Group items tagged

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

Mendeley Desktop organizes your research paper collection and citations. It automatically extracts references from documents, generates bibliographies, and is freely available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Mendeley Web lets you access your research paper library from anywhere, share documents in closed groups, and collaborate on research projects online. It connects you to like-minded academics and puts the latest research trend statistics at your fingertips.

Mendeley Desktop organizes your research paper collection and citations. It automatically extracts references from documents, generates bibliographies, and is freely available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Mendeley Web lets you access your research paper library from anywhere, share documents in closed groups, and collaborate on research projects online. It connects you to like-minded academics and puts the latest research trend statistics at your fingertips.

Lisa Lane with a response to Audrey Watters post on the closed LMS.

Audrey Watters arguing that the closed LMS is a hindrance to learning.

Clint on misogyny on the web and the massive problem it is through the case of Audrey Watters closing comments at Hack Education.

Good list of alternative feedback approaches.

Taking a stand for open access. A researcher posts about their decision to not post in a closed journal.

Minor infringements in OER platforms could close the whole system down.

"Howard Rheingold offers a glimpse of the future of high-end online learning in which motivated self-learners collaborate via a variety of social media to create, deliver, and learn an agreed curriculum: a mutant variety of pedagogy that more closely resembles a peer-agogy."

For Ref (Google) Force Chrome to fully kill a session when a user signs out or closes their browser i.e. don't run in background or save data to a users profile.Only for Apps domains and set at admin level as a policy. Needs Sync to be set too to be effective.

This article is worth reading. An interesting thought piece (two actually) on the move away from the open web to closed systems running across the internet that control the devices we use, the delivery mechanisms and the content we consume (read Apple).

"A universally frustrating experience for undergraduates is the struggle to determine the prerequisites they need to graduate in their chosen fields. But help is close at hand."

Imperial College threaten to stop subscribing to Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell journals unless subscription fees are reduced.

This document outlines a proposal for a new Software Sustainability Maturity Model (SSMM), which can be used to formally evaluate both open and closed source software with respect to its sustainability. The model provides a means of estimating the risks associated with adopting a given solution. It is useful for those procuring software solutions for implementation and/or customisation, as well as for reuse in new software products. It is also useful for project leaders and developers, as it enables them to identify areas of concern, with respect to sustainability, within their projects.

"Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation. For more information, download the Introduction to Our Space [pdf], FAQ [pdf], and Road Map [pdf]. All curricular units and lessons are free and available for download below. The full casebook [pdf - 133MB] can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of the page." Critiqued by @downes for not addressing the issue properly "This is "a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments." The content divides into five major subject areas: participation, identity, privacy, credibility, and authorship and ownership. I'm not sure these are the top five things I would list when thinking of ethical dimensions of new media environments. While it's useful that there is a section on flamers, lurkers and mentors I think there should be something about hate, racism and bulling. And while a section on credibility is a good idea, it should be based on the principles of reason and inference, not outrageously bad definitions like this: "Networking-the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information." And this: "Collective intelligence-evidence that participants in knowledge communities pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal." Wow, those are just wrong. Maybe I need to review this and criticize it more closely."

Web2Rights is a JISC project, funded from 1st November 2007 - 31st March 2009, whose purpose was initially to develop practical, pragmatic and relevant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and other legal issues toolkits to support the projects funded within the JISC Users and Innovation Programme (U&I) in their engagement with next generation technologies.  The Web2Rights team, comprised of lawyers, consultants, learning technologists and pedagogic experts focussed upon the need to address cultural and practical obstacles in engaging with Web2.0, IPR and other legal issues. Working in close collaboration with JISC Legal and focussing upon the specific issues raised by the U&I community of users, they have created a number of resources to address a variety of legal issues which might arise.

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

What happened in the meeting? A closing check

Excellent story of the journey to openness and the hugely positive difference it made to this leading photographers business and approach to life.