additional information is needed, please write us at openeducationnews@gmail.com.

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Co-Founder of CK-12 on Open Textbooks

Posted on April 30, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jane Park at Creative Commons has posted an interview with Neeru Khosla, co-founder of the CK-12 Foundation. The CK-12 foundation has sponsored “Flexbooks,” which are open textbooks, one of which is being used by state of Virginia. From the article:

We are carrying out this mission by providing textbooks, particularly for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) books. These books have been produced the way that publishers produce their books. There is no charge from CK-12 for using these books online through our online reader, downloading, or customizing them to your own needs. As we like to say, “Rip, mix and burn”. The cost of the printing is the only cost that users have to carry. This cost will go to your own choice of printing company or for better you can print them using your home printer.

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New CC Website Design

Posted on April 30, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Mike Linksvayer at Creative Commons has announced a new website design for Creativecommons.org. Linksvayer goes into detail about the reasoning behind the changes. From the post:

If you have ideas about how we could improve creativecommons.org sites, please leave a comment, file a bug, or even submit a patch. All of CC’s sites are built on free software and are themselves free software. Visit our code repository and a guide to where to find source code for the themes we use for WordPress, MediaWiki, and Drupal.

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Higher Education Cost Lowering; Still Higher Than Inflation

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting the Higher Education Price Index, or HEPI, is lower than anticpated for 2009. Last year the increase was 4.6%, and this year it is expected to be 2.8%. Both exceed the rate of inflation for their respective years. From the article:

The Higher Education Price Index, commonly known by its acronym, HEPI, is based on costs for eight categories of goods and services on which higher education spends money. Personnel and related costs account for about 85 percent of those costs.

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The Dissolution of Universities Debate

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Michel Bauwens at P2P Foundation has reposted an argument from Ryan Lanham about the need for universities to become more P2P. There has been notable debate on the P2P mailing list regarding this topic. From the blog post:

Most p2p firms–an intermediate animal in my view–exist by leveraging investment in knowledge creation–what you say is a plausible mission of universities. Google, for instance, or Craig’s List or Ebay…all p2p to one extent or another. Facilitating p2p is not a likely long-term facility for garnering cash flows because efficiencies of knowledge arise. That is why Microsoft is starting to die…they didn’t anticipate cloud computing and more p2p models like the evolution of Linux.

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OER Development as Service Learning

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Karen Fasimpaur reports on a service learning program at DeAnza College that devleops OER. The project asks at least 12 hours of community service for full credit, and is hosted on WikiEducator. From Fasimpaur’s blog post:

I think it’s an incredibly valuable way to get immersed quickly in OER (and more immediately valuable than designing yet another new OER project — there are plenty already out there that need our help!)

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Response to Maryland Open Access Vote

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Diamondback Online, the University of Maryland’s student newspaper, has an editorial on their faculty’s decision to vote against open access. Peter Suber at Open Access News reports on the editorial and adds commentary (thanks to Suber for the link). From the editorial:

Faculty members are correct in noting that publishing in some journals is more prestigious, but professors retain the rights to their research even after they post articles online, so they can still submit their articles to be published in many of those more selective journals. And if they’re looking to have their work published in a journal that refuses submissions that have already been posted online, the Senate bill encouraged them to do so. The bill was a list of open-ended suggestions, primarily calling for educating faculty on the opportunities and benefits of publishing through free online journals, and it would only encourage faculty to publish their findings online “when practical and not detrimental to their careers.”

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Australian Screen Archive

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The blog Recursos Educativos Abiertos is reporting on the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. The content is freely available, but fully copyrighted, and commercial use is prohibited. From the article:

In a partnership with the major networks and other learning organizations, the Archive has commissioned expert curators to annotate the holdings, which provides for a rich and contextualized experience—whether one is watching unique home movies of Ballets Russes stars from the 1930s or Australian films about the savagery of World War I.

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Copyright for Educators Presentation

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

McU Media blog has linked to Wes Fryer’s presentation “Copyright for Educators.” From the blog post:

This is an excellent presentation about Copyright and Creative Commons, which caused me to rethink my usual several-times-a-year pep talk about copyright and far use. I’m usually not a negative person, so why was this particular presentation always about the “don’ts” and never about the “you can do these really great things”?

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Short note: Hard times for the Google’s Settlement

Posted on April 29, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Today, Judge Denny Chin  gave a  four-month extension for the opt-out, opposition and amicus, and fairness hearing deadlines in the Google Book Search case. The Extended Deadline Opt-Out is now September, 9, 2009. This will allow different communities to take a deeper look into the Google’s Settlement and decide to intervene or not.

In addition, the New Yor Times report that the Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service.

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