Monthly Archives: July 2009

Mashable Writes on Open Education

Posted on July 27, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Josh Catone at Mashable writes an introductory article on open education. Some well-known open education projects are highlighted such as University of the People, OpenCourseWare and Flat World Knowledge. The comments reflect an interesting and multifacted viewpoints regarding open education. From the article:

Without a doubt, the cost of higher ed should decrease but for the US to remain a competitive nation, it should continue to be high quality. If the system were totally free, how would we provide excellent instruction? Give the teachers some love. Teaching requires training, research, experience, and an impetus for improvement. Anyone can go read stuff online, take a test, and think they’ve mastered material, but true understanding of subject matter doesn’t typically happen that way, if only for a lack of different perspectives.

Thanks to Stephen Downes for the link.

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Health and Medical OpenCourseWare

Posted on July 27, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Dena White at Mission to Learn has presented a list of 10 health and medical OpenCourseWare resources. The resources include Tufts, MIT, John Hopkins and others. From the post:

Open courseware collections focusing on health and medicine assist students and healthcare professionals learn more about their particular field, further their careers, and increase their learning potential without enrolling in and commuting to expensive continuing education organizations or colleges.

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Lessons Learned From Multiple OER Projects

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Sheila Macneill has a new blog post the results of an “OER road trip” to various institutions who are currently working on OER projects. Macneill discusses various individual institution initiatives and points out patterns between them. The post also presented some recommendations for OER projects. From the blog post:

Although seed funding is key to getting things started, it can’t be relied on forever. Hewlett have already announced that they will stop funding OER projects in the near future and so sustainability needs to be considered from the outset. Perhaps a case of “an OER isn’t just for a JISC project but for life . . .” mentality is needed to be developed.

Also linked to by Stephen Downes.

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In Defense of Wikipedia’s Photos

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

A little less than a week ago OEN reported on a New York Times article about the quality of photos in Wikipedia. Fred Benenson at Creative Commons has now posted a defense, suggesting that there are excellent photos in Wikipedia. From the blog post:

As Wikipedia continues its ascent toward being a cultural necessity (if not the nth wonder of the world), these advantages will only accumulate, thus further cementing the argument for free culture.

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Push for Privacy in Google Book Settlement

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Elinor Mills at CNET has reported that legal advocates, such the Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU, are pushing Google on their privacy policy for Google Book Search. Representatives for Google indicate that they have not formed a privacy policy, but are open to discussion. From the article:

Specifically, the groups are calling for Google to promise to respond only to properly issued warrants from law enforcement and court orders and notify readers if information about them has been requested; allow readers to search and browse anonymously; give readers control over their purchases and data and prevent others from viewing their activities; allow readers to give books to others without tracking; tell readers what information is being collected and maintained and why data has been disclosed if it has.

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OCWC Announces Webinar Series

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Meena Hwang at the OCWC blog is announcing a series of webinars on OpenCourseWare topics. The topics are geared towards beginners, but advanced practioners are invited to participate as well. The webinars start in August and go through November. From the blog post:

Each month, we have an expert in various fields of OER projects giving a 20-minute-talk. We will follow with an informal discussion on the subject. We hope that sharing the expertise and facilitating more discussion within the community will strengthen our projects and activities.

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Automating Creative Commons Attribution on Blogs

Posted on July 25, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Fred Benenson at Creative Commons writes about a new tool CC has been using on its blog. The tool, called Tynt’s Tracer Tool, automatically adds attribution text to anything copied and pasted from the Creative Commons blog. From the post:

As a creator and contributor to the commons, you have the right to attribution (all six of our licenses require it), so why not make it easy for your audience to automatically provide it?

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Giving Away an Academic Book May Help Sales

Posted on July 23, 2009 by | 1 Comment

David Wiley has a new post a The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus discussing the advantages of giving away electronic copies of books away freely. Wiley cites various examples of academics giving away books, such as Yocai Benkler and Lawrence Lessig. From the post:

Hal Abelson, architect of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare movement and a driving force behind MIT’s recent open-access mandate, has also made much of his academic work freely available. When asked what his motivations were for making his work free, he simply said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

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Innovation on Top of Open Content

Posted on July 23, 2009 by | Leave a comment

About two months ago, OEN reported on Data.gov, a new repository for government data. Glyn Moody now points out that the Sunlight Foundation is creating their own project to improve on Data.gov. Some of the improved features include housing the information on one site (some Data.gov datasets are located other websites) and community collaboration. From Moody’s blog post:

One of the great things about openness is that it lets people do incredible things by adding to it in a multiplicity of ways. The beatuy is that those releasing material don’t need to try to anticipate future uses: it’s enough that they make it as open as possible Indeed, the more open they make it, the more exciting the re-uses will be.

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Minor Changes to Creative Commons Licensing Engine

Posted on July 23, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Nathan Yergler at Creative Commons is announcing that some minor changes have been implemented around the Creative Commons licensing image. The changes surround use of the word “license” appearing in the URL linking to CC0, which is actually a waiver. From the post:

So starting this afternoon we’ve relocated the license engine to http://creativecommons.org/choose and CC0 to http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero. Redirects are in place so you shouldn’t notice any changes.

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