The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) has been hosting an OER Handbook on WikiEducator for a while now, inviting others to contribute and edit various elements of the book. Now they’ve finally published the first printable version of one of their mini-handbooks: OER Handbook for Educators 1.0.  The actual handbook isn’t so mini—though…

One morning in late June, I made the trek out to the outer mission area to interview two KQED QUEST producers: Sue Ellen McCann and Craig Rosa. I first met Sue Ellen and Craig a couple months prior, when we had an informal discussion about possibly CC licensing some of QUEST’s raw footage for a…

The August issue of the Open Source Business Resource (OSBR) is dedicated to education. It is now available online, including two articles specifically devoted to open education: “A Flat Network for the Unflat World: Open Educational Resources in Developing Countries” (Steven Muegge, Monica Mora, Kamal Hassin, Andrew Pullin) and “Why Give Knowledge Away for Free?…

Last week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, long-time supporter of CC, announced the second annual Digital Media and Learning Competition. The 2008 competition is a collaborative result of the MacArthur Foundation, the University of California, Irvine, Duke University, and HASTAC, a virtual and voluntary network of educators and innovators committed to improving…

In January, the Student PIRGs launched the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign “to encourage faculty to adopt open educational resources in their classrooms” in the form of open textbooks and other classroom materials. Read ccLearn’s post on it from January. Recently, the Student PIRGs released their findings after examining digital textbooks and surveying 500 students in the…

The National Science Foundation Task Force issued a report late in June on cyberlearning, more specifically on “Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge.” It is, in their words, “A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation” concerning ICT for learning. The report outlines five recommendations for “growth and opportunities…

One of my must-read blogs on technology and education, ZaidLearn has been rating various learning tools since July of last year. The blog was started by e-Learning Manager for INCEIF, Zaid Alsagoff, who has done research in the areas of “educational gaming, role-play simulation, virtual classrooms, learning (content) management systems, e-learning standards” and “instructional design…

Michael Wesch, creator of the strikingly insightful videos “A Vision of Students Today” and “The Machine is Us/ing Us”, gave a presentation at the Library of Congress back in May on the anthropology of YouTube. The presentation was the third in a series called “Digital Natives,” natives being basically my and probably your generation if…

When I was a kid, the only dictionary around the house was a monumental hardcover my little brother used as a stool to reach the cookie jar. We hardly ever looked inside of it, and when we did, we couldn’t find any words used in the real world. It was the super duper collegiate university…

Photo by Petri Tuohimaa for GMRI, CC BY-NC-ND “Sarah on a beach near Portland, Maine looking for two species of invasive marine crabs – Carcinus maenas (European green crab) and Hemigrapsus sanguineus (Asian shore crabs).” In April, I had a chance to meet with Sarah Kirn, Program Manager of Vital Signs, a field and inquiry…