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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.

For students new to medical school, parsing out the most relevant and helpful information from a seemingly limitless supply of materials can be daunting. The University of Virginia's School of Medicine has created a set of relevant websites that can be useful for medical students and others with an interest in related fields such as anatomy, physiology, and neurology. The links are divided into two dozen topical areas, such as "Gross Anatomy", "Nephrology", and "Surgery". Each section contains links from reliable sources, including the University of Toronto, Oxford University, and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. The "Gross Anatomy" area is very thorough, as it contains over twenty resources that provide an overview of anatomy, anatomical slide shows, and so on

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."

Colleagues, Last semester 30 faculty and staff participated in a reading group focused on Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring's "The Innovative University." The reading group came together face-to-face on a number of occasions and continued the rich discussion online. It was a great experience and a fascinating book. This semester the faculty and staff participating in the American Democracy Project recommended that we invite the campus community to come together to read "A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future." The work was completed by the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, under the leadership of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. It's a brief volume, rich in examples, on how colleges and universities must reclaim responsibility for civic learning. "A Crucible Moment" is available in PDF here: http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/college-learning-democracys-future/crucible-moment.pdf The reading group will meet once in March and once in April, with opportunities for online discussion. More information will follow later in the month. In the meantime, if you're interested in joining us for this discussion, please email Kim Schmidl-Gagne (kgagne@keene.edu). If you would like to commit to the reading group, but would prefer to read in hard copy, Kim will also order a copy for you. I look forward to this discussion, and I hope you will consider joining us for our spring reading group. Mel

The coalition government is driving forward reforms to allow commercial companies to set up universities to compete with traditional institutions. Students at private universities will have access to student loans of up to £6,000 a year from 2012. Further proposals to encourage the for-profit sector are due next month.

The Century America compilation of websites are a part of the COPLAC digital history project, a collaboration of several colleges in which student researchers have explored their local community's experiences during the Great War. Spearheaded by Dr. Bill Spellman, and under the direct leadership of Dr. Ellen Holmes Pearson from the University of North Carolina Asheville and Dr. Jeffrey McClurken from the University of Mary Washington, the project combines digital technologies, distance mentoring, and undergraduate research. The UNC Asheville website explores parts of Western North Carolina, with particular emphasis on the college's home city of Asheville, during the Great War.

After a whirlwind nine months that has witnessed a rapid rebirth of online education at elite U.S. universities in the form of massively open online courses, or MOOCs, Harvard University has thrown its hat into the ring - along with the largest investment yet in technology aimed at bringing interactive online education to hundreds of thousands of students at a time for free.

It started with an announcement in February that a University of Georgia instructor would start a crowdsourcing project to find out more about working conditions and salaries of adjuncts. Last month, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro announced that she was attempting something similar for graduate student employees. Both projects are attempts at gathering information -- on the salaries of adjuncts and graduate students -- where rigorously researched data is difficult to come by. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/02/crowdsourcing-contingent-salary-data#ixzz1quha2YCW  Inside Higher Ed 

The following guidelines explain the best use of social media to enhance professional and personal communications while protecting reputations. This text is adapted from materials prepared by Ball State University and DePaul University.

An iPhone app conceived by two students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, built as a computer science class project, and purchased by the school's IT organization has made its public debut in the Apple iTunes store. Formerly named iWolverine, now called "University of Michigan," the app allows users to track buses in real time through the popular Magic Bus Web application, listen to the school's fight song, check dining hall menus, and search for buildings, among other features.

CW Search is a search engine dedicated to increasing access to the information found in the best free university courses online. Several universities publish their course materials for free online, under the OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, as described on the OpenCourseWare Consortium website. OCW Search is an independent search engine that indexes all these courses so you can find these courses faster.

A key reason some ideas are so successful, conventional wisdom has held, is that a few highly influential people espouse them. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that what he calls "social epidemics" are "driven by the efforts of a handful of exceptional people." Those exceptional people tend to be experts on a subject who love to talk. Such people can convince dozens of others of their opinions. An excellent sales strategy, then, would be to find those few critical people, persuade them of the value of your product, and leave it to them to convince others. It's a compelling idea, but does it really work? Social network theorists Duncan J. Watts of Columbia University and Peter Sheridan Dodds of the University of Vermont in Burlington decided to put the notion to a test. What they found is a disappointment for "viral marketers" who specialize in selling products by influencing influential people.

WHEN colleges and universities finally decide to make full use of the Internet, most professors will lose their jobs. Seems to be saying the only thing preventing his job loss is the fact that universities don't have the time/money  to invest in online courses. Why do I find his attitude so despicable?

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.

Rather than being an add-on to the existing VoiceThread platform, VoiceThread Universal is a version of VoiceThread designed for compatibility with screen-readers.(4/5/110

KSC Faculty at Institute on Global Learning This summer, a team of Keene State faculty members from all three academic schools will participate in "Shared Futures: General Education for a Global Century," an institute sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities to help faculty integrate global perspectives across the curriculum. The institute will be held in Ellicott City, Md., from July 31 to August 5, and will draw faculty from 32 colleges and universities. During the fall 2011 semester, the core Keene State team will draw in faculty and staff from across campus to implement the goals and strategies developed at the institute. By building a network of educators dedicated to this integrative work, Shared Futures facilitates curricular change and faculty development on campuses nationwide. Through an online social network, the initiative hopes to create new connections between educators and new opportunities for partnership and learning. Keene State faculty members attending the institute include professors Charles Weed (political science), Margaret Henning (health sciences), Patricia Pedroza (women's and gender studies), and Rich Blatchly (chemistry). For more information, contact Prof. Weed at cweed@keene.edu or visit the Shared Futures page.

from news and events

During World War II, the United States government crafted hundreds of different posters to promote military service, the conservation of natural resources, and so on. The Northwestern University Libraries has collected and digitized 338 of these posters for close consideration by the curious public. The majority of the items here were issued between 1941 and 1945, and they can be searched by keyword, issuing agency, description, and artist. First-time visitors may do well to look over the two excellent posters created by the celebrated artist Ben Shahn. Both of these posters capture the drama and the difficulty of this age and they are representative of his fine work. This a remarkable collection and one that will be of great use to art historians and those with a passion for American history

Illustrations to Dickens http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fdickens2 During his life, Joseph Clayton Clarke was known for illustrating the novels of Charles Dickens. Born in 1856, Clarke also designed postcards and cigarette cards. His first illustrations of Dickens' work appeared in 1887 in Fleet Street magazine, and he continued by publishing complete illustration collections in books like "The Characters of Charles Dickens". This digital collection from the University of Oklahoma Libraries brings together 185 of his illustrations from this fine tome. Visitors can read the description of each illustration on the site, and view each item listed by character name. Here visitors will find such Dickens favorites as Clarence Barnacle from Little Dorrit and Martin Chuzzlewit from the novel of the same name

Studying humankind can give us great insight into the complexities of society and culture. However, any research involving human subjects comes with a thorny set of ethical considerations. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Ethics Center has curated this collection of online resources related to ethical dilemmas and situations in anthropology. The materials are divided into four areas: Case Studies, About, Additional Teaching Resources, and Codes of Ethics. The Case Studies area is quite well-developed, containing 20 rigorously vetted case studies from SUNY-Buffalo, the Society for Economic Botany, and the Smithsonian Institution. For those just entering the field, the Codes of Ethics area might be quite useful. It offers up professional codes from organizations like the American Anthropological Association, the American Association of Museums, and the American Folklore Society

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.