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OpenGeoportal.org is a new site that brings together geospatial professionals, developers, metadata specialists, and librarians to coordinate the Open Geoportal (OGP) project. The Open Geoportal is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application to rapidly discover, preview, and retrieve geospatial data from multiple repositories.

A number of universities are partnering on developing geospatial metadata and a tool that can scrape datasets from various sources to display (and overlay!) on a single, federated interface.

ScienceOpen, is a next generation Open Access platform that builds on the premise that scholarly publishing is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a dialogue to move research forward. It combines over 1 million articles from all areas of modern science, the humanities and social sciences with collaborative pre-publication workspaces, immediate publication and post-publication peer-review.

"What solutions might we find within our community to solve the problem of rising textbook prices? In our latest issue brief, Nancy Maron, Ithaka S+R's Program Director for Sustainability and Scholarly Communications, looks at recent trends in textbook publishing and suggests that collaborations between university presses and academic libraries might yield a new breed of textbook more aligned to the needs of faculty and students."

"By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

This article is fantastic, and speaks to just about everything I'm passionate about as an aspiring academic librarian. I'm somewhat worried about how smaller universities-my chosen workplace-will adapt to these newer models of scholarly communication and publication, and generally with how the academic conversation is changing. These exciting developments in what the university means have the potential to widen the already extensive divide between smaller and larger schools. I know the challenges section at the end talks a little bit about convincing decision makers to fund these projects, but has anyone read anything about how these changes can be made specifically by smaller or poorly funded universities?

In a region where transparency is often scarce, a new initiative is working to foster an open and more collaborative society in the Middle East. OpenMENA is a project that aims at opening access to information, knowledge and data and creating an atmosphere of openness and transparency in the Arab World.

Me ha parecido que este tema tiene mucha relación con el vídeo Native science and Western science: Possibilities for a powerful collaboration cuando habla de la teoría de la relatividad de Einstein y del concepto del tiempo como punto de referencia occidental.

The structure of MOOCs is continually evolving. Presently the major trend is the transferal of knowledge from the Western English speaking world, but this is changing. Collaboration and other countries' participation in creating this form of education are developing. I believe this is essential for specific regional needs to be satisfied and understood. It is technology and open education collaborating for the benefit of all, not only those with Western privileges. It's not education for education's sake, but brings in a more entrepreneurial approach - not only in Africa where one initiative has started. This article clearly illustrates these new developments in the MOOC arena, providing examples of projects underway and future plans for MOOC 2.0.

Es interesante notar que la propuesta educativa del MOOC sigue transformándose y expandiéndose. También me resulta desafiante que el terreno de aplicación del MOOC 2.0 sea el Asia (naturalmente, por la proporción de jóvenes) y no México. Esta es una interesante área de oportunidad.

I think MOOC will be much more effective as tool for learning exchanges between countries, especially developing stakeholder, rather than replacing high education.

Descubre, Fundación Andaluza para la divulgación de la Innovación y el Conocimiento I would like to introduce the Spanish Fundación Descubre (http://fundaciondescubre.es/) and, inside it, the network called "Divulga red" (http://divulgared.es/), thought to connect people (professional and amateur researchers and citizens in general), communicate and collaborate among them. DivulgaRed let people reveal research topics and the value of the science in different fields, sharing ideas with other researchers and group of people, all with the basis of a collaborative work. I had the pleasure of giving two talks in high-schools telling about optical communications and novelties that people can have in a near future. In a very good atmosphere, students and their own teachers asked me questions and I can enjoy a very nice atmosphere making my knowledge in this topic public. Even more, teachers in the high school were later discussing with me about possibilities in Education, and both they and me built some experiments to be made by students in the high school during the semester. So, as a concluding remark, every body who wants to share a new idea, or to obtain a new point of view, or simply who wants to introduce or simply to learn about a new topic is welcome in Fundación Descubre and DivulgaRed project. Regards. Dr. Antonio Jurado-Navas

"Peeragogy is a collection of techniques for collaborative learning and collaborative work. By learning how to "work smart" together, we hope to leave the world in a better state than it was when we arrived. Indeed, humans have always learned from each other. But for a long time - until the advent of the Web and widespread access to digital media - schools have had an effective monopoly on the business of learning. Now, with access to open educational resources and free or inexpensive communication platforms, groups of people can learn together outside as well as inside formal institutions. All of this prompted us to reconsider the meaning of "peer learning."- A great tool for student publishers to use.

300,000+ contributors, 2 years of collaboration, 3 key recommendations. Check out Our Digital Future: a crowdsourced report on sharing and collaborating in the 21st century.

Muy buena publicación, Julia, con una gran propuesta visual y todo. Los grandes editores aumentan los precios y la comunidad virtual busca la manera de superar ese obstáculo puesto al conocimiento.

Inter-varsity collaboration

Article about how a resource such as twitter can drive classroom learning going forward.

This is an area I'd like to tune up for myself and learning communities that I work with. Twitter's potential seems huge and not yet well utilized (in my networks) for closing the gap between sharing information and building relational solutions that move insight into action.

The reason I really like using Twitter for education is that it fits so well with constructivism. Like other social media, Twitter blurs the line between content creators and consumers, making interactions inherently collaborative; and more than that, the short character limit ensures that these interactions remain a dialogue rather than long-form conversations that frustrate sharing. I think suggestions like this article makes are also important beyond Twitter, because-let's be honest-it won't remain the dominant form of social media forever. Like we've talked about throughout the course, we need to be sure that technology doesn't drive change and that we don't simply adopt technologies because of their vogue; but whatever tools we end up using absolutely need to become more open and collaborative, or we risk losing student engagement and, ultimately, students themselves.

Perhaps a bit narrow, but relevant to me. The article touches upon some aspects of privacy and openness bothering librarians. On the one hand people themselves are sharing lots of information about their reading lists, reading habits and favorites. On the other hand, libraries are trying to preserve patrons' privacy and protect their privacy from unwanted eyes.

I enjoyed this reading very much, thanks! Not to spoil the end, but it is a good comment that in order to protect the patrons' privacy, they must do their part too. If they use machines that requires to log in to Amazon, for example (I don't own a Kindle so I don't know it that is true), well, libraries cannot protect their privacy on what they are reading. Which reinforce the idea of the role that libraries should play in educating people about online privacy. the example of combining books that were borrowed by the same person that allows to identify the patron is very powerful and shows how something that looks innocent like a list of borrowed books can be harmful.

I think this article really demonstrates how the meaning of libraries is constantly in flux, and in recent decades has been evolving quicker than it has in perhaps the past couple of centuries. But the library has always been evolving, first mostly accessible to academics and eventually democratizing its mission by bringing literacy to the masses with public libraries. Now we are evolving to decide how open and social the patron habits should be. I think there is a way that libraries can adapt to this change and incorporate ways for patron data to inform the collection and recommendations, but also give patrons the option of being completely private, perhaps similar to an "incognito" browser window. Ultimately, the library should take privacy seriously and give patrons options that do not deceive. Thanks for sharing!

Free access to 3 articles: The Unfolding of the Knowledge Commons pp. 13-24(12) Author: Hess, Charlotte Free Content From Lobsters to Universities: The Making of the Knowledge Commons pp. 25-42(18) Author: Caffentzis, C. George Open Access Scientific Publishing and the Developing World pp. 43-69(27) Author: Contreras, Jorge

Hi Raúl. Thanks for sharing these free resources. Which one do you like best? Which new insight did you gain?

I think Elinor Ostrom's approach to commons pool resources (used by Hess, for example) is very useful not only for understand the case of natural resources as commons (the tragedy of the commons to which it was originally applied), but to matters more close to this course, as knowledge. The approach is useful because it complicates the original perspective on commons. Originally (Elinor Ostrom) her perspective considered only group boundaries clearly defined (very small groups, peasants or indigenous); rules governing the use of collective goods well matched to local needs and conditions; cases where most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules; the right of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities; monitoring mechanisms by community & graduated sanctions. With the new commons (surprisingly, not only knowledge but roads, budgets, radio spectrum; medical commons, atmospheric commons and even silence as commons), new questions rises on the evolution or building new types of commons with no pre-existing rules and norms; increasingly complex; with size, communities, incentives often unknown; extremely dynamic; reactions to threats of enclosure; heterogeneous community; new forms of collaboration and collective action; and global in many cases. I think is a perspective that can help a lot in the case of knowledge and new forms of learning.

More than just playing and making, be able to reflect after creating something new is what makes this new mode of learning different. One step further would then be "open to critiques", then learn from both peers and master. Seemly Brown also discussed a new "networked identity": based on what one has created and what others have then built on it. This is the idea of building new things from other existing things, but give credit to where credit is due. Provide one's creation or product openly so that others can remix/build something new based on this product. This would be how an ideal knowledge environment would grow and sustain.

A really like the sequence of events he mentioned at the beginning: Create, Reflect, Share. It is so simple yet can result in so much production! And of course, it all starts with imagination :)

Great video! It will be/ is becoming the new mode of learning. We collaborate to create an active knowledge environment. It's definitely a mode of open learning, which can benefit all of us.