“alibrown18″ has a new post on being hired by the Open University. From the post:
Even for those not studying formally, the OU makes itself felt. Each week, there are around 50 000 downloads of OU podcasts from iTunes. Two million people access the freely available teaching and learning materials from the Open Learn website. Millions more watch OU supported television programmes, such as the BBC’s Coast.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, online learning, Open Education, open university, OU
The blog Literacy is Priceless has a new post on “the anatomy of open education.” The post defines open education and some of the issues it faces. From the post:
The benefits of open education are many (customization, cost-savings, freedom to innovate, etc.), but one of the primary advantages of the open education movement is that of access.
Thanks to RSS_Buzztracker for the link.
The website ResearchBuzz is reporting that Wikipedia has launched the Bookshelf project. The project is set to develop training to help recruit new contributors. From the project’s announcement page:
The Wikipedia Bookshelf Project will create a core set of public outreach materials designed to recruit new Wikipedia editors by increasing their awareness and interest, fostering excitement, and providing the training tools new editors need to get started. Recruiting new high-value contributors to Wikipedia will increase its value today and for the future.
Glyn Moody is reporting that Brazil’s Ministry of Culture is proposing lifting restrictions on personal copies and mashups of copyrighted material. A Google Translate version of the original article is available. From Moody’s post:
The reform also provides for “(…) the use of short extracts from existing works, where the use itself is not the main purpose of new work and does not prejudice the normal exploitation of the work reproduced, giving legal backing to the creation of mashups music or visual.]
Posted in Open Education
Tagged copy right, copyright, open content, openness, policy
Lisa Petrides has published an OER Twitter list. The list includes notable bloggers and organizations affiliated with OER and open education. Thanks to Lucy Gray for the link.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged oer, online learning, open content, Open Education, openness, twitter
The Open Knowledge Foundation Blog has announced a call for proposals for OkCon 2010. The conference is scheduled London for April 24, 2010. From the post:
This is a time of great change. In addition to high profile initiatives such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and the Human Genome Project, there is enormous growth among open knowledge projects and communities at all levels. Moreover, in the last year, governments across the world have begun opening up huge amounts of their data.
The Committee for Economic Development has published a report on using openness for both teaching and research in higher education. From the summary:
In this report we examine higher education through the lens of openness. Our goal is to understand the potential impact of greater openness on colleges and universities. Like other service industries such as finance or entertainment, higher education is rooted in information—its creation, analysis, and transmission— and the development of the skills required to use it. This report identifies some of the potential gains from making higher education more open and recommends actions that policy makers and institutions of higher education can take to harness its benefits.
Thanks to Judy Baker for the link.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged higher education, open content, Open Education, openness, research
Gavin Baker at Open Access News is reporting that 41 Nobel scientists have submitted an open letter to the U.S. congress. The letter asks congress to support the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which mandates that peer-reviewed articles that resulted from publicly-funded research must be submitted to an open access repository.
Mike Masnick has a new post disagreeing with a recent court decision that answers to textbook questions were a derivative work. From the post:
This still makes no sense to me. First, there’s no “copying.” Second, isn’t answering a question a “factual” statement? How can answering a question be copyright infringement?
Posted in Open Education
Tagged commons, copy right, copyright, open textbook, open textbooks, openness, textbook
Mike Linksvayer at Creative Commons has a new post announcing three different projects using or upgrading licenses. The most notable is the Fedora Project, which will be adopting BY-SA for its documentation. AntWeb, a website dedicated to ants is moving from BY-NC to BY-SA. Lastly, Wikitravel is upgrading from BY-SA 1.0 to BY-SA 3.0.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged cc, CC licenses, creative commons, e-learning, open source, wikimedia
