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If kids can get the lectures, can get the content delivery and skill modeling as well (or often better) by computer lecture than in person, why do we have use precious class-time for this purpose?  Why do we, in the status quo,  replicate in person in our classrooms what is easily available elsewhere, the content delivery/skill modeling, and then have kids apply their learning to difficult problems at home, without us there to help? Increasingly,  education’s value-add is and will be in the coaching and troubleshooting when students are applying their learning, and in challenging students to apply their thinking to hands-on learning by doing and teaming:  so let’s have them do these things in class, not sit and listen.   We know that collaboration is a critical skill set which can’t be developed easily either on-line or at home alone– let’s have students learn it with us in our classrooms.   Let every classroom be a collaborative problem solving laboratory or studio.

This short article outlines some ideas about an open source, online platform for making books, based on WordPress. My thoughts here come out of our experience building Book Oven

What would you say if I told you that there's a new introductory biology textbook being published that is affordable, lightweight and never goes out of date?

I spent a lot of time talking with and learning from gardeners from many different backgrounds and age groups who would no more hire a landscape designer than I would hire a personal stylist.

I feel even more strongly that many Gen Yers take a holistic approach to gardening and are comfortable reinterpreting the definition of what a garden can be.  For example, their commitment to the environment, their passion for figuring things out for themselves and their tendency to rely on the internet rather than on books

Whether it’s trading in lawn for meadows, ornamentals for edibles or chemicals for compost, the gardening world seems more open to change and innovation than ever before.

The Book of MPub curates research and critical thinking from students in the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University. In doing so, it makes a contribution to a collective discourse on innovative technologies in publishing—epublishing, new business models, and crowd sourcing and social media. The Book of MPub furthers discussion in three formats: blog, ebook and the classic, ever-evocative print form. The experimental process is itself research, and both documentation of the insights gained and the final product are comprehensive resources for the publishing industry at large.

While the attention of many was focused on the annual BookExpo America (BEA) hoopla this week, there were some interesting developments taking place in the digital textbook space.

Davidson uses the insights from these experiments as a lens through which to examine the nature and evolution of attention, noting that the educational system is driven by very rigid expectations of what “attention” is and how it reflects “intelligence,” a system in which students who fail to meet these expectations and pay attention differently are pigeonholed somehow deficient of aberrant, square pegs in round holes. Yet neuroscience is increasingly indicating that our minds pay attention in a myriad different ways, often non-linear and simultaneous, which means that the academy and the workplace will have to evolve in parallel and transcend the 20th-century linear assembly-line model for eduction and work.

Q: What are some of the ways that you've applied ideas and research about attention and learning in your own classroom? A: I rarely lecture anymore. I structure my classes now with each unit led by two students, who are responsible for researching and assigning texts and writing assignments and who then are charged with grading those assignments. The next week, two other students become our peer leaders. Students learn the fine art of giving and receiving feedback and learning from one another. I structure midterms as collaborative “innovation challenges,” an incredibly difficult exercise which is also the best way of intellectually reviewing the course material I’ve ever come up with. In other words, more and more I insist on students’ taking responsibility for their learning and communicating their ideas to the general public using social media.

If you want to learn more, you can find syllabuses and blogs on both the HASTAC and the DMLCentral site. I posted about “This Is Your Brain on the Internet” and “Twenty-First Century Literacies.” I also led a forum on interactive pedagogy in large lecture classes.

As more books and journals become easily accessible online, it’s easy to wonder if brick-and-mortar libraries could go the way of the video store. But research at the university has shown that the more people look to digital resources, the more they consult physical materials as well, according to Judith Nadler, director of the University of Chicago Library.

More than two-thirds of a large group of college students say that tablet computers will change the way students learn, according to survey results released today

Most of the students were not speaking from experience: Only 7 percent of the college students and 4 percent of the high school seniors owned one. Still, 69 percent of the college students said that tablets will transform higher education, and 48 percent said tablets will replace textbooks—at least as we currently understand textbooks—within the next five years.

That attitude may change once they try to study with tablets for an exam. Several pilot projects with tablets have found that students are frustrated with the difficulties in adding notes to digital books

What they're fighting about: The educational video publishers claim that UCLA is violating copyright and breaching its contract by copying DVD's of Shakespeare plays acquired from Ambrose and streaming them online for faculty and students to use in courses. They say UCLA had the right only to lend copies to teachers for in-class use or to show the DVD's in the library itself.

The university did not "secure the right to stream our programs from a library server to any class and any student whenever it chooses," said Allen Dohra, president of the trade group, in a written statement. UCLA says copyright law permits streaming.

Much is also at stake for publishers, who say UCLA's practice could be catastrophic for the educational-video business. They fear it will cut off new markets for distributors like Ambrose, which sells its own streaming service.

Flat World Knowledge, the largest publisher of free and open college textbooks for students worldwide, today announced the release of a new platform called MIYO (Make It Your Own) (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/miyo). The fully-automated system gives professors greater control over textbook content, and the ability, with one click, to make their modified book available to students free online or in multiple, low-cost digital and print formats.

The new system uses familiar drag-and-drop and click features that allow instructors to easily move or delete chapters and sections; upload Word and PDF documents; add notes and exercises; insert video and hyperlinks; edit sentences; and incorporate other content that is free to reuse under a Creative Commons open license.