A new post by EduKan CEO, Mark Sarver, is available at http://innovatingtheivy.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/i-love-vegas/
This is an excellent resource by Cable Green.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
What are they?
Open educational resources (OER) are “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.”
OER include different kinds of digital assets. Learning content includes courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals. Tools include software that supports the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content, searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities. Implementation resources include intellectual property licenses that govern open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. They also include materials on best practices such as stories, publication, techniques, methods, processes, incentives, and distribution.
Open Educational Resources websites:
- http://florida.theorangegrove.org (Browse this website)
- http://oerconsortium.org/
- http://www.archive.org/details/education
- http://openeducation.zunia.org/
- http://opencourselibrary.org
- http://oerwiki.iiep.unesco.org/index.php/Main_Page
- http://www.aascu.org/programs/redballoon/
- https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24836860/What-are-Open-Educational-Resources
MERLOT- Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching at www.merlot.org
http://www.advantageedu.com/blog/2008/100-open-courseware-resources-for-teachers/
National Repository for Online Courses content and in house materials — http://www.montereyinstitute.org/nroc/
The California State University system has been implementing a “Affordable Learning Solutions” initiative for about a year. They have organized many open learning resources into a “one-stop shop” that is open to everyone – see http://als.csuprojects.org
CSU have built some simple applications where a faculty or student can type in the ISBN of their textbook and “OER Finder” will provide a list of open learning resources associated with the topic of the textbook see http://als.csuprojects.org/course_content or if you only want to find open textbooks (vs. course modules, online courses, etc), use the OER Finder at http://als.csuprojects.org/free-textbooks . The Affordable Learning Solutions and the OER Finder is built on the long term success of MERLOT (www.merlot.org) – an open online library of over 27,000 open learning resources, many of which have been peer reviewed by academic editorial boards.
CSU has started having faculty share their course syllabi that illustrates how they are substitute open learning resources for textbooks (see http://als.csuprojects.org/sharing-practices for some initial samples.
The CSU also has tested the strategy of licensing digital textbooks (“Renting Digital”) at a significantly lower cost (35% of new textbook price for the pilot studies). You can read about the CSU’s Digital Marketplace project at www.dmproject.org and the “licensed content” project at: http://www.dmproject.org/solutions/licensed_content.html and the Digital Marketplace 2010 year-end report http://www.dmproject.org/docs/2010-YearEndReport.pdf
http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/pages/catalog.aspx?catalogId=68c4ce9f-c919-45ea-b18b-0f5aa7501fbd presentation on the open future and the speaker is Dr. David Wiley. While not totally open there is a large FIPSE Grant that was given to Florida State College in Jacksonville. They have a project called SIRIUS Academics which provides low cost course contents and books on several courses with more in the works. Person to contact if you are interested is Rick Granger: lgranger@fscj.edu phone: 904-632-3307. Also you may contact Leslie Balsiger for materials that she has on this topic lbalsiger@lccc.wy.edu
For Your Reading:
–Free wikis for educators: K through 12 through PhD
Starting this month, Wikispaces is offering free wikis to higher education. It’s the logical next step for us, all things considered. Source: Wikispaces
Link: http://blog.wikispaces.com/2011/02/free-wikis-for-educators-k-through-12-through-phd.html
10 Essential Mobile Apps to Invest in 2011: Gartner
Few people would refute that the IT world is going increasingly mobile. A quick scan of the many tech blogs show a preponderance of mobile gadget coverage. Numbers from researchers bear this out. Gartner said worldwide mobile device sales hit 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009. Smartphone sales to users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010. Gartner Feb. 10 put forth new prognostications for the mobile market, estimating that mobile apps will account for $16 billion in user spending in 2012. “Gartner expects brand companies to increasingly shift their marketing budget to the mobile channel and experiment with cutting-edge apps to capture marketing and sales opportunities,” noted Gartner analyst Sandy Shen. To that end, here is a list of the top 10 consumer applications Shen and her Gartner colleagues expect to fuel smartphones and tablets in 2011. Source: eWeek.com
-Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011
So here we are in a new decade, and the technologies that are now available to us continue to engage (and enthrall) in fascinating ways. The rise and collision of several trends—social, mobile, touch computing, geo, cloud—keep spitting out new products and technologies which keep propelling us forward. Below I highlight seven technologies that are ready to tip into the mainstream 2011. Source: TechCrunch
Link: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/02/seven-technologies-that-will-rock-2011/
-Students Become Immersed in History with Augmented Reality Games
The next generation of learners will have access to an astounding array of tools — including augmented reality games. What’s the purpose of this high-tech approach? To use “the world as the hook to get students interested in learning,” says Kurt Squire, the associate education professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, in an article by Heather Chaplin in Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Source: Mind/Shift KQED
Link: http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/02/students-become-immersed-in-augmented-reality-games/
-Open Courseware on Every Campus By 2016?
UC Irvine official makes a bold prediction during meeting of open courseware advocates from across the country. Source: eCampus News
-Who Needs Textbooks?
How Washington State is redesigning textbooks for the digital age. Great article about the Open Course Library project at WCET-member Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. Source: Newsweek
Link: http://education.newsweek.com/2011/01/25/who-needs-textbooks.print.html
MIT OpenCourseWare Announces New Course Materials to Support Independent Learners
MIT OpenCourseWare launched beta versions of five courses that represent a significant new approach to openly sharing educational resources. Dubbed “OCW Scholar” courses, these materials are designed from the start for independent learners who have few additional resources available to them. The courses are substantially more complete than typical OCW courses and include new custom-created content as well as materials repurposed from MIT classrooms. The materials are also arranged in logical sequences and include multimedia such as video and simulations. Source: MIT OpenCourseWare
Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/about/media-coverage/press-releases/ocw-scholar/
Course Specific Links
Open Resources for Intermediate Algebra:
Closed caption video lectures at:
http://www.khanacademy.org/#Pre-algebra
http://www.khanacademy.org/#Algebra
http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/open-textbook-content-/open-textbooks-by-subject/math.html
What new products need to be developed? Don’t be limited by what you know or think could happen…. Think outside of the box.. sorry for the cliche. Try to combine things that would never be combined.
How about weight loss bourbon? …. or
A furnace in your home that burns junk mail. The more junk mail you get the less your energy costs would be.
What are your ideas?
Great Bend, KS – EduKan, a consortium of the six western community colleges in Kansas, reports the largest enrollment in the institution’s 11 year history. “We offer our students ten different sessions each year to match the needs of our students,” says Dr. Mark Sarver, EduKan’s Director. “The session that begins in January is usually one of our largest, this year it was the largest in our institutions history.” Enrollment is up by 9.14% over the previously highest enrollment and overall enrollment is up 10.3% ahead of last year.
EduKan provides online associates degrees and general education classes to students in Kansas and across the United States. “We are seeing a lot more students coming from out of state, especially California where the state’s budget deficit is reducing the number of classes being taught by their community colleges; our out of state enrollment is up by 7% through word of mouth advertising by our students.”
It finally hit me at a presentation during the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas.
Let me take a step back, I attended the show to find a device that would help our students better utilize technology in their studies. We have toyed with the idea of moving to eBooks, but as the previous post states, our students are not a fan of eBooks.
So my search began. I waded through 62 inch ultra flat 3D televisions and speakers that work underwater and in space to find the three aisles designated for eReaders. I presented my dilemma. I need a device where students can highlight, make notes; print out selected passages (along with the notes and highlights) and share information with other classmates.
What a surprise…. Nothing exists. Many vendors looked at me like I had three heads. It was not until a presenter said, “We need eStudiers, not eReaders”. Yeah, someone else gets it.
Soooooo….. electronics people. Step it up. Give our students a product that allows them to interact with the content. We are waiting.
We surveyed 614 of our current online students regarding the use of eBooks and resource material imbedded in the online class. 25% have used eBooks, about half like them. Their biggest concern was being able to highlight, make notes in the margins and print specific areas of the document. Several saw eBooks as simply a way of pushing additional costs onto the student. Example – Regular textbook costs $189, eBook costs $99. If the student buys the eBook, most will want to print a portion or all of the document, costing the student in paper in printer ink. And at the end, they will not be able to sell the eBook back.
Students were encouraged by the idea of imbedded resources, however, their concerns were the same as with the eBook. How to customize the learning resource to their needs.
We are working on several technology ideas that might address this need. I will be at the Consumer Electronics Show this Jan. to look for innovative ideas to make student learning better and more engaging. A key focus of this show is educational electronics. I will keep you posted.
Remember, textbooks are flat. The world is not flat!
Mark
The world is flat. Pretty popular theory a couple thousand years ago.
Around 330 BC, Aristotle provided observational evidence for the spherical Earth,[10] noting that travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon. He argued that this was only possible if their horizon was at an angle to northerners’ horizon and that the Earth’s surface therefore could not be flat.[11] He also noted that the border of the shadow of Earth on the Moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always circular, no matter how high the Moon is over the horizon. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in all directions apart from directly above and directly below.[12] Writing around 10 BC, the Greek geographer Strabo cited various phenomena observed at sea as suggesting that the Earth was spherical.
Text books are flat. Yeah, but you need a book to teach.
We say NO. Project Aristotle is a bold initiative to rid our students of the pedagogically inferior flat context of an overpriced textbook. One of the key tenants of EduKan is to provide affordable access to higher education. We keep our tuition low – $125 per credit hour, yet our students are forced to pay almost that in textbooks.
Our initiative seeks to utilize open source and purchased digital repositories to embed content within our online courses. I encourage you to review some of the great resources listed below and follow us on our journey to become textbook (free).
HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge.
http://www.theorangegrove.org/OGMain.asp
Florida’s digital repository of open text and resources.
Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons “attribution” license.
In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.
http://learn.creativecommons.org/
ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to support open learning and open educational resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.
An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.
www.wikieducator.org – free training on how to use a wiki
http://wikilearn.uvu.edu/wikis/Main_Page
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