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"Thanks to Android, Linux is well represented on tablets, but there hasn't been a free software tablet, without any proprietary bits, until now. The Spark, which will be based on MeeGo and use KDE Plasma for its interface, will be the first free software tablet."

Audrey Waters questions what free means when it's 'really free' and realises that if it's too good to be true then it's too good to be true!

In a move that could shake the e-learning industry, Pearson today unveiled a new learning management system that colleges will be able to use for free, without having to pay any of the licensing or maintenance costs normally associated with the technology. Pearson's new platform, called OpenClass, is only in beta phase.  By providing complimentary customer support and cloud-based hosting, OpenClass purports to underprice even the nominally free open-source platforms that recently have been gaining ground in the LMS market. "I think that the announcement really marks another, and important, nail in the coffin of the proprietary last-generation learning management system," says Lev Gonick, CIO of Case Western Reserve University.

My Sound FX is your source for professionally recorded and edited, studio quality, free sound effects. These files may be used, without restriction, for both private and commercial use.

A thread by Tim Hunt describing work at the OU developing tools to auto mark free text responses in quizzes. Has links to try out two approaches. In Moodle.org so will need (free) log-in to read.

Expensive chemistry books (and others!) now free online by a pioneer of open content.

Interesting post on the price of 'free' and the meaning for educational conferences

Interesting tool I came across after following a discussion about people changing their CC licence and then end users struggling to prove that they had fairly used under an earlier license. "mageStamper is a free tool for keeping dated, independently verified copies of license conditions associated with creative commons images. You can use it to safeguard your use of free images from license changes, or to prove you are the original image creator."

"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."

Why do Intro to Sociology @Waikato & pay for the privillege when you can do it for free from Princeton? http://t.co/Dzhxeruw #waitalk #yam

"We believe that a free and open Internet can bring about a better world. To keep the Internet free and open, we call on communities, industries and countries to recognize these principles. We believe that they will help to bring about more creativity, more innovation and more open societies."

Free, online LMS which seems to be used at some of the Ivy league American universities if the home page is to be believed... Includes discussions, calendar, library (for your resources) and a gradebook.

NY Times article about the University of the People, which offers degress for free. Volunteer lecturers - which makes me wonder how sustainable this is... Also only offers degrees in computing and business administration

LOOC = Little Open Online Course free courses with capped small numbers of enrolments

Education and the role of funding. Schools being forced to teach value in marriage by private and 'free' funding.

(Note - free ebook version) - At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines. For decades, governments have tightened the grip of intellectual property law at the bidding of information industries; but recently, groups have emerged around the world to challenge this wave of enclosure with a new counter-politics of "access to knowledge" or "A2K." They include software programmers who took to the streets to defeat software patents in Europe, AIDS activists who forced multinational pharmaceutical companies to permit copies of their medicines to be sold in poor countries, subsistence farmers defending their rights to food security or access to agricultural biotechnology, and college students who created a new "free culture" movement to defend the digital commons. Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property maps this emerging field of activism as a series of historical moments, strategies, and concepts. It gathers some of the most important thinkers and advocates in the field to make the stakes and strategies at play in this new domain visible and the terms of intellectual property law intelligible in their political implications around the world. A Creative Commons edition of this work will be freely available online.

We envision communications infrastructure that is owned and operated cooperatively, by the whole of humanity, rather than by corporations and states.We are using the power of peer-to-peer technologies to create a global network which is immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown.We promote freedoms, support innovations and advocate technologies that enhance and enable digital self-determination.

Stanford has unveiled a free online open source platform for running MOOCs called Class2Go.

"OpenStax College offers students free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers. Adopt a book today for a turnkey classroom solution or modify it to suit your teaching approach. free online and low-cost in print, OpenStax College books are built for today's student budgets."

"Today I want to share some free or inexpensive ways to work with the audio in your elearning courses."