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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

"Back in March I served on a panel along with Liz Gross, Ed Cabellon, and Greg Heiberger at the #sxswEDU conference. Here are some of the highlights: Greg and I talk about our latest research on using Twitter to support students throughout their first year of college. I summarize my recent research on using Facebook in education. Greg explores the future of higher education and how new technologies can be used to effectively improve student success. Liz discusses how to use Facebook to market your institution and programs. Ed explains how to frame productive social media use to administrators. I get snarky about EdTech startups and how they don't communicate with educators."

In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of 'Web 2.0' and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. I will further argue that the current complexity of the digital environment requires us to develop 'schema' or approaches to thinking about how we can best harness the benefits these new technologies confer.

Overview We have devised an interactive curriculum aimed to support teachers of secondary students (approximately ages 13-17). The curriculum helps educate students on topics like: YouTube's policies How to report content on YouTube How to protect their privacy online How to be responsible YouTube community members How to be responsible digital citizens We hope that students and educators gain useful skills and a holistic understanding about responsible digital citizenship, not only on YouTube, but in all online activity.

"Teaching people 'how to' write an essay in Word, or 'how to' use shortcuts in their browser, or 'how to' use hashtags in Twitter is the same as giving them fish, rather than teaching them how to fish."

"Often, the word competency and skill are used interchangeably. While they are related, they are not the same. A competency is a demonstrated ability to perform a particular job or task. A competency includes skills, but also behaviors and the ability to apply those skills in order to perform a job or task. For example, a teacher may know how to use a computer and productivity software (skill), but may not know how to use those skills to increase collaboration and critical thinking in their students (competency)."

"All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty-first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement school-based experiences. This qualitative study examines how high school students from low-income families in the USA use the SNS, MySpace, for identity formation and informal learning. The analysis revealed that SNSs used outside of school allowed students to formulate and explore various dimensions of their identity and demonstrate twenty-first century skills; however, students did not perceive a connection between their online activities and learning in classrooms. We discuss how learning with such technologies might be incorporated into the students overall learning ecology to reduce educational inequities and how current institutionalized approaches might shift to accommodate such change."

"The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work "open access": digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. In this talk, Peter Suber - Director of the Harvard Open Access Project - shares insights from his new concise introduction to open access - what open access is and isn't, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. This event includes questions and responses from Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more."

"Social media and online games have the potential to convey 21st century skills that aren't necessarily part of school curricula - things like time management, leadership, teamwork and creative problem solving that will prepare teens for success in college and beyond. Making the transition between a highly structured environment in high school to a self-driven, unstructured environment in college can prove a huge challenge for many kids. Educators spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix this problem. The solution doesn't lie solely with games, but a lot of the psychology that motivates teens to play games holds potential. We need to figure out how to tap in."

"As learning technologies are now integral to most higher education student learning experiences, universities need to make strategic choices about what technologies to adopt and how to best support and develop the use of these technologies, particularly in a climate of limited resources. Information from students is therefore a valuable contribution when determining institutional goals, building infrastructure and improving the quality of student learning. This paper draws on a survey of student experiences and expectations of technology across three Australian universities. Analysis of text responses from 7,000 students provides insight into ways that institutional learning technologies and academic-led technologies are influencing the student experience. This paper also discusses how the three universities have used this information to develop strategic initiatives, and identifies a need for new strategies to support academic-led use of the available tools."

"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."

"If you want to find out why people might become engaged in OER and Open educational practices (OEP) then you might like to look at the Motivations section. If you are interested in looking at the range of models and approaches adopted for OER Release then the Models page may be useful for you. If you want to know about the impact of the HEFCE funding then we have an Impact section. We have drawn together some critical factors to support OEP for those that want some tips on how to go about this themselves. We have a section that highlights tensions and challenges around OEP and the OER journeys section provides an interesting look at the wider context and how the HEFCE-funded initiatives fit into that. We also offer recommendations. If you contributed to our surveys, polls and interviews then we have a series of supplementary appendices and you can look at out methodology and evidence pages - all available from the main report page http://bit.ly/HEFCEoerReview. We have also produced a summary briefing paper."

Have you ever wondered how to download and share digital content legally? How do you let people know that you want them to reuse your own work? Creative Commons licences can help you do both. We'll show you how. To find out more about Creative Commons in New Zealand visit us at

"Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically.  DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment.  As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs."

"The purpose of this post is to provide a concrete description of how curriculum mapping of a Moodle course might work.", i.e., "Map how well the activities, resources and assessment within their Moodle course aligns with a set of outcomes." Gives the example of graduate attributes.

Keynote presentation delivered to Instituto Cervantes, Providence, Rhode Island.Social network technologies are reforming the way we communicate with each other inside and outside our learning environments. In this presentation, Stephen Downes offers an inside look at these technologies, how they work, what they can do, and where they will likely lead the future of learning online. Downes will first outline some well-known technologies such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, describing how they are used and outlining how they manage online communication in general. [Slides] [Audio]

"Being connected changes learning. When those connections are global, the experience of knowledge development is dramatically altered as well. Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process in order to answer critical questions: "How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? What is the future of learning? What role with educators play in this future? What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous? ... (The result is) a MOOC with each week being facilitated by an innovative thinker, researcher, and scholar. Over 30 of them. From 11 different countries."

"Adding audio instructions or commentary helps you meet the needs of auditory learners, and often adds interest to the content. Schiefelbein said she often creates an audio recording of housekeeping tasks, such as deadline reminders, as well as to review what was covered the previous session. She also uses the Wimba Voice Board to create an audio-based discussion board which students use to discuss topics and reply to posts."

YouTube doesn't have to be a place where viewers passively watch video. Free annotation tools allow content creators to provide interactive opportunities to engage content. The resulting video can be used as part of a flipped classroom model or to time-shift any kind of instruction.This video tutorial shows you exactly how to create buttons that can be placed on your video to jump forwards and backwards within the timeline.

Two Potential Futures Our forecast suggests that the learning ecosystem is going to diversify, and indeed has already started to do so. At the American Alliance of Museums' convening on the future of education Glimpses of the Future of Education By Katherine Prince, Senior Director, Strategic Foresight, KnowledgeWorks A detail of a KnowledgeWorks infographic on the future of learning. For the complete infographic go to knowledgeworks. org/strategic-foresight. 1 ® Glimpses of Future Educationin September, I had the pleasure of sharing two plausible scenarios for how the future may take shape. We could find ourselves living in: * a vibrant learning grid in which all of us who care about learning create a flexible and radically personalized learning ecosystem that meets the needs of all learners, or * a fractured landscape in which only those whose families have the time, money and resources to customize or supplement their learning journeys have access to learning that adapts to and meets their needs.