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Openness proponents contend that distance education often isolates students behind password-protected gates. By unlatching those barriers, professors like Mr. Couros are inventing a way of learning online that feels less like a digital copy of face-to-face classes and more like the open, social, connected Web of blogs, wikis, and Twitter. It can expose students to a far broader network than they would encounter discussing their lessons with a small group of graduate students.

What is BigBlueButton ? BigBlueButton is an open source project that is built on over fourteen open source components to create an integrated web conferencing system that runs on mac, unix, or PC computers. In the true sense of open source, we invite you to try out and participate in our project.

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

"an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full "artistic" wonder. Not only that - but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards, as well as folks who love gaming to try and design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way."

"Sintel" is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. With initial funding provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community, it has again proven to be a viable development model for both open 3D technology as for independent animation film. This 15 minute film has been realized in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. In addition to that, several crucial technical and creative targets have been realized online, by developers and artists and teams all over the world.

Open content licensing for educators is a free online workshop designed for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.

Big list of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open CourseWare Resources (OCW). All free!!

Put multiple links into one short link which you can share. Opening the link opens all the links into separate browser windows.

No longer limited to freehand logos, graphic design is a booming field. From website design, to publications, presentations, and much more, graphic designers are in demand in just about every field imaginable.With so much demand, graphic designers can get caught up on the supply end. Don't lose out on an opportunity or job because you aren't equipped to handle it Use the below 70 awesome open source tools for graphic designers to get a leg up, expand your resume, and much more. Best of all, the price to put all of them to use is completely free.

An overview of ImmersED estate - a Open SImulator sim for educators to learn about the use of virtual worlds in education by actively engaging in learning exercises there. open and available for testing - please come by and kick the tyres! Built in OpenSim, hosted on ReacitonGrid.

This teacher's kids want to use pop music they love for a project.  Their teacher wants them to do so legally and with respect, so he's trying to contact the artist directly.  To get her attention (the artist is Taylor Swift), he's asking all his Twitter PLN to re-tweet his open letter to Taylor Swift to her Twitter account, so her mentions column will be filled with the RT of his letter.  If you Tweet, please copy and paste this into Twitter:RT @thenerdyteacher An Open Letter to @TaylorSwift13 - http://bit.ly/gV6uaH

Free and open-source software is good for you and good for the world. This is the best free Mac software that we know of.

If you're an Australian teacher then you should definitely have this page in your Bookmarks/Favorites. As they say: "Through its Copyright Advisory Group, the Australian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has published a Creative Commons information pack online, a bundle of eight documents that distills the basics of CC licensing and the philosophy behind it. This pack is a great resource for educators and students, and we encourage you to use it in your schools by adapting it however you like. The info pack includes concise and concrete answers to simple questions, like: What is Creative Commons? How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Material How to Attribute Creative Commons Licensed Material and more. Find all documents at their Smartcopying website, "The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE." All of them are licensed CC BY, the most effective and open license for open educational resources."

discussion of open learning, connectivism, and personal learning environments, including the sharing of some of what we experienced in massive open online courses

Possibly the most dangerous place to spend too much time is inside your comfort zone. Only when we take a risk and step away from the safety of the familiar and the ways we have always done things do we expose ourselves to new ideas and become open to the possibility of learning and discovery. The trouble is having the confidence to take that first step, to embrace discomfort and become open to the risks that come with trying something new.

The Open Font Library is an online resource which hosts, organizes and offers quality professional typographic fonts for download and use

Digital Culture & Education (DCE) is an international inter-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal. This interactive, open-access web-published journal is for those interested in digital culture and education. The journal is devoted to analysing the impact of digital culture on identity, education, art, society, culture and narrative within social, political, economic, cultural and historical contexts.