I was reading one of the week 12 additional resources, PKP School: Becoming a Reviewer http://pkpschool.sfu.ca/becoming-a-reviewer/ and came across the term Predatory Open Access Publishing. I guess no matter what, someone is going to try to make a buck. There is also a site that others have posted here, http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/ that is where Beall's list is housed. Beall's list is a list of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers - a good place to check if you are thinking of writing or reviewing for a journal, if it's on the list do more digging and research on the journal itself before committing to anything. The journal names all sound pretty impressive so you can't tell by name alone.

I've been employing Mr Google to try to help me determine how much OER might be used in post-secondary institutions in Canada and came across this document, which I think might be a slide deck turned into a PDF and without the accompanying script it's a little cryptic. The title is misleading, as it's the view from Western Canada, BC in particular. Most of the main OER initiatives I've been hearing about are in the west, I posted links to the BC Open Textbook initiative and to a particular text previously. This particular document

BC Open Textbooks is an initiative started by the province of British Columbia in Canada. It is open textbooks adapted and created by BC faculty. It's difficult to tell which texts are complete and ready for use as Tony Bates incomplete text that I created another post about appears on the same page with complete texts (eg Chemistry, Biology Geography.) All the texts can be modified through Creative Commons licensing. This project has been creating concern for publishers who stand to loose business in BC and other provinces if the texts get adopted outside of BC. Initially, the project was focused on creating "a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. A second phase was announced in the spring of 2014 to add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training." Initially they looked for existing Creative Commons books they could adapt and they adapted 8 textbooks. From inception to fall 2014, 2244 students have used their open texts for a savings of $353,000 or $157 per student. The aim is to reach 200,000 students annually so they are at .6% and save each $900-$1500/year, still quite a way to go. Wondering how much this project is costing taxpayers, I googled and found this article http://www.ousa.ca/2013/04/24/textbooks/ which claims $600k-$1m/year. So the government has spent $1.2 - $2 million to save students $350k over the past two years. Still a long way to go to break even. In summary, 65 texts published, 45 adoptions, 2244 student users, for a savings of $353k to date. If this was a traditional textbook publishing company, they'd soon be out of business if they weren't already.

This is an open textbook that Tony Bates is writing as part of the BC Open Textbook initiative. The topic is Teaching in the Digital Age. It's interesting as it's a work in progress and Tony has been blogging parts of the book to gain feedback as he is writing it. It's a topic that I am interested in. I do think it could use a substantial amount of copy editing, which it may yet receive, as may inconsistencies jump out at me in the TOC alone. I will be continuing to monitor this one as it develops further into his finished book.

"This book is about learning online with other people. It's title, Teaching Crowds, is deliberately ambiguous: the book is about how to teach crowds, but it is also about how crowds teach.

Perhaps if academics had to tweet their writing, their writing would be better.

Why Academics Stink at Writing http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Academics-Writing-Stinks/148989/

"But the familiarity of bad academic writing raises a puzzle. Why should a profession that trades in words and dedicates itself to the transmission of knowledge so often turn out prose that is turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand?"

Big data is being used to determine suitable candidates for jobs - not even paying attention to your skills but focusing on how you write. The part about your social media profiles fits in nicely with what Alec Couros was saying in module 2. "The days of keeping your personal and professional profiles separate are over," warns Experis's Geoff Smith. "Social media is a great platform for individuals to demonstrate their expertise, experience and enthusiasm for their field of specialism. However, candidates need to be conscious of the online reputation they are building and the data trail they are leaving behind."

So, you need an image for your blog? We've spent some time categorizing our favorite sources for free images and organizing them in such a way as to help you find what you're looking for. Here are the criteria we've examined: Subjects: Does a site focus on specific genres of images, or is it a mass collection of various image types?

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

MIT Research Paper - The pre- and posttesting showed substantial learning: The students had a normalized gain slightly higher than typical values for a traditional course, but significantly lower than typical values for courses using interactive engagement pedagogy. Importantly, both the normalized gain and the IRT analysis of pre- and posttests showed that learning was the same for different cohorts selected on various criteria: level of education, preparation in math and physics, and overall ability in the course. We found a small positive correlation between relative improvement and prior educational attainment. Interactive engagement pedagogy is where students regularly interact in small groups and participate in peer-to-peer learning.

First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, has published 1,397 papers in 220 issues; these papers were written by 1,915 different authors.

I have found some interesting research publications on this site, in particular to MOOCs. Leading Social Science Research Delivered Daily Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by distributing Submitted abstracts and by soliciting abstracts of top quality research papers around the world. We now have hundreds of journals, publishers, and institutions in Partners in Publishing that provide working papers for distribution through SSRN's eLibrary and abstracts for publication in SSRN's electronic journals. The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 563,000 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 465,300 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. The eLibrary also includes the research papers of a number of Fee Based Partner Publications. The Networks encourage readers to communicate directly with authors and other subscribers concerning their own and others' research. To facilitate this we publish detailed author contact information including email addresses for authors of each paper.

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.

Concerns about the decline in personal privacy have long troubled citizens, scholars and politicians. This is a list of recent academic research studies and reports that address issues relating to digital privacy.

Did you see that Khan is now available in French? I received an email from them the other day (below) so it is now available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. With each translation, the number of of people open to learning via Khan is exponentially increased - a quick google search indicates there are:

English speakers - 508 million
Spanish - 500 million
Portuguese - 191 million
French - 136 million

With over a billion Mandarin speakers, I wonder if/when we might hear news of that translation.

We are proud to announce that the entire Khan Academy experience is now available in French at fr.khanacademy.org thanks to the efforts of Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries without Borders).


-------Khan email----------------------
French is our third language beyond English (joining Spanish and Portuguese), bringing Khan Academy even closer to making a world-class education available for anyone, anywhere.

To use Khan Academy in one of these languages, visit your account settings.

Share the news on social media or forward this email to your friends and family!

Worldwide learning network of shared teaching and learning materials made freely available online. Grouped by subject area and grade level

Canada's new anti-spam legislation (CASL) helps protect Canadians while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the global marketplace. On July 1, 2014 Canada's anti-spam law came into effect. I believe it's the strictest in the world. If you email anyone in Canada you need to make sure you comply with this new law. We had to take a number of measures at my company including ceasing all bulk emails until we get our new opt-in database populates; including a footer in all our emails that allows recipients to opt out of receiving emails from us, and company-wide training on CASL and what we need to do to comply. People can be personally liable for violating this law. I'm not sure if the government has any manpower to actually monitor and prosecute any violators but we will see. As a Canadian, I don't think my SPAM had decreased - I actually received more emails to 'opt in' to mailing lists. I have also noticed that almost every message I receive has an unsubscribe option at the bottom, something I've been taking advantage of. I am not sure how this will ultimately affect open knowledge or if it will but it has made me think twice about reaching out to people I don't know over email.

Hi, something that we seem to be are acutely aware of in Canada in the higher education space is personal identifying information being stored on servers located in the US. Information stored on servers located in the USA are subject to American state and federal law.

This limits the use of open technologies and a lot of closed ones as well for many academic institutions due to the inability to manage the consent stipulations - most opt to play it safe and not use something if they cannot guarantee it meets FIPPA as potential fines are quite large. To further complicate, each Canadian province has its own privacy laws, with British Columbia being the strictest right now.

I'm curious if other countries have any national/provincial privacy laws that need to be taken into consideration and how they might be affecting you and your learning.

Here are some links:

Tony Bates - Canadian perspective on privacy
http://www.tonybates.ca/2011/03/25/cloud-based-educational-technology-and-privacy-a-canadian-perspective/

BC FIPPA
http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/LOC/complete/statreg/--%20F%20--/Freedom%20of%20Information%20and%20Protection%20of%20Privacy%20Act%20[RSBC%201996]%20c.%20165/00_Act/96165_03.xml#section30.1

UBC fact sheet on storage of personal information outside of Canada
http://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2014/01/Fact-Sheet-Disclosure-Outside-Canada.pdf

PS - This is my very first Diigo post. I'm working on an ipad - why is the comment box so frustratingly small?