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Launch of the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition Creative Commons, U.S. Department of Education, Open Society Institute launch high profile video competition to highlight potential of free educational materials Mountain View, California and Washington, D.C., - March 5, 2012 Today Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute announce the launch of the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources-or "OER"-and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.

Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy

A challenge Can you provide a link to an open educational resource that would be in your view an excellent example of any of the above applications of video? Here are some criteria I will be applying for inclusion: the example is well produced (clear camera work, good presenter, clear audio) it is short and to the point it demonstrates clearly a particular topic or subject and links it to what the student is intended to learn. I have to say that most of the examples I found on the Internet do NOT meet all three of these criteria! The video highlighted at the start of this post does, but then it is produced for the Open University. Can university in-house media departments meet this standard? I believe that some do, but I need examples! Once chosen, I will add the link with an acknowledgement to whoever provides me with the link. In the meantime, I will look for my own examples. My second set of questions is perhaps more of a challenge: This list was developed initially from broadcast television. How well do these functions apply to the use of video on the Internet?  Are there other educational applications of video on the Internet that are not on this list? Let's make this an opportunity for upgrading the extent and the quality of video in online learning.

In particular, the designation of MOOCs as 'democratizing education' really needs to be carefully examined. Presumably, 135,000 learners who wanted to learn about AI were disappointed or unable to follow the Stanford AI course. If this was really about democratizing education, these students should have been accommodated in some way. With regard to connectivist MOOCs, I worry whether they are just preaching to the converted by reinforcing participants' existing knowledge or values, or whether they lead to significant change in learners. They may do or they may not. We need more research on this. Octavo's simple research study, although valuable, just reinforces the need for more thorough research, and we also need more experimentation, with different designs and approaches.

Overview of a program looking at connected learning describing a "gap between the more engaging social learning environments young people encounter outside of school, and the top-down and standardized curriculum that they encounter in most classrooms." It's much more communal and participation-oriented than the approach I take, promoting:  -- "Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in.  -- Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute.  -- Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity."  While I value both creativity and participation, I think it's important to allow that more or less participation are equally valuable. And I don't agree that "shared" practice, culture, and identity is essential. 

Faculty Voice in Online Education: Enhancing Relationships Between Faculty and Students for Learning Success In an online learning environment, what you say is not as important as how you say it. When your "online voice" positively affects the relationship between faculty and learners, student retention in online education is greatly enhanced. Join us on March 31st for a free webinar that will help you identify your online persona and ways to improve it. You'll learn how to apply an active listening model that strengthens relationships between all members of the online learning community and improves the learning experience, overall. Talking points include: Is your language positive or punitive? What color and font size should you use to communicate? How does your persona come through in teaching?

Openness has not been oversold and that increased openness (of content, teaching/learning, analytics, policy, data, and technology) is really the only path forward for reform. Systems can be closed and blackboxed only once they are working well and the context in which they exist is stable. When everything is in a state of flux, we need opportunities for ideas to collide, innovations to be shared, concepts to be rehashed and mashedup, and iterative improvements to occur. Education today - at all levels - faces the challenge of tremendous change and unstettledness. Rigid systems break in periods of flux.

why colleges should experiment with inviting tens of thousands of students to participate in their courses free online.

Free software that creates a folder on your hard drive and automatically syncs the documents in your Google Docs to it.

t's ds106, a digital-storytelling course he teaches with a group of colleagues. His team shunned the learning-management market and built its own virtual classroom by cobbling together free open-source tools. The class blossomed into a "family" of students from five universities. Hundreds more play along online. Mr. Groom said a vendor's learning-software tool could never sustain the community, because most limit access to those with an account at that university.