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This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

This will be a great resource as we help faculty/students put more content online. "This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is "to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses."

dScribe, short for "digital and distributed scribes," is a participatory and collaborative model for creating open content. It brings together enrolled students, staff, faculty, and self-motivated learners to work together toward the common goal of creating content that is openly licensed and available to people throughout the world. It was first developed by students and faculty at the University of Michigan to leverage the interest and talent of students in working with faculty and staff to transform educational material into open educational resources (OER). The dScribe model encourages students, faculty, staff, and other interested individuals such as alumni and community members to get involved in not only creating open content, but also generating awareness about the benefits of creating and sharing educational content with a global learning community.

Since the economic downturn began I've noticed much more interest in open source Learning Management Systems (LMS), and it's no surprise that when people ask what the options are, the answer is usually Moodle. Now, there's nothing wrong with Moodle, but it certainly isn't the only open source LMS out there. Because there is no licensing cost involved with open source solutions, its easy for organisations to just jump in and set up the first solution that comes along. There is however a cost to installation and support, either financial or time related. Anyone setting up an LMS has a responsibility to research and choose the solution that is right for the learners and the organisation.

Just as colleges and universities have adopted online classes over the past decade, students can expect free open courseware of some kind at every campus in the U.S. in the next five years, a University of California-Irvine official said during a recent forum on open courseware.

Open education project The Wiki Education Foundation connects higher education to the publishing power of Wikipedia. Bridging Wikipedia and academia creates opportunities for any learner to contribute to, and access, open knowledge.

The app now supports opening audio files you send yourself in email and can open from other apps. You can also import different kinds of media (including audio) from cloud storage sources. This is tectonic-sized good news for iPad videographers!

"BigBlueButton is an open source project that is built on over fourteen open source components to create an integrated web conferencing system that runs on mac, unix, or PC computers. In the true sense of open source, we invite you to try out and participate in our project."

Open educational resources (OER) are "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research."[1] Being a production and dissemination mode, OER are not involved in awarding degrees nor in providing academic or administrative support to students.[2][3] However, OER materials are beginning to get integrated into open and distance education.[4]

A new research project by the Open University explores the much-debated concept of "the digital native". The university does this by making full use of the rich resource which is its own highly diverse student body. It concludes that while there are clear differences between older people and younger in their use of technology, there's no evidence of a clear break between two separate populations.

Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other educational material. Open resources are issued under a license that spells out how they can be used: Some may only be used in their original form; in other cases, resources can be modified, remixed, and redistributed. OER expand the access to educational resources to more learners, more of the time, and they have the potential to spur pedagogical innovation, introducing new alternatives for effective teaching.

"UNESCO's Open Access (OA) Curriculum is now online"

"On Twitter: An Open Letter to Non-Tweeters"

Great examples for KSC - Open for Learning Challenges Try one and share your response for others to learn from!

"Why Open Badges Could Either Kill or Cure Learning? "

Here's a valuable set of resources for Health Sciences education: "60 public access virtual patient cases released under a Creative Commons licence for open use and reuse. Cases were created working with subject experts in workshops across the province. Using the open-source OpenLabyrinth platform the PINE project has a research and development theme investigating common simulation, gaming and narrative patterns in educational case design. This is facilitated by the use of the Vue topic mapping toolset that allows authors to create visual representations of activities and decision making processes."

The 2010 survey data highlight the continuing transition in the higher education market for Learning Management Systems (LMS).  The proportion of survey participants reporting that their institution uses Blackboard as the campus-standard LMS has dropped from to 71.0 percent in 2006 to 57.1 percent in 2010.  Concurrently, Blackboard's major LMS competitors have all gained share during this period.  The percentage of campuses that use Desire2Learn as the campus-standard LMS is up five-fold, from 2.0 percent in 2006 to 10.1 percent in 2010.  Moodle, an Open Source LMS, also registered big gains during this period, rising from 4.2 percent in 2006 to 16.4 percent in fall 2010   The numbers for Sakai, another Open Source LMS deployed primarily in research universities, have grown from 3.0 percent in 2006 to 4.6 percent in 2010.

The OpenLearn website gives free access to Open University course materials. This is the LearningSpace, where you'll find hundreds of free study units, each with a discussion forum. Study independently at your own pace or join a group and use the free learning tools to work with others.

Easily caption and translate your videos, with help from your viewers.

Universal Subtitles gives individuals, communities, and larger organizations the power to overcome accessibility and language barriers for online video. The tools are free and open source and make the work of subtitling and translating video simpler, more appealing, and, most of all, more collaborative.The benefits of captioning and subtitling are immense:Captions make videos accessible for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearingTranslations make it possible for all of us to watch video in languages that we don't speakVideo creators get: better SEO, more views, access to a far bigger (potentially multilingual and global) audience, accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing viewers, and moreUniversal Subtitles is composed of three main parts:A subtitle creation and viewing tool (aka the widget)A collaborative subtitling websiteAn open protocol for subtitle search/delivery

Open Educational Resources come in many shapes and sizes. This partial list of sources introduces the scope of OER and the organizations cultivating its increasingly vital role in opening higher education up to the greatest number of people worldwide.

By Bill Taylor - With the advantages of Open Educational Resources being so clear, why aren't more educators utilizing them?

By Bill Taylor - With the advantages of Open Educational Resources being so clear, why aren't more educators utilizing them?