Monthly Archives: July 2009

Measuring Open Education

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Leigh Blackall has a new blog post on measuring open education usage. Apparently there is a project being undertaken to measure OER usage at Otago Polytechnic, which is Blackall’s institution. Blackall outlines questions about to measure OER usage and a little of the research methodology. From the blog post:

I know now that we will not be able to complete the study before Vancouver’s Open Education conference, but I will have usage data to present, and a method for assessing the value – maybe even a few interview samples to show.

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Orlowski: Creative Commons is “Bogus”

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Andrew Orlowski at The Register has a new article on Creative Commons. Orlowski discusses recent problems surrounding copyrighted images being mislabeled as Creative Commons licensed. From the article:

The Creative Commons gang are more interested in evangelising a fixed view of the world, rather than giving users a rich, nuanced and disinterested view of creative digital rights. Perhaps, as dogmatists, they’re predisposed to see copyright as a problem, rather than a set of tools.

Also, Orlowski links to an article by The Media Institute, which provides an objective explanation of the limitations of Creative Commons.

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Wikipedia “a Desert for Photos”

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | 3 Comments

Noam Cohen at the New York Times has a new article on the state of photos within Wikipedia. Cohen asserts that Wikipedia has done a poor job finding photos of well-known subjects, especially celebrities. The article quotes Jerry Avenaim, a photographer, who indicates that licensing may be the problem. From the article:

“To me the problem is the Wikipedia rule of public use,” Mr. Avenaim said. “If they truly wanted to elevate the image on the site, they should allow photographers to maintain the copyright.”

Thanks to Library Stuff for the link.

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Interview with Wikipedia Deputy Director About Video

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

“Brightcove” at Beet.TV has posted an interview with Erik Moller, Deputy Director of Wikipedia, on upcoming video integration. According to Beet.TV Wikipedia will accept common video file formats which will then be converted to Ogg Theora, an open file format. From the article:

Earlier this week, Erik told Beet.TV that Wikipedia is working on a sophisticated video player with full-screen, share, and other standard functions

Thanks Jolie O’Dell at ReadWriteWeb for the link.

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eduCommons 3.2.1-RC1 Now Available

Posted on July 20, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Tom Caswell has announced at the OCW blog that eduCommons 3.2.1-RC1 is now available. eduCommons is a widely used platform for OpenCourseWare deployments. The new revision offers additional compatibility with WordPress and RSS functionality. Caswell asks for help in translating eduCommons into other languages. From the blog post:

We would love to get feedback from the rest of the OpenCourseWare community, and we extend a special invitation to all those interested in joining in testing and localization efforts for this project.

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Harvard to Publish Through Scribd

Posted on July 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jon Stokes at Arstechnica is reporting that Harvard will be publishing 1,000 of its books through Scribd, which is sort of a YouTube for documents. Some of the books appear to be licensed with Creative Commons, while others can only be viewed for free online, and downloaded for a price. From the Arstechnica article:

My personal hope is that other cash-strapped publishing houses will bite the bullet, move their entire libraries to digital, and send their authors a complimentary, book-shaped box of tissues to cry into when they contemplate the loss of their name on a hardcover.

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Recap of OER Session at UNESCO Conference

Posted on July 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jane Park at Creative Commons is reporting on the OER session at the recent UNESCO conference on higher education. Park notes that the session resulted in a call for greater openness and transparency from individual institutions. From the blog post:

The global nature of OER is integral to their quality and value. OER that allow adaptation, derivation, and redistribution encourage global activity like translation, transcontinental collaboration, and more.

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OER Search Discovery

Posted on July 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The Wikimedia Technical Blog has a new post on OER search. The author discusses what OER is, its benefits and wonders how to best mark-up wikis for the OER search. From the blog post:

We’ll want to find a good, clean, maintainable, and easy to use way for wiki page authors to add resource metadata to their pages, which can be exposed to spiders and repository crawlers. RDFa vs microformats vs XHTML vs HTML 5 needs some resolution on the output format, but more interesting is making sure we have a clean user interface/workflow in the edit window without cluttering up the wiki markup.

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The Goal of a University Blogging System

Posted on July 17, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Earlier this week OEN reported on a blog post by Jim Groom reflecting on the openness of the university blogging systems. Now D’Arcy Norman at the University of Calgary weighs in on the topic, suggesting that openness shouldn’t be the only consideration. From the blog post:

The goal isn’t to publish content to the open internet. The goal is to engage students, in creation, discussion, and reflection.

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Benefits of Open Teaching

Posted on July 17, 2009 by | Leave a comment

David Wiley, as part of his recent string of contributions for The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus, has a new blog post on the benefits of open teaching. Wiley relates his experience with opening his “Introduction to Open Education” class to anyone on the Internet. From the blog post:

The added richness of broader, international perspectives that these outside, informal students brought to the course was priceless for the official students in my class. And there were huge learning benefits for the informal participants as well.

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