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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.

open educational resources and open scholarship (a form of open educational practice)

If you have ever entertained that seemingly laughable thought of installing anti-virus software on your mobile phone, you are not alone.

A few months ago, Kaspersky Labs discovered two Trojan-SMS malware that masqueraded as media player apps for Android devices. Once installed, the malware can send premium SMSes costing US$6 ($7.70) each without the user's knowledge.

the money is still on computers, and cyber criminals follow the trail of money. The increasing number of people using smartphones is a factor, but not a big one yet. There are some banking services on mobile platforms, but the majority of consumers still use computers to access banking services

opened

will be open in

refer to synopses

In the schools, too, there is no reward for helping others (indeed, it is heavily penalized). Suppose educational achievement was measured at least partially according to how much (and how well) you helped others. The value of the achievement would increase if the person is a stranger (and conversely, decrease to zero if it's just a small clique helping each other) and would be in proportion to the timeliness and utility of the assistance (both of which can be measured).

Suppose instead students were rewarded for cooperation. Not collaboration; this is just the school-level emulation of the creation of cliques and corporations. Cooperation, which is a common and ad hoc creation of interactions and exchanges for mutual value.  Cooperative behaviours include exchanges of goods and services, agreement on open standards and protocols, sharing of resources in common (and open) pools, and similar behaviours. Imagine receiving academic credit for contributing well-received resources into open source repositories, whether as software, art, photography, or educational resources. Imagine receiving credit for long-lasting additions to Wikipedia or similar online resources (we would have to fix Wikipedia, as it is now run by a gang of thugs known as 'Wikipedia editors'). We can have wide-ranging and nuanced evaluations of such contributions, not simple grades, but something based on how the content contributed is used and reused across the net (this would have the interesting result that your assessment could continue to go up over time).

There is, again, no reason why public service cannot be incorporated into individual assessment. Adding value to fire and police services by means of monitoring and reporting (not the piece-work model of something like CrimeStoppers, but actual prevention), supporting environment by counting birds, sampling water, servicing sports events by acting as a timer or umpire - all these can add to a person's assessment. I'm not thinking of the simple sort of tasks grade school students can perform. Indeed, a person hoping to attain a higher level qualification would need to contribute to the public good in a substantial and tangible way. Offering open online courses (that are well-subscribed and positively reviewed by the community) should be a requirement for any graduate-level recognition. The PhD used to be about offering a unique research contribution to the field; now it's about paying tuition and being exploited as a TA. These three things - helping others, being cooperative, contributing to the public good - are obviously not easy to assess. To be sure, it's far easier to ask students simple questions and grade the number of correct responses. But assessing students in this way, far from measuring putative 'content knowledge', is really an exercise in counting without any real interest in what is being counted. It acts as an invitation to cheat, as it places self-interest ahead of the values it is actually trying to measure.

Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true.

Flash is a closed system.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009

The change will allow instructors to publish and share their courses — syllabi, handouts, and so on — under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).

This will mean that, for the first time, content in Blackboard will be available to those who aren’t registered for a course — learners not enrolled, learners not on campus. Professors will be able to share their material to Facebook and Twitter.

Blackboard also says that it’s revising its policies so that institutions that do open up their course materials this way don’t incur any additional licensing costs when people access the materials, even via webinars and the like. That means non-traditional, non-enrolled, non-revenue generating students will be able to access the material as “guests” without forcing schools to pay more.

Find What You Actually Want to Learn About First things first, you need to figure out what you're actually interested in.

Figure Out How You Learn Best Full sizeWe all learn a little differently, and while we're fans of learning by doing, you can't always do that with everything.

Learn By Doing Whenever Possible Full sizeIn most cases you're going to learn best by doing. That means practicing programming by actually making a program or learning a new language by speaking it. If you're having trouble getting over the learning hump and sticking with it, you might simply need to provide better context for the process.

In terms of technology, the report predicts greater use of open source technologies, mobile and smart devices, e-books, Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS).

"Open source is making a real impact in the public sector with many universities, schools and colleges moving their LMS to an open source one. They don't see the point in being tied to a costly bespoke platform supported by one supplier.

hopes to see greater collaboration amongst the eLearning industry after attending the launch of the report at the European eLearning Summit in Sheffield.

Etherpad is currently being used in Libya, Egypt and various other places of conflict to rewrite constitutions and policies. Etherpad Lite’s “portableness” and simplicity to deploy make it a perfect choice for these types of environments where it is not an option to rely on third party services to ensure internet connectivity/data privacy/protection.

"CK-12 basically looked at STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] and broke it down into the 5,000 fundamental concepts, and they mapped them all together," Chakrapani says. "It's not about creating a textbook and every three years putting out a new edition so you can capture more revenue. It's about thinking how a student learns."

"And then you go back at the end of year with teachers, see what students struggle on, and revise and improve the book. Each year, the text gets better."

Free educational resources -- like a university course on Coursera, for example -- may be available for students to use at no cost, but students cannot reuse, remix, or repurpose that course content however they'd like. By contrast open-source materials like CK-12's materials are not only free, but can also be freely repurposed in any way a student or teacher sees fit.