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Researchers can find and read papers online, rather than having to manually track down print copies.  Machines  (computers) can index the papers and extract the details (titles,  keywords etc.) in order to alert scientists to relevant material.  In addition, computers can extract factual data and meaning by "mining" the content, opening  up the possibility that machines could be used to make connections (and  even scientific discoveries) that might otherwise remain invisible to  researchers. However,  it is not generally possible today for computers to mine the content in papers due to constraints imposed by publishers.  While Open Access (OA) is improving the ability for researchers to read papers (by removing  access barriers), still only around 20% of scholarly papers are OA. The  remainder are locked  behind paywalls. As per the vast majority of subscription contracts, Subscribers may read paywalled papers, but they may not mine them. Content  mining is the way that modern technology locates digital information. Because digitized scientific information comes from hundreds of  thousands of different sources in today's globally connected scientific  community [2] and because current data sets can be measured in  terabytes,[1] it is often no longer possible to simply read a scholarly  summary in order to make scientifically significant use of such  information.[3]  A researcher must be able to copy information,  recombine it with other data and otherwise "re-use" it so as to produce  truly helpful results.  Not only is it a deductive tool to analyze  research data, it is how search engines operate to allow discovery of content. To prevent mining is therefore to force scientists into blind  alleys and silos where only limited knowledge is accessible.  Science  does not progress if it cannot incorporate the most recent findings and  move forward from there.

A final nail in the open set-top box coffin could come soon. The FCC currently prohibits cable providers from encrypting basic cable channels in order to preserve compatibility with third-party devices. But these third-party devices have become increasingly rare, so the FCC is considering dropping the encryption ban altogether.

We build tools and communities to promote open knowledge around the world.

Used by millions for research, teaching, and learning. With more than a thousand academic journals and over 1 million images, letters, and other primary sources, JSTOR is one of the world's most trusted sources for academic content. JSTOR connects libraries, researchers, teachers, and students around the world with vital scholarly content in more than 50 disciplines.

In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans - one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world - Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities. News, data and conversation about education in New York. Join us on Facebook » Follow us on Twitter » Harvard's involvement follows M.I.T.'s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project to be known as MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but will carry no credit

Earlier today, Harvard and MIT announced edX, an open-source technology platform designed to deliver online courses. Now, anyone from around the world with an Internet connection can have access to, what MIT President Susan Hockfield called, "one of the best kept secrets of Cambridge and the entire higher education community" - the "richness of collaborations" between Harvard and MIT.

MIT and Harvard, two neighboring universities which often compete for top students, are now collaborating on free online courseware technology. Starting next fall, both schools will offer free courses using a platform based on MIT's previously announced MITx technology.  MITx enables the creation of online classes that knit together video segments, embedded quizzes, interactive feedback, online labs and student-ranked Q&A.

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, Missouri farmer Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step he's taking to write instruction sets for an entire self-sustaining farm operation with equipment costs of under $10,000.

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals. Harvard's annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.

The world of digital textbooks is more than heating up. It's on fire. Amazon just launched a digital rental option for textbooks. Companies like Chegg are becoming academic hubs that can improve your education experience through more than just textbook rentals. But all of the options to use digital textbooks have cost money. And teachers as well as students simply don't have much. Until now. Boundless just launched the public beta version of its brand new site. What is Boundless? It's a way to easily turn all of the open source information that exists in the world into a simple easy-to-use digital textbook. And it's free. This is one of the most exciting announcements that came across my inbox over the past few weeks. Boundless is shaping up to truly disrupt the digital textbook industry and the newly launched tools are robust enough to do just that. But enough hyperbole and hot air, here's what you should know:

My slidedeck for a keynote presentation given at PELeCON 2012 in Plymouth UK, on April 19, 2012

"If you're interested in human development, the opportunity set has never been more interesting. Search in the browser marked the beginning of anywhere/anytime learning opportunities, but the official beginning of the new era was a decade ago with the Wikipedia launch. As noted in the Lessons from SkillShare blog, anywhere, anytime learning sites have been popping up at an increasing rate. You can learn about rate of change and differential calculus on Khan Academy. Academic Earth was an early source of college knowledge. Udemy let anyone teach anything. Saylor.org and P2PU.org made it all free. Anya Kamenetz outlined the expanded post-sec landscape in DIY U last year. This year, massively open online courses (MOOC) from Coursera, Udacity, and Edx are all the rage. The aggregate impact is a dramatic increase in access to great content and great teachers."

Mission drives agencies, and the need to deliver better services to customers at a lower cost-whether an agency is supporting the warfighter overseas, a teacher seeking classroom resources or a family figuring out how to pay for college-is pushing every level of government to look for new solutions. Today's amazing mix of cloud computing, ever-smarter mobile devices, and collaboration tools is changing the consumer landscape1 and bleeding into government as both an opportunity and a challenge. New expectations require the Federal Government to be ready to deliver and receive digital information2 and services3 anytime, anywhere and on any device. It must do so safely, securely, and with fewer resources. To build for the future, the Federal Government needs a Digital Strategy that embraces the opportunity to innovate more with less, and enables entrepreneurs to better leverage government data to improve the quality of services to the American people. Early mobile adopters in government-like the early web adopters-are beginning to experiment in pursuit of innovation. Some have created products that leverage the unique capabilities of mobile devices. Others have launched programs and strategies and brought personal devices into the workplace. Absent coordination, however, the work is being done in isolated, programmatic silos within agencies. Building for the future requires us to think beyond programmatic lines. To keep up with the pace of change in technology, we need to securely architect our systems for interoperability and openness from conception. We need to have common standards and more rapidly share the lessons learned by early adopters. We need to produce better content and data, and present it through multiple channels in a program and device-agnostic4 way. We need to adopt a coordinated approach to ensure privacy and security in a digital age. These imperatives are not new, but many of the solutions are. We can use modern tools and

« 65% des écoliers d'aujourd'hui pratiqueront, une fois diplômés, des métiers qui n'ont même pas encore été inventés », estime le Département d'Etat américain du Travail. D'où la nécessité d'essayer d'anticiper la manière dont les technologies peuvent évoluer, et comment nous pourrons les intégrer dans nos écoles. A quelles innovations peut-on s'attendre en matière de technologie de l'éducation pour les prochaines décennies ? Cette visualisation est le fruit d'une collaboration entre les experts de l'éducation de TFE Research et du planneur stratégique Michell Zappa. L'éducation est à un carrefour particulier dans la société, expliquent-ils : d'un côté, elle a la responsabilité d'anticiper les compétences dont nous aurons besoin pour le futur. D'un autre côté, elle doit nous préparer à un monde de plus en plus complexe - et donc, imprévisible. Pourtant, les méthodologies de l'éducation ne peuvent être formalisées qu'après que les pratiques aient été définies... Le paradoxe est plus frappant encore en matière de technologie, où le rythme rapide du changement est la seule constante.

Les coûts des abonnements aux revues scientifiques sont prohibitifs. Ceci n'est pas moralement acceptables lorsque les recherches sont financées par des fonds publics et que les auteurs ainsi que les pairs qui revoient les articles ne sont pas payés. Les organismes subventionnaires, les chercheurs et le public exigent  de plus en plus des contenus ouverts: les moyens offerts par le web pour collaborer à la réalisation de contenus et à leur diffusion justifient de moins en moins l'usage d'entreprises privées. 

Pardon the hyperbole, but this may be one of the biggest partnerships in education since chalk met the chalkboard. MIT has officially joined forces with Khan Academy to launch a new set of educational videos. In this new partnership, MIT students will be making videos, not the professors. It's a truly inspiring time in education when you see a school ask its own students to become the teachers. It's like the ultimate flipped classroom. It's a flipped school. "Our students have responded with all the energy and enthusiasm we knew they would. We worked with them to design the program, and the results are fantastic." -Ian A. Waitz, Dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.