James Turner at O’Reilly Radar has a new post on the barriers to e-books in Africa and the Middle East. From the post:
For me, digital is a massive social development tool. I like to think of e-books as one small application of digital publishing, which is really a grand process of putting the world of letters onto the internet.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-books, e-learning, higher education, online learning, Open Education, open textbook, open textbooks
Qi Gu has written an editorial for The Daily Cardinal (University of Wisconsin) on OpenCourseWare. Gu suggests that OpenCourseWare is useful, but warns against offering credit. From the editorial:
A for certification might be going too far for open learning projects. There are some valid concerns that this would dilute the brand names of universities. If everybody claims to have been a Harvard student, where is the world-renowned prestige built in the past 200 years? So far the open resources are mostly just course materials such as lecture notes, assignments and online textbooks. These can’t even make up a full definition of “courses,” not to mention “education” (which is what is truly valued behind each diploma).
Posted in Open Education
Tagged higher education, ocw, oer, open content, Open Education, openness
Tony Bates is announcing that 10 new universities are joining the African Virtual University. The African Virtual University is a network of open and distance learning. Thanks to Stephen Downes for the link.
Karen Fasimpaur has a new post on the discussion surrounding digital textbooks in Texas. Though the current legislation indicates that the digital textbooks would be owned by the state, it is unclear whether or it will be openly licensed or not. From the post:
Recently, Texas State Representative Scott Hochberg, who was a leader on the “open source textbook” legislation* there, was quoted as saying “We were due to spend about $225 million to replace the grades six through 12 literature books in the state. We can buy the content for under $20 million. Someplace between $20 million and $225 million, there’s a cost savings.”
Open Source Schools has a new post about the Open Source Cafe at BETT (British Education and Training Technology). From the post:
Open Source School had teamed up with friends from Open Forum Europe to host the Café over the four days of the show, with a rolling programme of barcamp style presentations, advice and copies of open source software available on CD ROM.
Louise Egan has issued a press release announcing the availability of JorumOpen. JorumOpen is a repository for open educational resources. Many of these resources originate from the UK. From the press release:
All material within JorumOpen will also be exposed to search engines such as Google later this year, further enhancing the search and accessibility of these resources, and providing the perfect platform to showcase your work and learn from the expertise of others.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, higher education, ocw, oer, online learning, open content, Open Education, openness
“giotaalevizou” at OLnet has posted an interview with Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia, on open educational resources. From the post:
We are part of the OER community by default because of what we are. We have the wikibooks projects, which if fine, but we are trying to write textbooks using the same software to write that we use to write Wikipedia… And the software itself has certain default assumptions that are designed around the workflow for producing an encyclopaedia and it doesn’t support some of the other kinds of things you would want for an educational environment. It’s not an ideal system for this purpose.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged copy right, copyright, e-learning, higher education, oer, online learning, open content, Open Education, openness, Wikipedia
The Open Book Alliance is announcing two public meetings hosted by the National Writers Union in New York and San Francisco. The meeting will discuss what the second version of the Google Book settlement means for writers. From the post:
“All writers need to be fully aware of the settlement’s provisions in order to make informed decisions,” said NWU President Larry Goldbetter. “Writers have a second chance, regardless of whether you received official notice or what you did about the original settlement proposal. This is especially important with the new ‘opt-out’ date set for January 28.”
Posted in Open Education
Tagged google, Google's Settlement, open content, openness, policy, public domain
Richard Gayle has a new post on how he think academic publishing will change in 2010. From the post:
Most examples mentioned above try to reproduce the experience of reading something printed on paper on an electronic device. An alternative approach would move beyond the traditional format of a paper and rather takes advantage of the electronic medium. And it looks like the web technologies HTML5 and Flash are best suited for this.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, higher education, Internet, library, online learning
William Stites has posted slides from a recent presentation on using open source in education.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged Internet, K-12, open content, open source, openness, presentation
