Monthly Archives: September 2009

Little Things for Open Education

Posted on September 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jane Park at Creative Commons has a new post on little things that can be done to advance open education. Park highlights Acawiki and dScribe as two potential projects that could benefit from assistance. From the post:

Whether you’re an advocate for open education, promoting the use, reuse, and adaptation of openly licensed educational materials, or an everyday user of them because you find them convenient and effective for your teaching or learning needs, you have contributed in some way to improving the educational landscape for everyone, everywhere.

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Integrating OCW into a University

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Rebecca Attwood at Times Higher Education has a new article on OpenCourseWare. Attwood interviews persons from MIT OCW, Oxford and OpenLearn. From the article:

This year, it [MIT OCW] will fund close to 50 per cent of the operating costs. Existing grants will run out in the next few years, and the programme is looking for ways to save costs, for example by moving its video footage from a paid-for host to YouTube. OCW receives commission from Amazon for referring visitors to its online bookshop, and is working hard to raise income from fundraising activities.

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Using OpenOffice for Flash Cards

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

ghacks.net has posted a tutorial on how to use OpenOffice to create flash cards. The tutorial does require downloading the OpenCard extension, which is available for free. From the article:

The OpenOffice Impress OpenCards extension allows you to take a bare-bones presentation and use each slide as a flash card. Not only is a great tool for learning, it’s not killing trees AND a stack of files on your PC is going to take up less room than a stack of paper flash cards.

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OCWC Workshop Scheduled for October

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Meena Hwang is announcing that an OCWC workshop has been scheduled for Oct. 22 in Norwood, MA. Registration is $125 for OCWC members, $250 for non-OCWC members.

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International Conference on OER to Be Held in October

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jane Park at Creative Commons is announcing an international conference on OER will be held Oct. 29-30 in São Paulo, Brazil. The conference will be sponsored by Open Society Institute and Direito GV, a non-profit foundation.

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Presidents of Liberal Arts Colleges Send Open Letter to Congress

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Steve Kolowich at Inside Higher Ed is reporting that 57 liberal arts colleges are supporting the Federal Research Access Act of 2009. The bill would require peer-reviewed manuscripts derived from federally-funded research to be deposited into an open repository. From the article:

It would be “a major step forward in ensuring equitable online access to research literature that is paid for by taxpayers,” according to the presidents’ letter. The signatories note that both faculty who wish to stay current on research and students who aspire to doctoral degrees stand to lose out as academic journals grow prohibitively expensive.

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Paper Pulled for Violating Embargo

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Randy Schekman, Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, has announced that a paper has been pulled from its publication for violating an NIH embargo on data sharing. From the announcement:

Although the scientific community is often viewed as self-correcting, the systemfailed for this paper. It appears that not all of the coauthors were aware of the embargo agreement, and the referees and the editors did not know that a serious breach of scientific conduct and NIH policy had taken place.

Thanks to Gavin Baker at Open Access News for the link.

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Open Assessment Bank

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Mark Horner has a new post suggesting the creation of an open assessment bank. The bank would receive contributions from teachers and would be a stepping stone to contributing to Connexions. From the post:

If we support communities of teachers sharing, adapting and enhancing assessment items in iterative, open and transparent ways it will save individual teachers’ time, provide assessment items of the highest quality and enhance the sharing of innovative ideas.

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Criticism of Open Access Plan

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Last week OEN reported that five major U.S. majorities officially announced support for open access. The Law Librarian Blog has posted a critique. From the post:

While authors may choose which journal they submit articles to, it is the publishers who choose which articles to publish. What happens when a subscription-based journal rejects an article and the author’s institution cannot or refuses to write a processing fee check for an open access journal that is willing to publish it but for lack of payment? Will it be up to the author to use his or her own funds?

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Creative Commons Latin America Meeting Report Now Available

Posted on September 25, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Jane Park at Creative Commons is announcing that a report on a meeting held last year on OER in Latin America is now available. The report is in both English and Spanish and is licensed CC BY. From the report:

Latam Commons 2008: Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Open Education was held in November 2008 in Santiago, Chile. It was organized by the Chilean NGO Derechos Digitales, with support from the DUOC of the University of Chile, and jointly financed by Derechos Digitales and ccLearn, the education division of Creative Commons. The event brought together participants from eight countries in Latin America, and had an ambitious participatory format that took advantage of the knowledge and experience of the participants and guests in the discussion of three distinct, but related, themes.

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