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3rd part of Barriers to Change by Tony Bates

"The development of the information society and the widespreaddiffusion of information technology give rise to new opportunities for learning. At the same time, they challenge established views and practices regarding how teaching and learning should be organised and carried out. Higher educational institutions have been using the Internet and other digital technologies to develop and distribute education for several years. Yet, until recently, much of the learning materials were locked up behind passwords within proprietary systems, unreachable for outsiders. The open educational resource (OER) movement aims to break down such barriers and to encourage and enable freely sharing content."

A development framework for building iPhone (or mobile?) apps for education. This is a review which notes it is a low barrier to entry, is simple (this is a plus and minus point) and mentions adding RSS, lectures, images, links, event lists and YouTube to your schools app.

Seems like this is a paid for app rather than something we build ourselves. They build and then we can use their CMS to add / change content. Aimed at marketing so maybe we should pass it to them.

via Downes: Brian Lamb's presentation is smooth, polished and informed. Culture, he says, is something that historically we have participated in by creating and not merely consuming. And we are returning to those days, where we can create content for ourselves that we used to pay for and merely consume. Indeed, for any content company, placing a barrier - such as price - between the content and readers is a fatal mistake. Culture is something that is ours - it's not simply the creation of the best, it's an act that is a part of being there (like the million people who have photographed Barack Obama). And when each person records his or her own presence, we can create something larger than life, something real. Knowing that you are making a significant contribution to public discourse is motivation to create and contribute. There's this and a lot more in this presentation.

Article on the difficulty of getting academics to use lecture recording - so much so that Purdue has set up automatic recording!