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By: Matthew LeBar Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are often described as the future of education - or at least a significant part of it. But there may be a significant problem with them: a very small proportion of students who start them actually finish. This poses a serious threat to their legitimacy.

This brings up the question of what it means to complete something? And why is it so important to us? And why 'productivity', a thing somebody defined ages ago, is so important to our humanity? .. or is it anymore?

Because I am taking a MOOC course but also on campus at University, I receive credits and grades where this is definitely one of the motivations for me to contribute. Although I agree that completion of the course is not essential to attain knowledge, what about our motivations to learn? And what about our incentives? Not saying MOOCs are not interesting nor helpful, I like MOOCs, but I think people like recognition too. I think to just receive the "statement of accomplishment" is not enough to prove efforts made within the course. However MOOCs are not as well developed at this stage, there definitely will be adjustments in the near future.

David Wiley - In this piece I briefly explore the damage done to the idea of "open" by MOOCs, advocate for a return to a strengthened idea of "open," and describe an open education infrastructure on which the future of educational innovation depends. MOOCs: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back for Open Education

This TEDtalk might not answer directly to open knowledge topics so far, however it speaks to some of the issues raised in this week's lectures: pop-culture and technology can and should be used to engage people into educational & social activities (especially evident in Dr Jenkins' talk). Here, Ali Carr-Chellman talks about issues boys face in school - basically, they just don't belong there, as teaching is usually brought about from a woman's point of view (most teachers are female) and boys are told to be girls. Eventually, they feel they just won't succeed and take up other things - e.g. video games. The speaker advocates that video games could and should be used as a valuable tool to reach boys. Providing more resources, games could become THE ultimate way to deliver important messages and to teach effectively. (This also speaks to the point in Clarke's lecture, that games can be made into powerful scientific and educational plarforms.)

This has certainly been the case with my 15 year-old, who through Minecraft has created extensive networks for exchanging ideas and interests that have turned into research projects for his debate class.

Get involved. Please go to the website for more details: "TASK We are launching a print magazine to educate teachers, school administrators and students. The magazine will provide information and training tips for these sets of people to improve their capacity in teaching and managing schools. And improve life skills for students. We are in need of experienced writers and educationalists to contribute original contents to the magazine. Each article should not be more than 250 words and every information needed about the organization will be provided. "

Hi Maria, I like your tag "get involved". I hope others will use it as they post opportunities for our group.

Open Educational Resources‬‏ - بحث Google‏

From this article: Many organizations wanting to create educational materials find out during negotiations with authors that most of them are ultimately willing to openly license their materials. However this often requires overcoming their personal fears about OERs. Many authors are unfamiliar with the concept of an open license and open educational resources. Even if they hear about them, Saylor.org found that "chief concerns included the loss of control of materials, commercial reproduction, and loss of traffic/ad revenue" (6). And a chart : Fig. 1. What are most typical arguments you hear against Open Educational Resources? OER community experts survey.

The inflation of education costs around the world is a matter of offer and demand, and it has brought much unwanted consequences that affect the quality of the most demanded resource to come: talent

Why open education matters

LONDON, Sept. 16, 2014 /CNW/ - EF Education First announced that the EF Standard English Test (EFSET), the world's first free standardized English test, will be released on September 30, 2014. The EFSET will also be valuable to schools, companies, and governments, where large-scale testing was previously cost prohibitive. In the coming years, EF will work with institutions that want to adopt the EFSET as a formal English certification test, thereby helping millions of students and employees. This looks interesting, I wonder what kind of adoption rate we will see. It could really be a disruptor.

This collection of blogs, articles, and videos from Edutopia aims to help teachers deploy social media tools in the classroom to engage students in 21st-century learning.

I enjoyed Mimi Ito's piece on learning in the social media space. She spoke about some parents feeling that online activities are hostile to learning. Interesting to think about the generation gap experienced in new media. As a parent/ home educator I am excited by the online opportunities open to my young son.Thank you for this link.

An interesting overview of the challenges that both teachers and students face in the era of participatory culture

By Elisabeth Losh in Information Science and Web 2.0.

Two interesting links extracted from the article: Connected learning http://connectedlearning.tv/ Connected Learning is an educational approach designed for our ever-changing world. It makes learning relevant to all populations, to real life and real work, and to the realities of the digital age, where the demand for learning never stops. http://www.itofisher.com/mito/weblog/2012/03/connected_learning.html

Shule.Info is a project that puts data about Tanzanian schools online, providing information for the overall country, regions, and individual schools. The website is also in both English and Swahili, the language of the majority of Tanzanians. This is a great attempt at making this open data accessible and understandable to the people to who need it. "We all know that education in Tanzania is in a state of crisis. Massive failure rates. Not enough teachers. Not enough books. Poor teaching. And many more problems. So what do you do if you are a parent, brother or sister and want to find a good school? What if you are a council or national government leader and want to track progress? Right now it is very difficult to do so, because data is not easily available. And when you can access data, it is very difficult to understand and use. Open data is in fact relevant to all of us in making beter decisions. It is not just a concept for technical experts. If we knew which medicines were available in our nearest health centres we would save ourselves wasted trips. If we had live traffic updates we could better plan our travel. And if we had data on school performance we would have the chance to make better decisions about our children's education and potentially shape the course of their future differently."

The Declaration shows the importance of Open Educational Resources and gives recommendations to governments and institutions around the globe. In this document, we will briefly give an introduction to OER and reflect on the main recommendations as well as propose implementation actions for governments as well as institutions.

A great introduction to open educational resources, and the importance of making academics more of a part of the creative commons. Some pretty informative slides and messages.

Whether you're doing research for a project, need help with homework, or just want to learn something new, YouTube EDU features some of our most popular educ...

I knew Khan academy, but I did not hear the story and how it was created, not the fiplosophy behind the project. Thank you for sharing, as I learnt how these huge project came from a real, human, day by day activity.

An interesting and helpful resource pack regarding OER in schools. There are guiding documents as well as informative documents explaining OER.

Useful page. Thank you.

A good resource for Distance Education: higher education, postgraduate, professional development. Main languages: Russian, English.