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Although this was published in 2007, the creation of OER is put in an historical context. It's interesting to see the rapid and continual growth of the movement in seven years.

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

Research by the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project thoroughly covers the issues related to copyright and access to learning resources in higher education in 8 African countries, namely Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. For each country, the authors give the background setting, an analysis and critical evaluation of the legal doctrine and inter-relationships, a qualitative assessment and then draw conclusions and make recommendations for improvements to be undertaken to improve the status quo of these challenges. It's acknowledged that much more research is still needed. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

This article take about the barrier of establishing open education globally, including culture challenge, languages, different study methods and so on. He analysis the problems and also try to fix it in his paper

The document consists of two parts; the first part is about Open Educational Resources: the challenges of teaching and learning in the Arab countries. the second part is about Open textbooks and Higher Education in the Arab States

Today, on the one hand we have the Internet that allows access to information worldwide and at any time on the other hand librarians are facing tremendous pressure with the exorbitant price rise of the subscriptions to academic journals and unable to meet their responsibility of providing information. Simultaneously. This has called for the development of new models of information provision to meet user demands. Open Access is one of the models under discussion that has implications for educational, research, legal and economic policy. This handbook is designed to contribute to this debate and provides an interested public with information on Open Access, a subject which, despite its great social importance, has hitherto been mainly discussed by experts. The handbook is the outcome of a workshop that brought together 25 experts coming from German Federal Ministries, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Commission, the academic community,major academic organisations, the publishing sector, and the Open Access community This handbook presents the various views of major stakeholders and covers a wide range of issues relevant to open access.

I found this is quite useful for open access! It kinda of introducing open access in depth. Thanks for sharing!

Adobe has just given us a graphic demonstration of how not to handle security and privacy issues. A hacker acquaintance of mine has tipped me to a huge security and privacy violation on the part of Adobe. That anonymous acquaintance was examining Adobe's DRm for educational purposes when they noticed that Digital Editions 4, the newest version of ...

The Internet is challenging its users privacy, and privacy carries a different meaning in the Digital Age.

It seems internet users might just have to become "comfortable" with software companies now having access to large amounts of information about them…the new normal