OKMOOC

"If you were only reading the popular press you would think that higher education is experiencing a sea change."

These are some cool 'motivational' videos about open education - certainly a valuable resource when talking about the subject. The attached link has the three best ones (I have looked ahead & the third place winner is actually included in module 7), but this playlist (sorry, could not find one in English, but the videos are in English anyway) has a few more: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgmAVOv3Lv3H1q20GUUg9h2koK6hPq4hk (playlist from Virtual educational library from Lithuania).

It is well known that the rules that allow for certain educational uses of copyrighted works under certain conditions without permission of the rights' owners vary greatly between countries. But how different are those rules? And how difficult is to access those differences? Can a teacher with no legal background determine alone whether a certain...

Two weeks ago, News Corp Australia's Miranda Devine published Wendy Bacon and comrades lay into Sharri Markson on Twitter in defence of The Australian's media section editor Sharri Markson, who had been criticised for a column she wrote about the dangers of mixing activism and journalism.

I totally agree from the point of view of this article related to learning and being a Journalism teacher. Just great!

A short video explains some important terms about citizen science.

I would like to encourage everyone that takes the OpenKnowledge course to contribute their top five favourite websites that can give us more information on open learning and information sharing and/or people, collectives and websites that are already doing it! This is a Library open to all which we can use now and in the future to search for the resources we need.

Hello, Teresa, As the amount of information taken from this course, as well as from resources related to it and taken from the web is simply overwelming, I decided to create a blog with all these resources. Some are from the course, others from different internet resources, all related to open learning and knowledge. I give you the adress here: learninglovers.wordpress.com Sorry for not compleating your document, but I am still in module 3 and I have recorded more than 300 resources, so it would take me for a little while to do so... Hope it's useful for you!

Interesting paper on utilizing citizen science for digitizing natural history collection data. It is nice to get the perspective of how these programs are constructed.

Open Access repositories promote the widespread dissemination of scientific and scholarly production. Researchers and teachers publish free on line digital assets for claiming their activity and for sharing research results with other researchers. In particular universities, research centres, libraries and, for limited subsets of their collections, museums, administrative archives and other cultural institutions are promoting open access. In the future, a considerable section of scholarly, academic and cultural institutions memory will be formed by born-digital assets, stored in open access archives. Their digital collections will have an ever growing relevance in making up the scientific and information heritage of the next generations. In order to ensure that these objects will survive and continue to be cited, scholarly and academic communities should be committed to the long term preservation of their repositories.

Beware of impostors: Research has shown that 'citizen journalism' is no replacement for the real thing. Photo: Michael Fitzjames "Citizen journalism is an oxymoron," says Rakhal Ebeli, managing director of Melbourne-based news bureau Newsmodo. "I mean, how can someone who is not a journalist be a journalist?" I am adding this not that I am in agreement but its an example of negativity towards this area.

I think that this article does a good job of discussing some of the "darker" aspects of citizen journalism. It distinguishes how citizen journalism often deals with trying to change public opinion, whereas traditional journalism, in theory at least, aims to be objective and truth-based. While it is a large stretch to call traditional journalism "truth-based," there are typically certain measures in place to promote accuracy, such as fact checking, review, etc. I like how this article supports the professional integrity and need for trained, educated journalist, comparing "citizen journalism" to "citizen-pharmacy and crowd-sourced obstetrics." While there is certainly value in IndyMedia and citizen journalism, the flip side is that information distributed in this manner is not by any means guaranteed to be accurate or fair.

I am a professional journalist (Bachelor and master degree in Journalism) and I can tell you that a journalist that works for a media is not truth-based, accurated or with professional integrity. A professional journalist is an employee in a company with economical, policital and social interests supported by the content that is being published. I have the content of my articles changed from my managers in order to "match" the diary interests. And what was finally published was far from being truth (then I denied to put my name in the article, but it was still published). So citizen journalism might include emotions, prejudices and non contrasted impressions from citizens, but are still free and natural. I am totally towards citizen journalism.

Varios razones para proponer el texto: es una visión crítica de los medios sociales (que vale la pena repasar, aunque no se esté de acuerdo necesariamente con todas las premisas); los vincula con el entorno democrático y de poder, y creo que aporta al texto que nos propusieron como lectura del módulo 3, http://fuchs.uti.at/570/, Against Henry Jenkins. Otra ventaja es que está en español.

No he logrado abrir el documento. Me dice que está "corrupto" y que no se puede abrir. Debe de ser cosa de los tiempos que corren...

"The Macaulay Library is the world's largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings. Our mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history, to facilitate the ability of others to collect and preserve such recordings, and to actively promote the use of these recordings for diverse purposes spanning scientific research, education, conservation, and the arts." A great example of what citizen science can build!

Academy free resources in Arabic in various fields and disciplines

Open Educational Resources: Paris Declaration ( in arabic)

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

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

The Participatory Museum is a practical guide to working with community members and visitors to make cultural institutions more dynamic, relevant, essential places. It was written by me, Nina Simon. I'm an exhibit designer, museum consultant, and the author of the Museum 2.0 blog. The book is available for purchase, perusal, and discussion.

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.

This looks really exciting as an open tool for storing and sharing info without internet! 

Open Educational Resources‬‏ - بحث Google‏

OpenEd13 is here! The registration desk opens at 7:00am Wednesday morning, with the opening keynote starting at 9am sharp. See http://openeducation2013.sched.org/ for the complete conference program! We're not live streaming OpenEd13, but all sessions are being recorded and will be posted with 12 hours of their conclusion.