EduResources Weblog--Higher Education Resources OnlineThis weblog focuses on locating, evaluating, discussing, and providing guidelines to instructional resources for faculty and students in higher education. The emphasis is on free, shared, HE resources. Related topics and news (about commercial resources, K-12 resources, T&D resources, educational technology, digital libraries, distance learning, open source software, metadata standards, cognitive mapping, etc.) will also be discussed--along with occasional excursions into more distant...Jill Bolte Taylor Reports on Her Own Stroke Experience- March 31, 2008 When a neuroanatomist reports on her own experiences during a stroke and her own stroke recovery efforts, then both professionals and other patients can gain insights. This report by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is of absorbing interest. (Patient support groups provide a valuable educational service on the Internet by providing emotional support and information exchanges. Some patient report sites are also starting to provide data of high quality. See the site PatientsLikeMe for...http://127.0.0.1:5335/?idStory=66508 Blackboard's Patent Rejected in Preliminary Review- March 29, 2008 This preliminary judgement by the U.S. Patent Office is very good news for all supporters of open source learning and teaching: "On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard's claims. We caution that this is a NON-final action; both Blackboard and Desire2Learn will have an opportunity to comment before a final action.http://desire2learn.com/patentinfo/ Wikiversity Course: Composing Free and Open Educational Resources- March 25, 2008 This Wikiversity course surveys many of the best known open educational resource sites and teaches participants how to develop their own OERs. Very useful. ___JH _____ "The course readings and the assignments in this course will familiarize participants with the main concepts related to open education resources and to the historical and philosophical ideas behind them. The participants will also do their own projects where they will learn to create and participate in projects...http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Composing_free_and_open_online_educational_resources Desire2Learn Interview- March 18, 2008 This Campus Technology interview with Desire2Learn's president and general counsel provides a useful perspective on Blackboard's patent infringement claims. ____JH _____ "In a field in which intellectual property is contributed freely by so many, Blackboard's patent covering certain LMS technologies seemed to some to be out of place, and it was greeted with anger and distress by many in education and in the education development community." "So we tried to talk about prior art that met the...http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/59935 OER: the Way Forward- March 10, 2008 This UNESCO planning document is now available as a Wiki page (a pdf version is also available and several translations are underway). The discussion of six priority issues facing OER development gives a useful summary of what has been done and what needs to be done. ____JH ___ "Awareness raising and promotion and communities and networking, emerge as the main priorities for promoting the advancement of the OER movement. Third-ranked capacity development is essential to enabling...http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER:_the_Way_Forward OER Stories from UNESCO- March 4, 2008 These stories from the UNESCO OER Community show a panoply of OER developments and applications from many countries. The case studies range from very large projects such as the UK's OpenLearn Open University to small projects such as the Italian SCOLA project. ____JH _____ "Members of the UNESCO OER Community identified awareness raising and promotion as the top priority issue to promote and enable the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. Community members proposed awareness raising...http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories#Stories_in_development Open Educational Resources: Enabling Universal Education- March 1, 2008 This article from the Feb. 2008 International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning by Caswell, Henson, Jensen & Wiley gives a valuable overview of the recent history of opencourseware and its future importance for universal education. ____JH ______ "Abstract. The role of distance education is shifting. Traditionally distance education was limited in the number of people served because of production, reproduction, and distribution costs. Today, while it still costs the university.http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/469/1001 |