Monthly Archives: August 2009

New Service Claims to be “File-sharing for Academics”

Posted on August 24, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Gavin Baker at Open Access News has a new post on Scholas, which acts as a file-sharing service for academics. Users can list their works on the site, license them with Creative Commons and access them via a shortened URL (e.g. http://schol.as/9I-3UJV82). From Scholas “About” page:

Scholas is a service that enables academics to list their publications and share work quickly and easily via the web. This can be a list of existing publications including journal articles, books etc. As well as any other items, such as research notes, presentations, posters and data-sets.

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Accreditation and Openness

Posted on August 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Gary North has a new post on MIT OCW and the future of education. North argues that accreditation remains the real reason behind higher education. Other tangents, such as religion in education, are discussed using North’s unique writing style. From the post:

The sad fact is this: most parents don’t care about education. They care about accreditation.

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Major Rivals Oppose Google Settlement

Posted on August 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Miguel Helft at the New York Times is reporting that Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon have announced their opposition to Google’s proposed book settlement. The companies plan to join the nonprofit coalition Open Book Alliance, which opposes the settlement. From the article:

“This deal has enormous, far-reaching anticompetitive consequences that people are just beginning to wake up to,” said Mr. Reback, a lawyer with Carr & Ferrell, a firm in Palo Alto, Calif.

Also covered by Arstechnica and Engadget.

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Lessig Puts Blog into “Hibernation”

Posted on August 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Larry Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, is announcing that he will be putting his blog into “hibernation.” Lessig cites a few reasons for discontinuing the blog, which includes managing spam and the upcoming birth of his third child. From the post:

This isn’t an announcement of my disappearance. I’m still trying to understand twitter. My channel at blip.tv will remain. As will the podcast, updated as I speak. I will continue to guest blog at Huffington Post. And as Change-Congress.org enters a new stage, I hope to be doing more there. But this community, this space, this board will now rest.

Thanks to Glyn Moody for the link.

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Inclusion and Openness

Posted on August 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

D’Arcy Norman has a new post on his thoughts about Open Education Conference 2009. Norman discusses a range of topics, but most notably inclusion. He suggests that the conference had a “strong sense of male dominance” and asks how the conference could be made more diverse. From the post:

If the open education conference was so strongly over-represented by white males who shared similar backgrounds, why is that? If it’s not through active exclusion (there is no club to join, no registry to sign, no approval process), it may be through a sense of inclusion or non-inclusion. Why are women, people of colour, people of various other backgrounds, not as strongly represented here?

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Textbooks and Change

Posted on August 21, 2009 by | 1 Comment

George Siemens has a new post on textbook production and changing the education system. Siemens is critical of the open textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge, arguing that it only provides slight change over the prevailing textbook model. From the post:

It’s too early to convincingly declare select-authorship models of textbooks to be superior to wiki-created textbooks. Or, if we do make the declaration (as Wiley, Benkler and others have done), we need to focus on understanding why.

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Wiley Creates an “Unmix”

Posted on August 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

David Wiley has a new blog post on “unmixing” or the act of reproducing a work through disparate sources. As an example, he recreates a passage from Lessig’s book Remix entirely of phrases from other sources. From the article:

Now, you may argue that these phrase attributions – while exact and correct – are rather random, and therefore don’t do much to significantly change the meaning of the text. I think the simple act of unmixing this particular text speaks volumes.

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Digital and Open Textbooks in the News

Posted on August 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Derby Cox at SanLuisObispo.com is reporting on the trend towards digital textbooks. Cox interviews a wide range of people, including Ben Crowell, who runs the free booksite The Assayer. From the article:

The trouble began in the 1980s, Frank said, when 60-or-so textbook publishers competed to create the largest sales force. After the companies consolidated into a few mega-publishers in the 1990s, the industry entered what Frank called a “nuclear arms race of supplements,” when companies competed to distinguish their products with extra materials like CD-ROMs.

The open textbook company Flat World Knowledge was also featured on Venture Beat.

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OER “Miseries”

Posted on August 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Minhaaj Rehman has a new blog post on OER and western bias. Rehman’s thoughts are similar to Leigh Blackall’s recent posts, which argues that OER is a force for cultural imperialism. From the article:

OERs have been a purely western solution for expensive books and other forms of restricted content e.g music, drama works and movies. It has a very little resemblance and definition in other cultures specially in eastern world. Things had always been free specially, educational material, entertainment and products with no marginal costs of reproduction. There sharing has been not only deemed ok, it is considered a piety to share and collaborate.

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Open Access Mandate in China

Posted on August 20, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Gavin Baker at Open Access News is reporting that the National Science Library and Chinese Academy of Sciences have adopted an open access mandate. From the post:

NSL adopted the mandate policy, which mandates the NSL members to archive the article to the NSL-IR 1 month after the article was published. The articles submitted by the NSL members will be one of the main evidences and references for the members’ final year performance evaluation, which impacts on the salaries and other treatments of the faculties and staffs.

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