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"July 31, 2011 By David Glenn Cambridge, Mass. This past April in Switzerland, Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned lecture denouncing publishers' paywalls, which charge fees to read scholarly research, thus blocking most people from access. It was a familiar theme for Mr. Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who is one of the world's most outspoken critics of intellectual-property laws. But in this speech he gave special attention to JSTOR, a not-for-profit journal archive. He cited a tweet from a scholar who called JSTOR "morally offensive" for charging $20 for a six-page 1932 article from the California Historical Society Quarterly. The JSTOR archive is not usually cast as a leading villain by open-access advocates. But Mr. Lessig surely knew in April something that his Swiss audience did not: Aaron Swartz-a friend and former Harvard colleague of Mr. Lessig's-was under investigation for misappropriating more than 4.8 million scholarly papers and other files from JSTOR. On July 19, exactly three months after Mr. Lessig's speech, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that Mr. Swartz had abused computer networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disrupted JSTOR's servers. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison."

A good blog post concerning James Boyle and his talk where the 'central theme was the relationship between where we are today with open science and where international computer networks were in 1992. He likened making the case for open science today with that of people suggesting in 1992 that the networks would benefit from being made freely accessible, freely useable, and based on open standards'.

This New York Times article on the Open Content Alliance is an essential article for librarians and media specialists to read. It is also important for those following the fight for information and control of that information. In this case, the Open Content Alliance wants to make books that they scan available to any search engine while Microsoft and google are aggressively approaching libraries for exclusive access to their content. (which could be rescanned by another later, possibly.) Librarians and media specialists should understand this... when will people approach schools to scan annuals or student produced works? Maybe that is a while off, but for now, be aware that it is probably inevitable.

An overview of the Open Content Alliance versus Google and Microsoft battling to take control of the content housed in libraries.

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators

100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators

"The first International Open Access Week is scheduled to take place October 19-23; it is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research......."

Just received this in my inbox: "WASHINGTON DC (August 25th, 2009) - Curriki, the largest online community for creating and sharing open source K-12 curricula, was asked by the Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) to provide a continuity of learning plan for states, school districts, and individuals as part of a nationwide readiness initiative for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 virus. Curriki's continuity of learning plan includes access to a free and open repository of teaching and learning resources built on an open platform that can be customized for individual states or school districts. Like an iTunes playlist, users of Curriki can create collections of free and open educational resources, along with repositories of other supplemental content. If a teacher prefers one lesson to another, he or she can easily swap content in or out to meet the individual needs of the students. States or school districts can take advantage of customized landing pages designed to provide specific information, news, resources, and links to their education stakeholders. Additionally, Curriki's group function allow members of a district, school, or community to stay connected and privately share resources, communicate and post news and collaborate on projects from any location. " I think that perhaps online learning is about to completely boom largely as a result of the growing pandemic and the need for isolation and ongoing learning. Curriki has things together for this and I'm going to take a look at this for our school.

Great TED-talk about open education and open access to research materials.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Faculty members at Stanford University's School of Education have voted to make scholarly articles available to the public for free, a policy change that the university says makes Stanford's education school the first such school in the nation to join the growing "open access" movement in academia.

Policies from various organizations about their Open Access repository material Archiving Policies.

If your organization is working with Open Access Repositor Material -- check out this website where institutions share their policies and register your own. (from Stephen Downes.)

Collections of open access articles, sources and information organised by topics. Useful for research.

This is the main page for EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education, an open access graduate course from the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. This course is available to both for-credit and not-for-credit students. It features openly available, live, and recorded presentations from notable educators & theorists.

Sciyo.com is a fast-growing open access scientific publisher, enabling barrier-free access to the latest research developments, knowledge and ideas within the field of Science and Technology.

You have until NOvember 26 to nominate for the Edublog awards. There are many who don't care for this awards system because there are many great bloggers, but I think anything that recognizes educational blogging is a good thing. So, nominate away, here is information. Here's the page that tells you how to do this. "The 2012 Edublog Awards are a go! The Edublog Awards is a community based initiative started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media. Working together, we create an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web! How Does It Work? There are 3 parts to the awards: Nominations - NOW through November 26th Voting - TBA The Live Awards Ceremony - TBA"

Grading handwritten answers by students as a feature of a copier? Producing data analytics as a result. IF this works, it will not only sell more copiers, but also make handwritten work more of a commodity. Maybe if a computer can quickly grade the easy stuff, teachers can spend more time assessing project based learning and other work that computers cannot do. This won't help me much - except when I teach binary numbers and memory conversion which do require me to check work (I never do multiple choice.) I could see how math teachers would be thrilled. "Xerox later this year plans to roll out Ignite, a software and web-based service that turns the numerous copiers/scanners/printers it has in schools across the United States into paper-grading machines. Unlike such staples of the educational system as Scantron, which uses special forms where students choose an answer and fill in the corresponding bubble, Ignite will grade work where the answers are written in by the students, such as the numeric answer to a math problem. Ignite takes right and wrong answers and turns them into web-accessible data for teachers with reports that say whether a student or groups of students are consistently having more trouble with certain kinds of math problems. Those reports can be used by teachers to tailor what they're teaching - such as by identifying what group of students needs more help with a certain topic - or given to students so they know where they should focus their studying. It also opens the door to specific tests or homework assignments for specific students becoming more the norm, each tailored to academic strengths and weaknesses."

Free, open access online education magazine. This month's theme is 'wellbeing'. Magazine can also be downloaded as a PDF.

Read the open access magazine online. This month's issue has a 'Learning For All' theme, with articles about special education, inclusion, behaviour management, feedback techniques, and EdTech for your lessons.

Open access online educational magazine. This issue has a 'Educational Research' theme.

Open access educational magazine