OER Resources

Comment by Tim Vollmer, Manager of Policy and Data for Creative Commons: "...a handy, human-readable reference guide for academic authors, publishers looking into supporting Open Access, and policy makers and funders adopting open policies that require Open Access to research that is funded through the public purse... focuses primarily on describing the spectrum of Open Access policies for journals. An increasingly important and related area is the sharing of data associated with the research process. Open data have the potential to facilitate enhanced scientific collaboration and reproducibility, but it is not yet settled, from both a legal and technical perspective, how this wealth of data that leads to the creation of scholarly work will be shared. And current research suggests an approach whereby articles are licensed under an open license (preferably CC-BY), while data associated with the article are dedicated to the public domain using a tool such as the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. In this way, researchers clearly communicate-in a comprehensive manner-the rights and permissions available to users for both the text and the data." Read more at http://blogs.plos.org/blog/2012/10/01/tim-vollmer-of-creative-commons-on-howopenisit/

Contradicts the Fitch Report (http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/finch/) and AHA response (http://blog.historians.org/publications/1734/aha-statement-on-scholarly-journal-publishing) re inequities for the pay-for-publishing strategies now trending: "According to the 2011 Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP), the APC is usually paid by the author's funding agency (59%) or employer (24%), not by authors out of pocket (12%)"

a table of contents: 1. Three major OA announcements from the UK on the same day 2. Some recent history as context for these announcements 3. Basics of the new RCUK policy 4. Basics of the Finch recommendations 5. General agreement between the RCUK policy and Finch recommendations 6. Appreciation of the large-scale shift to OA in the UK 7. Some consequences for journals and authors 8. Responding to publisher fears of green OA 9. Objections and recommendations 10. Announcements from Europe the day after the UK announcements

9 week free, open and online course designed for higher ed community but may also be of interest to secondary educators or home schoolers. Expecting people to dedicate 3-10 hrs a week starting January 10 and running through March 13, 2013.

A terrific checklist for anyone looking to "build" a course: 1. Plan for 30 minutes 2. Develop content without technology (clarify goals, assumptions about students, objectives, assessments, learning outcome artifacts, sequencing, validation) 3. Implement your content using technology (inc prep to evaluate the efficacy of your course) 4. Pilot with your target audience

Open field notes for a book to be written for Johns Hopkins Univ Press on trends in education, inc. MOOCs. One post is entitled: "the real disruption isn't online courses, it's their business model" George Siemens, Bonnie Stewart, and Dave Cormier have been contracted to write for Johns Hopkins University Press, and they expect the book to be published in mid-2013. They started the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs), together with Stephen Downes, in 2008.

Mike James urges programmers to adapt gaming techniques to allow the regular-Joe academic expert to include a simulation quickly and easily into a learning experience (instead of videotaping them as they present it via words or pre-produced visuals)

The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences. It contains these parts: - a description of the MOOC, what it did, and what was learned - a description of the element of MOOC theory learned in the offering of the course - practical tools that can be used to develop that aspect of a MOOC - practical tips on how to be successful Contribute to this Book You are invited to contribute. If you participated in a MOOC, add a paragraph describing your experience (you can sign your name to it, so we know it's a personal story). If you know of resources or can add information about an element of MOOC theory, add to or edit the text that already exists. If you know of tools, provide a link to the tool, a short description, and your assessment of the tool. If you have a tip, add the tip. In order to participate, please email or message your contact details, and we'll you to the list of people who can edit pages. Send your request to stephen@downes.ca

Sean Michael Morris sez "Coursera is silly" - same-old, same-old beast not far away from the correspondence course of the early 20th century or the educational TV of the 1960s

interview with Stephen Downes and George Siemens

OEP guide (how to use their maturity model to implement Open Educational Practices in your own institution); submit case to OEP Clearinghouse for best practices; OPAL Awards recognizing OER achievements.

interesting points re video of prof working out the problem as demo (vs. slide presented with problem already worked out) and issue of SlideSpeech vs. video transcriptions for cost

infographic re big initiatives looks great

Resources of interest to the Open Learning Network project - curated by OLnet Team

In this technological age a plagiarism checker is essential for protecting your written work. A plagiarism checker benefits teachers, students, website owners and anyone else interested in protecting their writing. Our service guarantees that anything you write can be thoroughly checked by our plagiarism software to insure that your texts are unique.

Great idea!

South Africa - teaching portal, learning portal, community portal