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There is Smoker, 44, in his Guilford High School classroom more than a year ago, flailing his arms, short-hopping across the classroom, then pushing against a wall. He is explaining how molecules move, but the only sound in this YouTube video is instrumental music.

Experiences such as Smoker's are behind a bill that the state's largest teachers' union is lobbying for at the state Capitol. The legislation, under consideration by the General Assembly's education committee, would create a task force to study the impact of cellphone cameras and video-recording devices in the classroom.

State law already allows local school boards to ban or restrict cellphones at school — and many of them do —

Good open content is a vital part of creating a vital open education apparatus… Content is just one piece of the open education mosaic that is worth a lot less on its own than in concert with practices, context, artifacts.

Creating and sharing content is certainly not the sexiest part of the open education movement. But the open education movement is going nowhere fast without open content. And while infrastructure / content work generally doesn’t excite anyone, the results of innovation in the infrastructure space do excite people. What would you say if I told you that “fiber to the curb” internet service was going to be available at your house/apt in January!”? Probably the same thing you would say if I told you that “content complete, interactive courses - including assessments with feedback - will be available from BYU’s Open Learning pilot in January!”

Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.5

In a traditional Cartesian educational system, students may spend years learning about a subject; only after amassing sufficient (explicit) knowledge are they expected to start acquiring the (tacit) knowledge or practice of how to be an active practitioner/professional in a field.9 But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field. This encourages the practice of what John Dewey called “productive inquiry”—that is, the process of seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.

In the fall of 2004, Wiley taught a graduate seminar, “Understanding Online Interaction.” He describes what happened when his students were required to share their coursework publicly:

If we want to improve learning ~today~, we have to meet learners where they are ~today~. And today and for the foreseeable future the overwhelming majority of learners will be going to schools and universities where their teachers will adopt textbooks based on things like the name recognition of the author(s), the quality of the textbook, supporting instructional materials like test item banks and PPT notes, and the availability (and marketing!) of review copies.

having said that, there are some additional, very practical benefits of an open textbook for the faculty member who has to make the adoption decision. For example, when the license and the technology allow the faculty member to remove chapters from the book, change the order of chapters in the book, or even edit chapters in the book directly (e.g., adding locally relevant examples) BEFORE her/his students ever see the books online or in print, this gives the faculty member much greater control over the instructional experience. Most faculty members couldn’t care less about “open” for openness sake, but give them greater control over the instructional experience, and suddenly openness is translated into a concrete benefit - a difference beyond “openness for openness sake.”

The Plus in our CC By-NC-SA Plus will indeed be More Permissions - it will grant blanket permissions for anyone and everyone to make Commercial Use of FWK-published textbook materials in the context of the FWK Marketplace. The Marketplace will be an area of the FWK site where people can post and sell their own study guides, audio chapters, flash cards, videos, case studies, and other study materials related to FWK textbooks at whatever price they set (of course, they can alternately choose to openly license the things they put in the Marketplace, too). The Marketplace will be an “eBay for study materials,” and like eBay when somone sells material through the Marketplace, a small portion of the sale will come back to FWK and be shared with the textbook author whose work has been derived from or augmented by the new material.

I would argue that postliteracy is a return to more natural forms of multisensory communication—speaking, storytelling, dialogue, debate, and dramatization. It is just now that these modes can be captured and stored digitally as easily as writing. Information, emotion, and persuasion may be even more powerfully conveyed in multimedia formats.

Libraries, especially those that serve children and young adults, need to acknowledge that society is becoming postliterate.

PL libraries budget, select, acquire, catalog, and circulate as many or more materials in nonprint formats as they do traditional print materials. The circulation policy for all materials, print and nonprint, is similar.2. PL libraries stock, without prejudice, age-appropriate graphic novels and audio books, both fiction and nonfiction, for informational and recreational use.3. PL libraries support gaming for instruction and recreation.4. PL libraries purchase high-value online information resources.5. PL libraries provide resources for patrons to create visual and auditory materials and promote the demonstration of learning and research through original video, audio, and graphics production. They also provide physical spaces for the presentation of these creations.6. PL libraries allow the use of personal communication devices (MP3 players, handhelds, laptops, etc.) and provide wireless network access for these devices.7. PL library programs teach the critical evaluation of nonprint information.8. PL library programs teach the skills necessary to produce effective communication in all formats.9. PL library programs accept and promote the use of nonprint resources as sources for research and problem-based assignments.10. PL librarians recognize the legitimacy of nonprint resources and promote their use without bias.

Mr. Reshef said that this University opened the gate to these people to continue their studies from home and at minimal cost by using open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching.

As part of this year’s focus on education, the UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) presented the newly formed University of the People, a non-profit institution offering higher education to the masses.

Students will be placed in classes of 20, after which they can log on to a weekly lecture, discuss its themes with their peers and take a test all online. There are voluntary professors, post-graduate students and students in other classes who can also offer advice and consultation.

A Ball State University study released in April showed that 27 percent of 300 college students polled owned a smart phone, compared with 19 percent of the general population.

"The main thing we have to think about is what the phone can bring back into the learning environment," Johnson said. "[Smart phones] are [used] much more as a tool than a delivery platform."

AGAIN LIKE WE SEE IN MANY OTHER CELL PHONES FOR LEARNING PRESOS, THIS “APPLICATION PHASE” IS THEORETICAL. WE NEED MORE ACTUAL EXAMPLES OF CELL PHONE USES IN CLASSROOMS. OF COURSE A BIG ISSUE RIGHT NOW IS THERE ARE NOT MANY EXAMPLES. I NEED TO MAKE CONTACT WITH THE EDUCATORS IN OXFORD, KANSAS, WHO ARE WORKING ON A CELL PHONE LEARNING PROJECT THIS TERM.