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It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

Its all about how to use what

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.

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

OER Commons is a dynamic digital content hub, offering a suite of OER implementation supports.

A well developed website for Open educational resources

This is an interesting post. Thank you for your sharing. As mentioned in this post, new research shows that electronic readers promoted more deep reading and less active learning. However, from my own experience, I feel like electronic reading leads to less deep reading but more active leaning. For me, I will never choose to read electronically if I have the physical version of the book because reading from digital devices, such as e-readers, tablets and smartphones, make me feel it's not like reading, it's more like looking through some online content or some one else blog posts. When read electronic books, it easy for me to skip around, and lose focus, attention or patience. I always need to read a second time for fully understanding a paragraph, when I read electronically. Also, with out the convenient of highlighting and making notes, reading electronic books prevent me from better understanding the content and thinking deeply. However, reading electronically, especially reading online might promote active learning because in some online reading website or softwares, there's interactive section on the side where readers of the book or article post their own opinions or form a discussion. This promote people to read, think and learn actively and collaboratively.

"electronic readers promoted more deep reading and less active learning" Some of my observations. I believe the future is for electronic reading only.

For me, maybe I am old school, it depends on the mood. I am wired towards both the print and electronic books. I cannot wait to have a printed book in my hand this Christmas holiday. The smell of the new selection of books and the paging through is a wonderful experience.

"This small pilot study suggests that the article creation process may more closely mirror the traditional writer/editor process than it does the "crowd as writer-editor". It also raises questions about potential changes in how people view the content creation process."

The pan-European data regulator group Article 29 has issued new opinion on how websites and advertisers can track users and the permissions they require. The new opinion dictates that "device fingerprinting" - a process of silently collecting information about a user - requires the same level of consent as cookies that are used to track users across the internet.

It is impossible to ban all tracking, just like if I am using Chrome, it is normal for me to think that I am tracked by Google. If I am using Safari, then it is normal for me to think I am tracked by Safari. I believe that there is not anything wrong with people collecting my "non-identifying material", since it is only data. But if it is more like personal information, it should be banned. Also, there are a lot of sites when we ban cookies, the photos or some content will not appear. So no cookies means no content. In the end would not there be no effect on how people uses the websites? If we do not accept it, we could not use the site, the only difference is we are informed about it, and we should assume every site or software once it is connected to the internet, it implies some kind of tracking.

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.

This is a really great read for bloggers, freelancers and creative professionals alike. The article outlines a comprehensive criteria for engaging online content providing tips and tricks for publishing purposeful, personal and promotional content.

The Canadian Government promoting how sharing private content of someone is illegal. Having the internet and our social media tools, it is so easy to share and connect with people. It is great in many ways, like education, social life, work etc. but when it comes to personal life, maybe it is not as great. People like to share because it is easy and fast, there are no physical restrictions. There are consequences but because there are too many people doing it, it is hard to target everyone. With this digital age coming so quickly, maybe rules, regulations, and education are still trying to catch up. If I have not taken this course, I would not have known that sharing a screenshot on Whatsapp with friends is actually illegal. The point is when everyone is doing it now, and we were not deeply educated on this topic beforehand, how is this going to stop? When sharing screenshots has became a trend, how is it possible to stop?

I think this video does an excellent job of not victim-blaming, or casting any moral judgement. I think it's easy to say "don't take pictures", etc., but approaching it as a strictly legal matter may be a better route to take. Speaking of the general open access movement, I think some valuable lessons could be taken from this for raising awareness about appropriate uses of open access information. It reminds me of the Disney compilation copyright video we watched at the beginning of the course - using some very literal imagery to get a point across, and explaining what the law is, not what people are doing with it.

I think this PSA does a really good job of communicating a 'touchy' subject in a tasteful manner. The message is simple and very relatable for adolescents. Cyberbullying is a tremendous issue among youth in Canada and I am really glad to see the government taking preventative initiatives.

November 2014 An in-depth look at how BuzzFeed is leading the industry's trends in social, mobile, and video. The shift from search to social isn't just in progress: it's already here. According to Shareaholic, social is now the #1 source of referral traffic to content on the web

Really neat article, loved the info graphics! BuzzFeed did a great job of illustrating the shift from desktop to mobile media stressing the significance of creating shareable mobile content.

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.

My last week in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City was markedly different from my week in Hanoi in ways I did not expect. A spirit of entrepreneurship and optimism about the future of education in Vietnam has been palpable. I met with several entrepreneurs in Ho Chi Minh City.

There is a lot of talk about education technology and open education resources having a big impact on learners in developing countries. This article offers a brief glimpse into education entrepreneurship in Vietnam. Vietnam Open Education Resources (VOER) has supposedly pushed Vietnam to have a more developed OER system than any other country other than the US. I would be curious to see how Thiem would measure this claim. Platforms built around OER have potential to lower costs of materials, but they rely heavily on an active base of creators and self-publishers. There may always be an incentive for creators of especially good content to offer it for a price. In addition, just as a movie benefits from the guidance of an experienced director, a textbook or etextbook or any other large-format education content benefits substantially from an experienced curator who could charge for his/her work. I don't see this going away any time soon.

This article discusses the importance of the MOOC may have to spread open and quality content in variety of contexts. At the same time are showing the different models of organization and design that can present, depending on the objectives and strategies proposed from different perspectives, with s...

LibGuides. PRC SPCH 1311 1315 Jessen: Speech Communication and Public Speaking. CRAP Detection.

We are not aware of all the mistaken information that is online and that's why crap detection is so important.

I strongly disagree with their list of 'crap' detecting guidelines. "Credentials"? "Reputable"? Fact or Fiction"? You gotta be kidding me. Most credentialed people I know are lost in the sea of institutionalized learning, and with it comes their arrogance that they know better - they don't. Those known as reputable are not walking the bleeding edge of knowledge. And fact/fiction is turning inside out as we begin to see more and more historical fictional information is now shown to be based in fact. ... LOL! ... (Not that I have an emotional attachment to this issue.) ;) ;)

Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in immediate open-access journals. The policy doesn't kick in until January 2017; until then, grantees can publish in subscription-based journals as long as their paper is freely available within 12 months.

This serves as a significant catalyst to change the mentality of both the researcher and the funder. The Gates Foundation is a leading organization in resolving world health issues. This action demonstrates their drive and desire toward their cause; and will hopefully it will start a trend amongst authors and other research funding NGOS.

As mentioned in class discussions, this is the only reasonable response. Bill and Melinda have put their time forth into creating charities, and attempting to control content which was given from charitable grants is lunacy. It is comforting to see the Gates foundation scrapping the 6-12 month window of restriction. WIth this said that said, this draws interesting parallels with journals that receive government grants due to the fact that the privately sold resource is already being funded by the tax payers.

Well-written article on open sources and open learning. It discusses what the future holds and how the next step must be to converge technology, ideas/content and resources even further.

Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. More than 400 million CC-licensed works are now available on the Internet, varying from music, photos, research findings to entire courseware. Creative Commons provides the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. Millions of creators world over are taking advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity. The book The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators, some such famous creators are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization or the nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content to the rest of the world.

Always useful to have a definition to work with. "A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike."

The Open definition, formerly Open knowledge definition, mentioned by Wiley in "Defining 'Open'"

Great website. Everybody must read it and share it.