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VIB is a life sciences research institute, based in Flanders, Belgium. They perform basic research with a strong focus on translating scientific results into pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. For their fifteenth anniversary, we did the entire event branding, for which we used only chalk and a huge blackboard. For this event we also designed a box with nine books in it. For the books only we made more then 200 large chalk drawings.

Following on from a whole bunch of Augmented Reality posts this week, it seemed fitting to include this, the Parrot Carrot Safari, a very cool digital extension to a new Australian Kids book, in the form of an Augmented Reality iPhone app that lets kids interact and extend book’s content.

The Association of Virtual Worlds has just released the new edition of  The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds listing over 250 virtual worlds and is pleased to offer it free to anyone who is interested in the rapidly growing field of virtual worlds.

Want to write apps for OSX, the iPhone or the iPad? You can learn JavaScript and use a frameworks like PhoneGap or Titanium. Or you can learn the official language of Apple operating systems:  Objective-C. The debate over whether to build mobile apps in JavaScript or Objective-C is beyond the scope of this blog post. But if you want to learn Objective-C, these resources will get you started.

I spoke about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship) a subject which I am learning more about all the time as the movement grows and gains traction. You see, the idea behind open practices is that anyone can gain access for free, at any time and in any place - courses, software, ideas, knowledge, people... OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world.

It's not going to be easy to change a model where knowledge has become a commodity though. Too many powerful people and organisations stand to lose a lot if everything becomes 'free' and open. But things are changing slowly. The publishing houses who once had a strangle hold on academic journals are beginning to lose their grip. Some are having to change their business models. Google Reader and Google Books for example, are giving us all more than a glimpse of the pages of just about every book that has ever been published. And open access journals are opening up knowledge for all without payment. So when a student comes up against a paywall - what will they do? They will go elsewhere of course - to the free versions that are out there on the web.