SFI2011

"Today the National Academies Press announced it would offer its entire PDF catalog of books for free, as files that can be downloaded by anyone. The press is the publishing arm of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, and publishes books and reports that scientists, educators, and policy makers rely on."

"The State of Maine, Department of Education is seeking proposals for the development of an open digital textbook to support the integration of technology in teaching and learning. The open digital textbook must be comprehensive enough to serve as a content area's primary subject matter and redefine the traditional textbook for that subject matter at the identified grade level. This resource will leverage available and supported technology, through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. In this context, an "open digital textbook" is a collection of digital educational content that is openly available over the Internet. It is licensed to allow duplication and distribution, in addition to modification of the content. It will include the necessary elements for successful implementation at the classroom level including alignment to standards, learning opportunities, instructional guidance, supporting materials, accessibility to all learners, and integration of technology."

Where does my comment show?

Richard - here is my comment

"Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release."

"Never flood your followers again. Add Tweets to your Buffer and we spread them out for you during the day."

Created and narrated by physics Professor Erik Christensen of South Florida Community College. A collegeopentextbook.org advocate and trainer, Professor Christensen discusses the benefits to himself and his students of adopting an open physics textbook. The customization of the open textbook with his own teaching materials, he believes, enabled him to make physics "more fun and interesting" for his students, with some choosing to major in physics at the universities. Also, costs to students dropped from $178.00 to $13.00.

Funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, College Open Textbooks is a collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving the awareness and advocacy for open textbooks.

Driving Awareness and Adoptions

"YouTube + Creative Commons = awesome. Starting tomorrow at 9am Pacific time, YouTube will offer the option to license videos with the Creative Commons CC-By-3.0 license, and will introduce new remixing options in YouTube's cloud-based video editor. "

Reach for the sky of expression.

I use both a Facebook group and a LinkedIn group as community engagement tools. I like them both, but for very different reasons, and what I really wish I could do was combine my favorite features of each and get the best of both worlds.

"Short interview with Anu Sivaraman, Professor, Business Administration, about her use of blogs for her IT in Marketing class. In addition to providing students a platform to express themselves and collaborate, blogs have proven to be a gateway to helping marketing student develop a very important entry-level skill."

"The study also revealed a significant deviation between student survey results and actual computer-use practices. Students tend to under-report the amount of time they spend on distracting activities in class."

Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom. She had heard of Twitter... She collaborated with the UT Dallas, Arts and Technology - Emerging Media and Communications (EMAC) http://www.emac.utdallas.edu faculty and as a Graduate student in EMAC I assisted her in her experiment.

While doing research for a recent workshop, I came across a useful list of seven social software elements. These seven building blocks--identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing--provide a good functional definition for social software. They're also a solid foundation for thinking about how social software works.