Angus Scrimgeour in August on asymmetrical OER needs. In the article Scrimgeour addresses the question of how to stimulate OER creation in developing nations. From the post:
My response is advocacy, oiled by that scarce educational commodity – money. The advocacy part needs to focus on the low hanging fruit, namely, the prospective champions. These may be Vice Chancellors, academic staff, head teachers, or even Ministers of Education and civil servants in some countries.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged commons, e-learning, oer, open, open content, Open Education, openness
Brian Lamb has a new post on last minute updates regarding Open Education Conference 2009. Lamb notes a special panel discussion on copyright on Aug. 13, which will be open to the public. He also reminds readers that the day-long discussion between Stephen Downes and David Wiley is still set to take place on Aug. 11. From the post:
…we are pleased to present a special panel on “Expression, appropriation and the law” with screenings of clips from a variety of copyright-conflicted works, as well as a discussion led by Vancouver-based artists and policy experts.
Jane Park at Creative Commons is announcing the official launch of Open Ed. The site is meant to orient anyone interested in open education and provide a list of related projects and organizations. Open Ed has been up for a few months already, but this post marks its official launch. From the post:
Open Ed is hosted by ccLearn, but we are merely providing the web space. We’ve done some initial work on it, but the site is yours—be you an OER advocate, a teacher wanting to connect with other teachers, or a learner who would love to do the same. And you can contribute in any way you like, because Open Ed runs on MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.
Sheila Macneill has a new blog post the results of an “OER road trip” to various institutions who are currently working on OER projects. Macneill discusses various individual institution initiatives and points out patterns between them. The post also presented some recommendations for OER projects. From the blog post:
Although seed funding is key to getting things started, it can’t be relied on forever. Hewlett have already announced that they will stop funding OER projects in the near future and so sustainability needs to be considered from the outset. Perhaps a case of “an OER isn’t just for a JISC project but for life . . .” mentality is needed to be developed.
Also linked to by Stephen Downes.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged oer, open, Open Education, open learning, openness
About two months ago, OEN reported on Data.gov, a new repository for government data. Glyn Moody now points out that the Sunlight Foundation is creating their own project to improve on Data.gov. Some of the improved features include housing the information on one site (some Data.gov datasets are located other websites) and community collaboration. From Moody’s blog post:
One of the great things about openness is that it lets people do incredible things by adding to it in a multiplicity of ways. The beatuy is that those releasing material don’t need to try to anticipate future uses: it’s enough that they make it as open as possible Indeed, the more open they make it, the more exciting the re-uses will be.
Earlier this week OEN reported on a blog post by Jim Groom reflecting on the openness of the university blogging systems. Now D’Arcy Norman at the University of Calgary weighs in on the topic, suggesting that openness shouldn’t be the only consideration. From the blog post:
The goal isn’t to publish content to the open internet. The goal is to engage students, in creation, discussion, and reflection.
Today, Judge Denny Chin gave a four-month extension for the opt-out, opposition and amicus, and fairness hearing deadlines in the Google Book Search case. The Extended Deadline Opt-Out is now September, 9, 2009. This will allow different communities to take a deeper look into the Google’s Settlement and decide to intervene or not.
In addition, the New Yor Times report that the Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged commons, copy right, copyright, Google's Settlement, Internet, open, openness, public domain
Peter Suber at Open Access News is reporting on a proposed Open Access Trust for the Google Book Settlement. The idea behind the trust is that it would act as guardians for the orphaned works in Google’s settlement to ensure that they are being made available for common good. The proposal was suggested by Charles Nessman at Harvard Law School. From Suber’s commentary:
This is an excellent idea. It needn’t rest solely on the argument that orphaned works are part of the public domain. It could rest, instead or in addition, on the argument that the Google book settlement will shrink the scope of fair use and shrink the odds that competition will lower the price or improve the terms under which the public will have access to digitized orphan works.
Posted in Open Education
Tagged commons, copy right, copyright, Internet, open, openness, public domain
Susan Topel of Open.Michigan is reporting that four of its students are participating in the Clinton Global initiative. The purpose of the Clinton Global initiative is to bring together world leaders to discuss global problems. The U-M students proposal is to make health OER available in Ghana, South Africa and Liberia. From the blog post:
The inadequate density and distribution of healthcare providers negatively affects health outcomes around the globe. In Africa in particular, too few health care professionals are being trained to meet local needs. A key barrier in both developed and developing countries is the lack of instructor capacity to teach both basic and clinical sciences, complicated by the duplication of effort in developing learning materials that can be shared as OER.
Creative Commons has announced that the Open Video Conference is now accepting proposals. The conference is taking place June 19-20 in New York City, and is sponsored by “the Yale Law School Information Society Project, the Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, and iCommons.” From the conference’s “About” page:
Open Video is a broad based movement of video creators, technologists, academics, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, activists, remixers, and many others. When most folks think of “open,” they think of open source and open codecs. They’re right—but there’s more to Open Video than open codecs. Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online.
