September 29, 2011
Princeton goes open access to stop staff handing all copyright to journals
Sunanda Creagh,
The Conversation, September 29, 2011.
Peter Suber calls the headline in The Conversation a "shameful spin or misunderstanding", but what actually has happened is that Princeton is requiring its staff to retain sufficient rights to publications to allow the university to post academic work in its institutional repository. The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication. Here's the resolution, which was adopted September 19. More coverage from Andrew Appel.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Video, Web Logs, Copyrights, Chatrooms, Learning Object Repositories, Open Access, Academia]
Promethean MOOC
Corey Papastathis,
Google Sites, September 29, 2011.
Preliminary announcement page for another MOOC, the Promethean MOOC: "Over this ten week MOOC (massive open online course) we will be using Promethean tools to explore technology integration concepts...The first 5 weeks will be tailored for people just beginning to use Promethean tools. Though there will be other technology concepts available during weeks 1-5 for participants who know the basics of the Promethean software. Weeks 6-10 will focus on the more advanced tools and features of the Promethean software and technology integration concepts."
Transforming Asia through Open and Distance Learning
John Daniel,
AAOU, September 29, 2011.
Interesting talk from former Open University Chancellor John Daniel at the AAOU annual conference. He first remarks on Amartya Sen's idea of development as freedom. "Viewing development as the expansion of freedoms puts the focus on the purposes that make development important rather than on some of the means of achieving it." He then looks at recent work from Tony Bates on private distance and online leading providers. "The study by Tony Bates that I quoted suggests that private providers offer eLearning more professionally than conventional public universities." Against that, he offer's Paul Stacey's picture of the university open: "He points out that the combination of open source software, open access publishing, open educational resources, and the general trend to open government creates the potential for a new paradigm in higher education." The universities best placed to leverage this approach are traditionally open universities, says Daniel. "It would be difficult for a university that has put scarcity at the centre of its business model suddenly to embrace openness." Accordingly, he cites Jim Taylor's call for "an umbrella organization for a network of participating institutions with longstanding reputations and accreditation."
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Books, Networks, Open Source, Open Access, Paradigm Shift]
DON’T Turn Back the Clock: Microsoft Provides Resources for Change in Daylight Saving Time in Russia
M3 Sweatt ,
The Official Microsoft Blog, September 29, 2011.
Good resource from Microsoft on adapting to changes in Russian time zones. "This summer, the Russian government adopted a new law to cancel daylight saving time (DST) in the country. This means that Russia will not 'fall back' to the previous Russian Standard Time zones this fall." Good for the Russians; I've never liked moving the clocks back and forth (and unless they change automatically, or unless Andrea changes them, I just leave them as they are).
Quantifying yourself through personal analytics
Wolfgang Greller,
Reflections on the Knowledge Society, September 29, 2011.
If your scale reports that your weight is constantly increasing, what's your reaction? If your weblog reported that you are writing at a Grade Six level and recommended more reading, what would you do? There's a lot of talk about learning analytics, mostly by people wanting to use them to grade people (and maybe spy on them) but the killer app for analytics isn't any of this, it's self-reporting for self-improvement. Why has it taken so long for educators to see the potential for such feedback? "Why has this not entered education research earlier? Mostly, I believe, it has to do with the fact that the understanding of ‘learning’ in the educational sciences is often restricted to academic learning and knowledge acquisition, not focused on behavioural learning which is a domain of Psychology."
Related: my klout score is 60 or so (even though it has yet to successfully link to my blog), my most popular slide show has more than 40,000 views, my Groups and Networks image 9,000 views on Flickr... what do all of these analytics, and more, look like on a single dashboard? What type of information would provide better value? Via Nellie Deutsch in the edumooc Facebook group.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Flickr, Research, Web Logs, Online Learning, Academia, Privacy Issues]
Copyright Is Back: Why Canada is Keeping the Flawed Digital Lock Rules
Michael Geist,
Weblog, September 29, 2011.
As the Canadian government prepares to pass copyright legislation (which this time, due to a majority government in the house, is very likely to pass) my analysis remains much the same as Michael Geist's. "Why is Canada sticking to digital lock rules when a more balanced approach that is consistent with the WIPO Internet treaties is readily available? The answer is obvious - the digital lock rules are primarily about satisfying U.S. pressure, not Canadian public opinion... the unwillingness to stand up for Canadians on digital locks represents a huge failure. Moreover, it sends the message that when pressed, Canada will cave... The failure of C-11 is that the government isn't relieving the copyright pressure. It is asking for more."
TeamUp: a soft launch
Teemu Leinonen,
FLOSSE Posse, September 29, 2011.
Teemu Leinonen has always been the 'groups' to my 'networks' and now he has soft-launched an application that I think has the potential to be a rousing success: TeamUp. It's all about, of course, forming groups - "Form teams based on skills and interests, record teams' progress." Leinonen writes, "Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki platform described a wiki as “the simplest online database that could possibly work“. I think that in a way, TeamUp is the simplest collaborative software that could possible work."
Amazon's Kindle Fire Is a Disruptive Innovation
Rob Wheeler,
Harvard Business Review, September 29, 2011.
I've had an iPad for the last few months, and I've discovered I use it almost exclusively for watching Netflix. Now maybe I'm an unusual user, having a MacBook for the road, a nice Nikon D5100 camera, and my home and office desktops. But maybe I'm not. And that's the play Amazon is making with the Kindle: a nice, inexpensive device that can be used to read and watch media (not coincidentally, exactly what they sell). And if so, then the Kindle Fire is, indeed, disruptive, as claimed in this Harvard Business Review article. "It's not just a low-end competitor to the iPad. There is scalable technology at its core that the present-generation iPad lacks — the extensive use of the Cloud."
There's extensive coverage of the new line of Kindles online: Mashable offers an overview of the new Kindle products, Mark Glaser captures the A-lister Twitter chatter, BBC asks, who's afraid of Kindle Fire, as RiM cuts prices, Reuters reports on the price pressure created by the Kindle, Chris Espinosa calls it astonishing jujitsu on Google, Daniel Eran Dilger calls the Kindle a loss leader, Martin Langeveld says it's all about the shopping, Wired's Seven Levy says it does one job very well, ZDNet says colleges finally have a viable tablet, Learnpost says it changes the game for education while Audrey Watters says it's not the tablet schools have been waiting for, covering the new Kindles John Gruber at Daring Fireball notices that Amazon's audacious and fascinating Silk browser, an a new twist on an old idea, uses Webkit.
[Link] [Comment][Tags: Schools, Twitter, BBC, Google, Chatrooms]
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