OER Blogs
Wikiversity in Trouble?
Leigh Blackall has a new post wondering whether Wikiversity is in trouble. From the post:
In that discussion Jimmy [Wales] has called on Wikiversity to set up stronger policies for deterring what he sees as “trolls, breaching experiments (experiments designed to test the strength of Wiki policies), and attacks on Wikipedians”.
Mozilla Jetpack Contest Winners Announced
Philipp Schmidt has a new post listing the winners of Mozilla’s recent Jetpack contest. Jetpack is a framework for building Firefox extensions. From the post:
After 3 months of hacking Jetpacks, debugging code, refining user experiences, and having a good ol’ time with teams from all over the world, the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge is sadly coming to an end. In the same spirit of sharing and collaboration that has made this project so much fun, we couldn’t decide on just one overall winner, and decided three projects should get a special prize.
Sakai Product Council
Michael Feldstein has a new post explaining the Sakai Product Council. From the post:
Convening for the first time at last summer’s Sakai conference, the PC’s function is about 90% coordination and 10% governance. First and foremost, our goal has been to take existing documentation on project standards that came about through previous community efforts, place them in a framework of a project life cycle, work with current project owners to help them apply those standards appropriately to their particular work, and then feed the lessons learned back to the community in the form of better documentation.
WikiPremed MCAT
Glyn Moody has a new post on how the WikiPremed MCAT sustains itself. From the post:
What’s interesting here is that once again it’s analogue goods that bring in the money, while the digital side does the marketing – a pattern that is emerging in many sectors.
Overview of Open Textbooks
“psmythe” has posted a short overview of open textbooks. From the post:
Despite the successes in closing the traditional digital divide (access to computer hardware), a new digital divide is opening for a small minority, in terms of their ability to access knowledge (Green & Hannon 2007)
Lectopia Information Session
This afternoon I am presenting an information session on Lectopia for staff in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW. The session is intended to provide a basic overview of what Lectopia is, address some of the recurring questions that arise with respect to the service, and answer any questions that staff may have.
I’ll be recording the session using Lectopia, and providing the tech gods and goddesses cooperate I’ll post a link to the recording here when it’s available. I’ll also release a version through archive.org under a Creative Commons license.
Session Information & Resources
The majority of the session will be devoted to demonstrating and discussing different aspects of the service, therefore the PowerPoint slides below are fairly minimal.
Video Tutorials
The following is a playlist of 7 video tutorials I prepared prior to moving over to FASS. These cover a variety of topics, many of which relate to the custom Self-Service tool that was developed to enable staff to have greater control over the scheduling of their recordings.
Automated Lecture Transcription
Why Families Choose Online Learning - Katie Nordeen, WDIO
Above the Law: Classes get Second Life online learning - Josh Law, the East Texan
The Future of Online Learning Is More Growth - David Nagel, Campus Technology
Assessment in a Web 2.0 Environment
The Digital World of Young Children: Emergent Literacy
* "Opportunities to engage with digital media increasingly prevail through the use of mobile devices – and in developing countries access to mobile devices is more commonplace than access to other technologies
* "Developmental milestones are changing as young people's access to mobile and digital technology grows.
* "Digital media positively impacts children's opinion of learning, providing engagement opportunities not always seen with print materials."
As always, I question the emphasis on closed mobile platforms (which, while publishers dreams, are harmful to open discourse - see the post about Apple below). Via Garry Putland.
Jay Blanchard and Terry Moore, Pearson Foundation, March 15, 2010 [Tags: Apple Inc., Books] [Link] [Comment]
QOTD: a new Alexandria
Remembering what happened to the first Library of Alexandria, I worry a bit about centralizing the archive (and about anything from the New Republic) but reading the article find a robust propoisal with the public interest firmly in mind. "Imagine that this library is electronic and in the public domain: sustainable, stable, linked, and searchable through universal semantic catalogue standards. Imagine that it has open source-ware, allowing legacy digital resources and new digital knowledge to be integrated in real time. Imagine that its Second Web capabilities allowed universal researches of the bibliome."
The argument for change from the traditional system of academic publishing is compelling, I think, and has two major threads. First, "If scholars continue to hide away and lock up their knowledge, do they not risk their own irrelevance? An immediately important debate, I think, is to be had over how academics fail to engage with their natural constituency (and former students): journalists, business leaders, lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and civil servants." And second, "What if our next 'peasant poet,' as John Clare was known, twitters? What if he writes a blog or shojo manga? What if he publishes via a desktop or vanity publisher? Will his output count as part of legal deposit material? What if there is a masterpiece being filmed in Bollywood? What if one among many Nigerian novelettes, which typically address a young heroine's agonized choice between a village boy and a 'big man,' turns out to be written by a Jane Austen?"
Scholars of the future will be astonished at how few voices out of the collective six billion were ever actually remembered, and will wonder how we could let such a cultural tragedy occur. Lorcan Dempsey, Weblog, March 15, 2010 [Tags: Twitter, Books, Semantic Web, Research, Open Source, Academia, Web Logs] [Link] [Comment]
Secret iPhone Agreement (now public) and Apple User Ethics
# Ban on Public Statements [by developers]
# App Store Only [for distribution]
# Ban on Reverse Engineering
# No Tinkering with Any Apple Products
# Kill Your App Any Time [Apple can]
# We (Apple) Never Owe You More than Fifty Dollars
Wesley Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, March 15, 2010 [Tags: Apple Inc.] [Link] [Comment]
The Amazing Web 2.0 Projects Book!
Social media & workplace performance matrix
Changing the System at a National Level
I agree with Siemens's basic focus in thew discussion that follows, but wonder who is this "we" of whom he speaks? For example, he says, "We adopt catch phrases from popular media pundits. What we need is substance – a vision and a means to discover the suitability of that vision." Who is this "we"? Not me, I don't think. I know there's a writing tactic, where you identify with the audience and find points in common. But I'm not going to say "we" when I mean "you" or some specific pundit, popular or otherwise, who needs criticizing. George Siemens, Connectivism, March 15, 2010 [Tags: Connectivism, Project Based Learning, Microsoft] [Link] [Comment]
Here Is Where I Grew Up...
CSS Off Results
Chris Coyier, CSS-Tricks, March 15, 2010 [Tags: none] [Link] [Comment]