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Some of readings in module 2 made me thing of this radio report. It gives an interesting look at gamification in education, focusing on highschool and college levels. While they don't directing talk about open knowledge I think gamification is something important to consider and look at when thinking of alternative forms of education.

A good combination of game and education can definitely inspire more children to learn. So if wen can combine game and education, we may also be able to bring social media (i.e. Facebook, twitter) into our classroom, which could inspire university students to study.

Learning a new language changes your brain network both structurally and functionally, according to Penn State researchers

Social media management with Hootsuite. Manage multiple networks and profiles, great way to use one dashboard to aggregate your feeds and content into one area.

Very interesting examples. Thank you for sharing this. Something I need to learn more about. It seems to be a flexible way to invite groups to share material and create together. It can definitely be used in a global education way I think.

Kay, R., Lauriclla, S. (2011). Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Using Laptop Computers in Higher Education Classrooms: A Formative Analysis. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. 37:1

a. Laptops and mobile devices are ubiquitous in todays classrooms as students are digital natives. Because of decreasing prices of technology over the past few decades, an overwhelming majority of the university students surveyed own a laptop (87%). Because of this quick onset of technological adoption, culture has lagged, in terms of re-defining the social institutions that such mobile and computer technologies affect. According to this analysis, students feel that the use of a laptop helps in aiding studies, is useful for gathering course and supplementary materials and engaging in peer collaboration. Several challenges have been noted: communication based challenges, relating to social media, email and messaging services; and entertainment based challenges, relating to media consumption. These challenges serve as potential sources of distraction for the student using the technology and others. In their findings, 16% of students reported being distracted by pornography during class, on their own or others' computer screens, which ranked higher than computer games, at 1%. The authors conclude that the benefits of laptop use in class outweigh the challenges 2:1. Possibly, if the functionality of student laptops are integrated into course curriculum further, students can benefit from further peer collaboration, increased academic benefit and decreased distractions.

Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. Hola a todos. Hoy me gustaría haceros llegar una aplicación que utilizamos en la Universidad de Málaga para que los alumnos hagan los Portfolios relacionados con la asignatura que estén tratando, incluso permitiendo la relación entre contenidos de distintas asignaturas. Podéis ver la aplicación en la página web: https://mahara.org/ Mahara permite crear, controlar y desarrollar tu propio portfolio electrónico. Permite, asimismo, organizar las páginas que el alumno va creando, organizando su propio portafolio en páginas, permitiéndole crear las páginas que estime necesarias y adaptándolas al público que el alumno decida tener en cada página. En este sentido, le permite elegir qué elementos mostrar, cómo y cuando. Finalmente, y como algo muy positivo y dinámico, permite compartir con la red el contenido que hace el alumno, hacer amistades, participar en los grupos y, finalmente exportar todo el contenido en una página web que, posteriormente, puede ser compartida en Internet. Desde la Universidad de Málaga hacemos uso de esta herramienta y nos sirve como herramienta de evaluación de nuestros alumnos, donde vemos su capacidad de síntesis, comprensión y reflexión sobre las distintas materias que vamos tratando.

Veru useful indeed! I didnt know this. Thanks for sharing!

I think this will be a great add-on on my personal website. I just added it on.

Argues that increasing corporate control is undermining the foundational values of higher education.

Here in Spain we have a similar evolution of higher education; private postgraduate private schools give masters that guarantee the access to top jobposts, but they are not focused on analysis, creativity and critical minds, but on pure business. What you need to be on your future job post is what you learn. Public institutions are still on air, but they are struggling with less and less public resources to survive. So I guess this is not only going on in USA.

Italy is going even worse...i'm an Adjunct Professor for maybe 1000 euro per year ... surviving by scholarships, call center mid term contracts, collaborations where i'm asked to pay for taxes the university should pay, all levels teaching.. I like "Some of the basic principles underlying effective pedagogy, such as small class size, individual attention and the importance of mentoring, are being sacrificed in order to increase head count, limit labor costs and create a one-size-fits-all educational experience." The problem is that universities are to make profits from fees (that's why they hire me instead of employing me) and offer any kind of courses, masters to increase their income! The problem is: how can we expect to increase the quality of learning as far as decisions are taking by political, business, organizational sides instead of scientific and educational ones?

Rheingold puts his thoughts, videos,course syllabi on the skills to be network smart on this site. Here is his introduction: The future of digital culture-yours, mine, and ours-depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives. How you employ a search engine, stream video from your phonecam, or update your Facebook status matters to you and everyone, because the ways people use new media in the first years of an emerging communication regime can influence the way those media end up being used and misused for decades to come. Instead of confining my exploration to whether or not Google is making us stupid, Facebook is commoditizing our privacy, or Twitter is chopping our attention into microslices (all good questions), I've been asking myself and others how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and above all mindfully. This book is about what I've learned.

Peter Downes wrote this blog criticizing the Cape Town Declaration. It was very interesting reading in terms of looking at the issues from different perspectives. I did not agree on everything he wrote, but the following paragraph was resonated in my mind as I read it. I DID , however add a word - in parenthesis. "If there is anything that could be thought of as a truism in contemporary education, it is the idea that we are all learners and that we are all teachers. The idea of lifelong learning makes explicit the former idea, and the principles of learner-centered, constructive and inquiry-based learning make explicit the latter. Knowledge - particularly social and public knowledge - is not something that is (only) produced by a hothouse meeting of experts, but rather, is produced through a process of dialogue and conversation".

The fact is someone had to initiate and ask for comments. The door might not have been widened enough as the author comments. It is perhaps time to understand that in as much as we would like to live in an open world, our views will always diverging to a number of directions.

"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.

I've found some of these tools to be helpful in designing interaction online - particularly useful as we discuss collaboration and filtering.

Thanks for sharing. i definitely need to use Vyew.

Buen contenido. También existe un sitio llamado https://www.examtime.com/es/ para compartir y aprender en línea

Young, K. (2004). Internet Addiction: A new Clinical Phenomenon and Its Consequences. American Behavioral Scientist. 48:402

a. Although this is a psychology article, it poses an important concern over the rise of internet addiction in connected populations. This article is relevant to this course, as it relates to the notion of critical consumption; some users are unable to filter information effectively, which should be recognized as a concern. Young states many statistics from educators and researchers discounting internet use in the classroom as it is far too distracting and the loss of productivity (in both students and the workforce) is immense.

Some might argue that this article shows the downside of connected learning and e-resources, however this is not the case. Certain web activities mentioned in the paper such as chat rooms, social media, and video games are not the focus of this course. Open Knowledge deals with the light side of the internet, which is the interconnectivity, the accelerated learning, and the ability to publish ones own content. The internet can definitely be misused, but not every web activity is "junk food". If someone obsessively became a mathematician and ultimately ended up being the best mathematician in the world due to "addiction" people would call him or her a genius. The trick is to filter which content and activities one engages in.

A lot of kids use smartphones or tablet everyday, and they even do not need their parents to tell them how to use these devices, it is like kids have the innate ability to use the technological devices. There are debates on whether touchscreen technology is good or bad for kids. For my personal opinion, touchscreen technology would make them lack communication skill and social skill. However, by providing sound effects, colours and moving objects on the screen, it could get kids' attention and interest to learn something they feel really boring such as math, by this way they could learn faster and understand better. Therefore, touchscreen technology is not totally bad or good for kids, it depends on how parents help kids to balance how much time they could spend on touchscreen technology. It seems the only way for kids, because they are too young to have self control.

"Data connectivity is intrinsic to most of our daily lives. The place which exists in almost every community large or small, rural or urban, is the public library. Ben Lee argues that not only do libraries provide free access to data, but they do so in an environment which is trustworthy and neutral, geared to learning. Access to digital technology increasingly overlaps with access to opportunity and it is important to recognise the role public libraries already play (and have always played) in keeping the gate to knowledge open. "

This recently published book, by a University of British Columbia journalism professor named Alfred Hermida, questions how the new culture of sharing and collaboration-and the pace of change that sharing enables-changes our lives. It's particularly interesting for us because it doesn't back away from the challenges that open access poses for us: how does being both creator and consumer change us? How does blurring the lines between these two change the way we think about the balance between copyright and the public good? Hermida doesn't tackle these last questions directly, but he provides a useful lens for thinking about our changing roles and how open knowledge and sharing need to reflect that. Considering the book's focus on sharing, it's somewhat ironic that it's not open access, but I highly recommend checking it out. It's received significant attention in the Canadian press and is exactly the kind of mainstream attention that can get conversations about open access started.

Not everything can be shared. Aside from the 14 reasons what makes people share knowledge is because they are trust each one with the knowledge that they will share will be beneficial to the receiver of the knowledge or learning. Knowledge is power when shared.

"Every day we face challenges - from the personal, such as the quickest way to get to work, or what we should eat, to global ones like climate change and how to sustainably feed and educate seven billion people on this planet. At Open Knowledge we believe that opening up data - and turning that data into insight - can be crucial to addressing these challenges, and building a society in which is everyone - not just the few - are empowered with the knowledge they need to understand and effect change."

really good! I think this is a very good summary about what we are learning in this course: "We need to create a culture of "open data makers", people able and ready to make apps and insights with open data. We need to connect open data with those who have the best questions and the biggest needs - a healthcare worker in Zambia, the London commuter travelling home - and go beyond the data geeks and the tech savvy to make data be useful to all."

The city of Sao Paulo adopted a "participatory culture" a few months ago. Are there any other cities in the world who`ve done the same?

there's a lot going on there: http://www.artisopensource.net/network/artisopensource/category/projects/ecosystems/

It's good that people make a participatory culture over the cyberspace, it is way beyond the limitations like in a classroom setting. It creates a social connection with one another and can be a life-long learning process.

Michael Eisen is a researcher at UC Berkley and a co-founder of Public Library of Science. He discusses the news that the American Association for the Advancement of Science named Kent Anderson as its new Publisher, who is a critic of the open access movement. The most interesting thing for me was the mention in his blog post as well as in the comments section by another, that it is perhaps a trend for scholarly publications to produce open access journals. A peculiar motive, to perhaps "own" the open movement? It would be interesting to learn more about this trend, motivations behind it, and the implications on how that affects the OA movement.

And then a quick Google search found an announcement that Nature will be fully open access as of 20 October 2014... but still costs $5,200 USD to cover the article processing charges - perhaps Universities should (will) start to pay these costs instead of the high costs of subscriptions to scholarly journals as they continue to open up their access. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/open_access/index.html

Wow--these article publishing charges are ridiculous. I don't know if the scholars whose work gets published in these esteemed journals have budgets that would allow them to cover such fees, but I am sure that I wouldn't be able to get multiple articles covered by grants for my own work in the social sciences. And I'm 99% sure that the public universities I've worked for would not be ponying up that kind of money to cover my publication fees. This seems like yet another way to penalize scholars working in fields that don't get big grants or living in countries that don't have this kind of money to throw around. I prefer the UK's policy of requiring all nationally funded research to be published open access without any publication fees. That's the only way to even the playing field.