Monthly Archives: October 2009

OER at TESSA

Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, along with others, have published a paper on the development of open educational resources at Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) program. From the paper:

These TESSA materials are designed to be a pedagogic “toolkit” of skills, knowledge and artefacts to enhance the professional knowledge (both subject and pedagogic) of teachers. The school-integrated activities, at the heart of the study units, combine theory and practice, and encourage teachers to learn about teaching through classroom experiences while stimulating experimentation and critical debate…

Openness in Higher Education

Gavin Baker at Open Access News is pointing to a draft report on openness in higher education. The report encourages experimentation with openness. From the conclusion:

In this report we have only begun to plumb the potential for greater openness to improve higher education. As we have made clear in our previous reports we believe that openness is not a paramount value or an unalloyed good.

Thanks to Stephen Downes for the link.

OpenEd ES Community

Jane Park at Creative Commons has a new post on the OpenEd ES community, which is Creative Commons’ project to reach out to Spanish-speaking participants in open education. The post includes an FAQ in Spanish. From the post:

Our hope is that the Spanish speaking community around OER…will grow and thrive within its native language. OpenEd ES is part of a greater effort to make visible all of the interesting work that is being done in various languages around the world.

Innovate Journal Closing

Ben Terris at The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus is reporting that the journal Innovate is closing. James Morrison notes in the comments that the back issues will still be available. The news was originally broken by Stephen Downes.

P2P Influence Markers

Michael Bauwens has a new post discusses the P2P Foundation’s efforts to track mentions on Twitter. From the post:

Which concluded that we reached nearly 4,000 retweets (October 19), not sure since when, but 58 per month on average and 18 per week … by about 800 different individuals, the highest reaching 38 retweets.

OER Dialogue Feb – Mar 2009

Stephen Downes is reporting that UNESCO has published the results of ongoing discussion about OER. The document is meant to cover from Feb. 9 – Mar. 9 2009. From the introduction:

The community periodically holds discussions on high-interest topics. During an earlier discussion (in June 2008), it was suggested that there should be a discussion devoted to access to OER. It should consider access very broadly, but have a focus on access issues specific to less resourced environments.

OER Programme Meeting Review

Matt Jukes has a new blog post reviewing what ocurred at a recent JISC OER meeting. From the post:

There were a couple of particularly interesting almost throw away moments during this talk that were picked up again during the day. The first was the assertion by Patrick that use of Creative Commons had saved OpenLearn £100k…

Using Wikipedia to Find OCW

Stian Haklev has a new post discussing an effort to include links in Wikipedia to OCW. From the post:

I think this is a brilliant initiative! It’s a great way to improve the “findability” of these resources, and contributes to demolish the idea that Wikipedia is not suitable to education.

Open Source for America

Doug Holton has tweeted about Open Source for America (OSFA). The organization is dedicated to increasing adoption of open source solution in the U.S. federal government. From the “About” page:

We hope to encourage the government’s utilization of open source software participation in open source software projects, and incorporation of open source community dynamics to enable transparency.

OER and the Gender Gap

Ahrash Bissell has a new post discussing the gender gap in education. Bissell suggests that OER is well-suited to eliminating gaps in performance by gender. From the post:

We should all be striving to reach a point where every student is encouraged and evaluated as an individual, according to his or her needs, interests, abilities, and aspirations. Certainly embracing OER won’t be enough, but it’s a good start.

Thanks to DML Competition for the link.