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Education, and in particular higher education, has seen rapid change as learning institutions have had to adapt to the opportunities provided by the Internet to move more of their teaching online1 and to become more flexible in how they operate. It might be tempting to think that such a period of change would lead to a time of consolidation and agreement about approaches and models of operation that suit the 21st century. New technologies continue to appear,2 however, and the changes in attitude indicated by the integration of online activities and social approaches within our lives are accelerating rather than slowing down. How should institutions react to these changes? One part of the answer seems to be to embrace some of the philosophy of the Internet3 and reevaluate how to approach the relationship between those providing education and those seeking to learn. Routes to self-improvement that have no financial links between those providing resources and those using them are becoming more common,4 and the motivation for engaging with formal education as a way to gain recognition of learning is starting to seem less clear.5 What is becoming clear across all business sectors is that maintaining a closed approach leads to missing out on ways to connect with people and locks organizations into less innovative approaches.6 Higher education needs to prepare itself to exist in a more open future, either by accepting that current modes of operation will increasingly provide only one version of education or by embracing openness and the implications for change entailed. In this article we look at what happens when a more open approach to learning is adopted at an institutional level. There has been a gradual increase in universities opening up the content that they provide to their learners. Drawing on the model of open-source software, where explicit permission to freely use and modify code has developed a software industry that rivals commercial approaches, a proposed

This aims to be a comprehensive list of links to Open Source Flash projects, both those hosted on OSFlash and elsewhere. Note: This list does not include tools that are not open source.

This aims to be a comprehensive list of links to Open Source Flash projects, both those hosted on OSFlash and elsewhere. Note: This list does not include tools that are not open source.

Interview with Ray Henderson and Lou Pugliese about Blackboard buying its way into open source.

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available to all people a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual workspaces for research and education. This 3D multimedia wiki technology makes it easy to create deeply collaborative and hyperlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems. By using a peer-based messaging protocol to reduce reliance on server infrastructures for support of basic in world interactions across many participants, Open Cobalt makes it possible for people hyperlink their virtual worlds via 3D portals to form a large distributed network of interconnected collaboration spaces. It also makes it possible for schools and other organizations to freely set up their own networks of public and private 3D virtual workspaces that feature integrated web browsing, voice chat, text chat, and access to remote desktop applications and services."

Hey guys. Just watched a live session online at Cisco w the developers of this system, still in development, but interesting differentiators vs 2Life, e.g. peer-to-peer, nested worlds, oh and its open-source. Thought yaz might be interested in tracking it.

"(Iceland) wants to take a number of government departments open source. According to project leader Tryggvi Björgvinsson, the migration project will involve the three biggest public institutions in Iceland: all of the ministries, the city of Reykjavik and the National Hospital. "These are setting a good migration example", he says."

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development

"R is an open source statistical programming language"

Scott Wilson reports on an open source initiative to develop web app stores for universities and other communities.

Audrey Watters on 'that' LMS and the sellout by Moodlerooms and Netspot.

Feldstein on the commerce and sustainability of open source LMS.

Linux article on a contentious keynote where Bruce Perens argues that the Open Source momenent has failed itself

"For this list, we've collected [open source] educational apps from a variety of categories that can replace popular commercial software."

"...it's encouraging to see that enterprising hardware hackers are building DIY, open source mobile devices that could potentially replace those tightly-controlled eReaders and mobile media and Internet devices that we clutch so tightly."

There's open and there's mot quite so open - an age of openwashing is upon us.

"open source, open hardware, open community" (via @malckiwi)

Info about a new open source academic publishing house looking to be scholarly and multimedia friendly.

Using the Kaltura video extension for Moodle, teachers can upload and manage rich-media content, such as full lectures in an online course; students can then post video comments, ask questions and create a face-to-face discussion recorded directly from their webcam or other sources.

I guess you WCEL folks knew about this? Do eGressive do any LMS related work?... Catalyst IT has taken over fellow open source developer, Christchurch-based Egressive. Egressive will formally become Catalyst's South Island branch from the end of this month (November). The takeover is friendly, says Egressive director Dave Lane.

Seven essential qualities of open source

Open source help for schools. Includes a software directory which has some great stuff in it.