In today’s economy and rising prices for everything cutting costs for students in areas where we can has become and will continue to be of paramount importance to students and their families in making a choice on where they can go to college.  Mainstream media has jumped on the bandwagon with various articles on free and reduced cost textbooks over the last couple of years.  These include articles in US News and World Report which provides an overview of available textbooks resources from free to reduced cost.

In September 14, 2008 the New York Times reported in an article on the various options of providing textbooks at reduced costs including  print on demand options such as Lulu and Flatworld Knowledge,  allowing free downloads in Word and PDFs versions of textbooks, and sites such as Merlot and Connexions.   In an LA Times article dated August 18, 2008 economic text author McAfee noted that it does take work to find online textbooks and resource.  More on McAfree’s work and rationale for open sourcing his textbooks can also be found in this Inside Higher Ed article.

There are some student run sites such as Textbook Revolution which provides:

Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world…. links to textbooks and select educational resources of all kinds. Some of the books are PDF files; others are viewable online as e-books.

Another similar site to this one, but not student run,  is the Open Textbook Registry which is:

a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Of course one must be concerned because the cost of textbooks seems to increase the likelihood that students will engange in illegal activities to get the books that they need for little or no cost as related in this article from Boston.com ..

“We think it’s a significant problem,” said William Sampson, manager of infringement and antipiracy at Cengage Learning Inc., a reference book publisher in Farmington Hills, Mich. Sampson said that in any given month, 200 to 300 of the company’s titles are posted illegally as free Internet downloads. Distributing books for free without permission violates copyright laws and deprives publishers of revenue.”

We will be evaluating the use of Merlot in the months to come, however it is important to note that Merlot plays a significant role in the affordable textbook initiative.  Membership in Merlot provides individuals with the opportunity to contribute learning materials, create a personal  collection, share online expertise, and receive peer recognition. The Open Textbook project for Merlot is found at this link on their website and contains 279 resources.   Of course membership is not required to access the resources on the website.  It is important to note that their resources undergo an peer review and are rated.

Do you use any of the resources below in developing your course content, if not why not?  If you favorite resource is not here would you note that in the comments?  If you do why?  What are the advantages? How are these received by students?

I posed the question regarding free/open source textbooks to the DEOS list serv,  this is a list serv for those who work in the field of distance education, and received information back regarding the Orange Grove. The Orange Grove was also profiled in Inside Higher Ed in September. The Orange Grove is actually an example of a university press providing course/textbooks online and downloadable for free.  Another good example is that Anthabasca Press http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/bySeries/2 which includes:

Anthabasca University Press is part of the growing collection of the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library (LHCADL). AU Press’s open access, digital collection of peer reviewed scholarly work provides valuable educational resources (e-books, journals, website publications and videos) that support Lois Hole’s vision of accessible research and learning.

Another example of efforts in promoting open access resources is this on e of an individual keeping a resource base of applicable web based resources on the Technology Training Center of Porterville College.  See this comprehensive list of resources here:  http://www.portervillecollege.edu/tlc/resources.htm#OER

Freetextbooks: This site seems to have a little of everything from lecture notes, to free textbooks, and other webbased resources.

Learnout loud:  your one-stop destination for audio and video learning.   Browse over 20,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and video.

Further examples of open education resource depositories include Wikimedia. Under the umbrella of Wikimedia is Wikiversity, Wikisource, and Wikibooks both provide accessible resources for textbooks and course content.

Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning.

Wikisource is an online library of free content publications collected and maintained by our community. We now have 135,382 texts in the English language library.

Wikibooks a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003; since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 38,399 pages …

Wikia Education; A list of University / Education Wikis

Wikiversity:  a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities.

Open Education Campaign Wiki:

An open university is one in which

1. The research the university produces is open access.
2. The course materials are open educational resources.
3. The university embraces free software and open standards.
4. If the university holds patents, it readily licenses them for free software, essential medicines, and the public good.
5. The university network reflects the open nature of the internet.

where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty, administration. The Declaration was a joint statement of the community at the [Free Culture 2008 Conference] in Berkeley, CA.

Amser:  AMSER, Applied Math, Sciences Educational Repository, is a portal of educational resources and servicesCommunity and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. built specifically for use by those in

Private industry is also getting involved in the opencourseware initiative as well as indicated by the Novell Opencourseware site. They state that:  OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes. By making these materials available to the public, we hope to extend to all people worldwide the opportunity to access these high quality learning materials.

Open Culture University: Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free university courses, free movies, free language lessons and other enriching content — it’s all here. (from their website)

Videos,  I Tunes v-casts, podcasts, etc., all provide the educator and student with access to a broad spectrum of educators in their field of discipline:

Ted Talks: TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 450 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks feature closed captions in English, and many feature subtitles in various languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. (retrieved from their website)

FORA.tv helps intelligent, engaged audiences get smart. Our users find, enjoy, and share videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world.

We gather the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. We present this provocative, big-idea content for anyone to watch, interact with, and share –when, where, and how they want.

With our community of savvy users and an extensive, growing library of smart videos, FORA.tv is at the forefront of the ongoing integration – and transformation – of the traditional media, TV, cable, and online industries from mass-market to high-quality, high-value content. FORA.tv was founded in 2005 and is funded by a select group of investors including William R. Hearst III and Adobe Ventures.  (retrieved from their website)

Psychology/about.com About sites usually provide a detailed list of web based resources in a variety of areas.

LearnOutLoud audio and video resources for Psychology (from their website) Check out 10 of the top free online psychology audio books, lectures, & podcasts. For the past three years we’ve featured dozens of free psychology resources as part of our Free Resource of the Day Emails

EduFire:  Live Video Learning Online Classes Fit Your Busy Schedule Learning is easy with top instructors. Learn anytime from anywhere.. from their website they state:

We have a simple (but not easy) mission: Revolutionize education. Our goal is to create a platform to allow live learning to take place over the Internet anytime from anywhere. Most importantly…for anyone. We’re the first people (that we know of) to create something that’s totally open and community-driven (rather than closed and transaction-driven.

As you can see there is an endless supply of resources on the web and it grows daily.  If this is not enough for you or your class they can collaboratively create their own content via blogs, webcasts, wikis, and podcasts!  It’s a whole new age in education of self-created content, self learning to group activities, collaboration and building on or “meshing’ up the knowledge of other resources.

Michael J. Trout has a vision for the future of education.  He is driven by a desire to provide education to all …Learning Anything, Anytime, Anywhere…in order to address the concerns that he feels may destroy humanity.  Fundamentally though his plan does more to address and improve our basic quality of life..providing education builds human capital and it is human capital which improves our quality of life and drives our economy.  Michael is creating a shared vision inspired by his passion for learning, his desire to excite and inspire individuals to learn comes through in his videos, which you can access on Face-book. Michael has developed a shared vision, including all in his passion for flattening education.    You will be inspired by his enthusiasm for “Learn Anything, Anytime, Anywhere…”  and his vision to flatten global education.  The website for Michael’s EDUIT (Education Using Information Technology) describe the plan and vision more in-depth.

Michael encourages us all to  Imagine ..”     a world where everyone participates in a flat education system, challenging themselves and others, and winning awards and prizes for applying themselves, no matter what their social, economic, geographic disposition is…We can and we will build it.”

Michael is proposing that other education organizations and entities link with him to provide the Flatten Global Education conference in 2010.  I think that is a great idea!  To get major players in the field of education to sit down together and discuss and define the future of education, how to provide open source materials globally, how to most effectively use the technology we have available, and identify barriers and remove them.  I think the time is now for us to put aside the competitive differences that have driven us to develop a fantastic knowledge base of educational materials, research, and tools to starting engaging in collaboration to determine how to best use these resources to improve society and brainstorm how to use them effectively.

I have been trying to keep up with Michael for the last couple of months..he knows I am a “Second Lifer” and that I advocate for virtual worlds as a learning venue..to put it simply he does not seem much sense in that, that being said on most points of education Michael and I agree, primarily that providing education, knowledge and the tools necessary to easily educate everyone may very well be necessary to address some of the possible coming global crisis from global warming, oil shortage,  global economic disparities,  and,  I also believe, pandemics.  Michael questions whether or not we have the “educated talent” to address these global concerns, to do research, to develop solutions to the issues that will be facing humanity within the next 20 years.  As I ponder this I interpret his vision to mean that we need to build a “social network” of scientists, engineers, and other professionals who collaborate within their disciplines but all across disciplines to address these global concerns.  We have the smart kids in this world .. we just need the platform to engage them in learning, working together and solving the world’s problems of tomorrow– today! A universal education platform will tie these young people together to learn from each other as well as to learn from a broad spectrum of multimedia resources readily available via the web  and the today’s brilliant talent who are leaders in making the world a better place.

In addition to tapping into the vast array of multi-media resources available on the web Michael also intends to use simple games to motivate learners.  These games will be designed around the objectives of the course or learning goal.  These interactive games will enhance a student’s learning by their participation and collaboration with others.

The eSingularity or eRevolution is built upon a platform that will be ubiquitous, simple, and will provide learning to all. Building a such a platform comes with a price, but a price that is much cheaper than going to Mars or wars that could come about because we don’t have the tools in place to develop common understandings and communication tools to work together on shared concerns.   Michael envisions this as a “macro solution” which provides access to open source materials, videos chunked for “rapid learning,’ short clips driven by learning objectives, can be accessible within limited bandwidth, provide mobile/cell phone access, and some game based learning.

The cornerstone of Michael’s vision is that global education must be flattened to allow everyone to learn anything, anytime, anywhere–>for free.  His vision is a shared vision as he has and continues to gain people who are joining him in this initiative.  Search for more information on the Web by doing a search for eSingulairty -Trout, find the Facebook page by search for Eduit, follow him at twitter.com/eduitorg, find the Linked in group, e3.0.

Curtis Bonk has certainly inspired many to take a good hard look at open course-ware, free education, and open education resources.  He has promoted his vision on the web through his blog,  Travelin Ed Man, you can find him on YouTube, and the site for the book The World is Open How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.  In the book, Curtis Bonk suggested that open course ware be cataloged and reviewed, given that mission I want to find open courses in writing; technical writing, fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  I took what I felt was a unique approach to this by first reviewing my Poetry and Writing magazine just to see if there were any Master’s, Fine Arts that were advertising as being fully online, as historically these have always had at least some sort of short residential component.  After reviewing a a magazine from 2006 to one printed in 2009 I did not see that much had changed in how these programs were structured.  So I started to scour the web looking for open courses in writing..well it goes without saying that I am not the first one who has gone on that mission!  I will refer to those great sites such as Smashing Magazine’s 50 Free Resources that will improve writing, the Online Education Database of 150 Resources to Help You Write, to the handful of courses offered by Utah State University in open course-ware,  MIT’s open course-ware initiative, a resource of online courses offered by universities in English, and a site that is not affiliated with a university, The Writer’s Village.    In fact Bonk, himself, has compiled a list of the top 100 education sites, which he refers to in his blog.  One of the big personal websites which compiles learning objects and course ware is that of Dumblittle man, this site seems to link back to lists of links as well.   Finally the Freelance writing site directs writers to a variety of sites which will enhance and develop their writing skills.

The Writer’s Village offers courses via an annual $69  membership, as I reviewed their website I did find the information on the site a bit “stale,” with nothing really updated since last spring.  The site boasts of over 250 courses, offers a 2 month trial registration for $29.99.  You can also take a class for free in order to try out the site.  According to the website this course  is “an introduction to the craft of writing fiction and provides a sample of how courses at the Village are run.  A dedicated team of mentors assists students new to the course, and possibly new to the online learning experience, as they go through this six-week course.”  The Writer’s Village is an example of an educational service which the learner can access for informal learning.

The following sites are not open course but the tools, resources and other support that writers need to be successful.  Smashing Magazine is a design, inspiration, graphics, and creative web based magazine, that illustrates the “how to” of the many aspects of graphic design.  The June 28th, 2009 article,  50 Free Resources that will Improve Your Writing, provides the reader with several resources under each category of grammar, punctuation and composition, common mistakes and problems, general writing skills, practical guides to better writing skills, copy writing blogs, tools, and other miscellaneous sites.   Learn-gasm is a blog that provides resources in several related areas such as resources for web workers who write for the web, literature, and a variety of other areas.

With the rise of publishing to the web self-publishing no longer seems to have the stigma that it once did. Lulu was the premier entry into this field.  Lulu provides writers with a variety of publishing packages which include:  support, publishing the book for the writer, Amazon distribution, getting the ISBN assigned to the book, a variety of publishing options, editorial services, and other services.  Services depend upon the level of publishing option selected.  iUniverse is another self-publishing option which offers publishing services, evaluation services for editorial and marketing needs, a variety of book formats, and design services.  There is a web-list of resources helpful to copywriters, which provides the following:

• links to professional copywriters’ associations
• links to major research databases and cite-able sources–where you can pull all types of stats, current studies, numbers, facts, etc.
• free online trusted style guides–get the final word on grammar, sentence structure, definitions for slang terms, how to cite sources in your web-copy, reference for copyright laws and content usage issues
• links to various niche market sources (under continued construction)

Open and free courses are available in writing as I noted earlier.  Of specific interest is the technical writing wiki. This site provides “Level 1 and Level 2 courses in technical writing, plus a workshop on writing system requirement specifications…”   Of interest to those who are pursuing journalism is the News University site which provides open and free courses to  registered users and learners seeking to develop writing skills in that area.

Second life provides opportunities for writers to also pursue their craft. Sites such as the Stormy Mountain Writing Center,which provides:

• Every month, we’ll pick a book whose author is willing to come into Second Life for the discussion.
• To join the discussion, all you need to do is read the book before the meeting.
• At the appointed time, we’ll all gather with the author for an informal round-table discussion. (You’ll be able to ask the author anything you want about the book you just read!)
• Immediately after the discussion, we’ll proceed to the Story Mountain Stage, where the author will give a live reading.

The Stormy Mountain Writing Center appears to be a great site in Second Life, however the website seems to be a bit stale so I hope that enthusiasm for their project continues, I have dropped Alas Zerbino an IM for more information.  Another site for writers in Second Life is the Written Word, (link to their Website), their Second Life site is here. More in world writing related events and activities can be found at the Second Life events calendar and at the following site; Second Life wiki which illustrates the uses of Second Life in Education. I have, in the past, been able to participate in world at writers groups and hope to do so again sometime, there is nothing like that peer feed back to improve your writing skills.  It was also a great opportunity to meet with published writers who were knowledgeable of what it takes to get published.

Overview of the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services program (OLCOS) and Open Education Resources

The OLCOS state aim  “at building an (online) information and observation centre for promoting the concept, production and usage of open educational resources, in particular, open digital educational content (ODEC) in Europe.”    According to the report on the OLCOS, Open Educational Resources, Open Eduction Roadmap, published in January 2007 the purpose is to “carry out a set of activities that aim at fostering a set of activities that aim at fostering the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Education Resources—(OER).  The following overview will define the terminology associated with OER and OLCOS, identify the range of sites that provide open education resources, the development of WEB 2.0, Web 3.0 and the benefits and challenges associated with OER.   This report addresses the need ‘to foster open practices of teaching and learning that are informed by a competency based educational framework.”

OER is defined as access to open content, including meta-data that is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners.  It is intended that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favorable free from restriction to modify, combine and re purpose the content, consequently that the content should ideally be designed for re-use in the open content standards.  The development of Web2.0 complimented OER very well.  OER is based upon the collaboration of teams in reviewing and ensuring the quality of resources.  Given that Web 2.0 is various defined in this article by O’Reilly as fundamentally user driven, collaborative, user designer, interactive, and dynamic.  Further definitions of Web 2.0 can be found in Wikipedia, expanded by the advent of personal learning environments which is defined as: systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to  set their own learning goals,manage their learning; managing both content and process,communicate with others in the process of learning, and thereby achieve their learning goals.    Guides such as this Web2practice maybe helpful in further defining the role of Web2.0 in teaching and learning.   “Web2Practice is a site which provides guides to emergent technologies and innovative practice,” retrieved from the website.
OER provide benefits to the following stakeholders:  Instructors, learners or students, and employers
Personal Learning Environments are further defined here by Graham Atwell as recognizing that learning is ongoing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning. It also recognizes the role of the individual in organising his or her own learning. Moreover, the pressures for a PLE are based on the idea that learning will take place in different contexts and situations and will not be provided by a single learning provider. Linked to this is an increasing recognition of the importance
of informal learning.

Open education resources and learning object repositories provide access to resources which a learner can use for creating his/her own personal learning environment in order to achieve certain learning outcomes.   OER may include free and open textbook sites, learning object repositories, documentary and video sites, document sites, etc. A list of some of these is as follows;

Open Education Resources:

iBerry is a non-profit making, private website providing information and resources for learners, educators, researchers and anyone else with an interest in Higher Education.

Learning object repository:

Merlot:  a leading edge, user-centered, search-able collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.

New Media Consortium maintains this directory of learning object repositories on the web.

Online books and textbooks:

FlatWorldKnowledge: Our peer-reviewed books are written by experts, professionally developed and supported by supplements.  There the similarity to traditional books ends. Our books are free online  in multiple formats (softcover, audio, self-print versions) and open-source so you can modify them to fit your course.

OpenTextbook: Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation

Video:

Top Documentary Films: TDF offers full watchable documentaries and information on documentaries by quoting reviews from trusted sources. In case you decide to buy your favorite documentary film, or you want to get some more information on some of the docs  (documentaries)  there is a store available for that. Documentaries are classified in categories and you can easily find what you are looking for.

The Internet archive: The archive maintains a moving images library of free movies, films, and videos.  This librayr contains thousands of digital movies uplaoded by Archive users which range fromclassic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts.  Many of these videos are available for free download.

Snag films: is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve.  SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web. With a library of over 850 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free.

Virtual reality:

Virtual body: Just found this one today!

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between the Palace Museum and IBM. The goal of the project is to provide the means for a world-wide audience to celebrate and explore aspects of Chinese culture and history

Second Life sites such as:  Frank Lloyd Wright Museum,   Sci-lands, Goethe Institute, Caledon, The Tut exhibit, and business maintained sites

Semantic Web Initiatives such as

Folksemantics

Aardvark

Twine

Olnet.org   To search out the evidence for use and reuse of open educational resources…..stated purpose from the website;  the aim of OLnet is to tackle gathering evidence and methods about how we can research and understand ways to learn in a more open world, particularly linked to Open Educational Resources (OER) but also looking at other influences. We want to gather evidence together but also spot the ideas that people see emerging from the opportunities.

The World is Open How Technology is Revolutionizing Education  By Curtis Bonk

(Some font problems still learning WordPress)

Books such as Bonk’s nudge education towards change, perhaps nudge is not the right word, but if education moves a nudge it’s a huge leap.  Education maybe open but it’s definitely not flat..there are tall peaks and low valleys..the peaks being new initiatives such as the University of the People, Peer 2 Peer and, of course MIT.   What Bonk has done is to take a systems view of these initiatives.  Each of these, viewed individually may not seem so disruptive on its own.  Taken as whole these initiatives are rapidly changing traditional education.

This blog is written in order on conceptualize the following:  We All Learn

W:      Web Searching in the World of EBooks
E:       E-Learning and blended learning
A:       Availability of open source and free software
L:       Leveraged resources open courseware
L:       Learning object repositories and portals
L:       Learner participation in open information communities
e:       Electronic collaboration
A:       Alternative Reality Learning
R:      Real time Mobility and Portability
N:      Networks of personalized learning

What follows is a short list of resources which I found on the web that I felt related to each of Bonk’s key points.  I was excited to find some semantic resources for one or two of these.  One that I did not include here is Twine which I discussed in an earlier post.

Web Searching in the world of eBooks

Access Text Networking:

The AccessText Network facilitates and supports the national delivery of alternative electronic textbooks to higher education institutions for students with documented disabilities.

AccessText provides these textbooks by leveraging an online database powered by Intuit QuickBase^® and incorporating publisher-provided information on thousands of textbook titles.

Open Textbook Initiative

Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Connexions

a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc

. Anyone may view or contribute:

• authors create and collaborate
• instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
• learners find and explore content

Examples of Affordable, Free and Open Textbooks

This page contains a vetted list of affordable, online educational resources that might be used in place of an expensive, commercial textbook.  The focus of this list is usability; each resource was recommended by at least one professor who has assigned it.  For links to other more extensive collections and repositories, see our links section.

Make Textbooks Affordable Organization

eLearning and Blended Learning

There are a variety of eLearning resource, free,open and with paid subscriptions on the Internet.

Blended Learning: This page provides links to some resources on blended learning – that is a learning solution created through a mixture of face-to-face and online learning delivered through a mix of media.

Bonk referred to Notschool.net

eLearning according to Wikipedia may be defined as: a term which is commonly used, but does not have a common definition. Most frequently it seems to be used for web-based distance education, with no face-to-face interaction. However, also much broader definitions are common. For example, it may include all types of technology enhanced learning (TEL), where technology is used to support the learning process.

There are resources available such as eLearning Guild for professionals in the field of eLearning design.

ELearn Magazine

Availability of Open Source and Open Software

Open Source: Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Leveraged resources open courseware

John Hopkins OpenCourseWare Initiative:      Project provides access to content of the School’s most popular courses. As challenges to the world’s health escalate daily, the School feels a moral imperative to provide equal and open access to information and knowledge about the obstacles to the public’s health and their potential solutions.

The most current development in this area is folksemantic semantic website that pushes your education interests and needs to you.   According to the website for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning Folksemantic is:

Learning Objects repository and portals

Flexible Learning Toolboxes (Toolboxes) are high quality, cost effective interactive e-learning and assessment resources featuring scenarios, images and activities. They are designed for use by training providers, industry and business and support online delivery of recognised training packages for the vocational  education and training sector.

Learning Objects, Learning Activities: LOLA is an exchange for facilitating the sharing of high-quality learning objects. It contains materials for use across the curriculum, with a particular focus on modules for Information Literacy

Museums: an exhaustive list of museums on the web

Learning Participation in Open Information Communities

Students/learners creating learning objects such as YouTube videos, flickr, and scribd docs.  These types of sites seem to proliferate on the web.

Electronic Collaboration

According to the Business Dictionary this is the: Process of monitoring, critiquing, and cooperating in a project or program by using internet, emails, groupware, etc.

Alternative Reality Learning:

Innovative learning games: alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive experience that uses the real world as a platform to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions”Alternate reality games leverage social technologies to some degree or another for game designers (known as puppetmasters) to provide information to participants, and for participants to communicate with leash other during the process of the game. ARGs are sometimes described as the first narrative art form native to the Internet, because their storytelling relies on the two main activities conducted there: searching for information, and sharing information.”

Virtual reality education website

Real time Mobility Learning and Portability

Define as fromWikipedia: Mobile learning is: Any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Mobile learning institute: Nokia, a world leader in mobile communications, and the Pearson Foundation sponsor the Mobile Learning Institute, which delivers engaging, personalized, project-based learning right to classrooms and community centers across the United States

Networks of Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning Space

This space is for folks interested in the idea of making learning (online, blended, or hybrid) more personalized. This includes not only learning design and instruction, but also the tools and technologies that can be used to make learning more personal.

Refer back to Folksemantic

Peter Bradwell identified the term edgeless university. It seems that something comes up daily that moves us closer towards identifying further trends towards what Bradwell defined as the “Edgeless University.”

What is the Edgeless University? It is identified as follows:

“that the function they perform is no longer contained within the campus, nor within the physically defined space of a particular institution, nor, sometimes, even in higher education institutions at all.”

Bradwell, the author of “The Edgeless University,” for DEMOS identified the following trends that will, , impact education these include, I also added one or two to the list:

1. Open repositories of online content

2. Social Media Networks like Facebook, Twitter

a. Increased collaboration of people who are not geographically co-located

3. Semantic Web tools

4. Use of Virtual Learning

5. The economy

6. Increase in numbers of students

7. Open course ware/open education resources

8. Open and free universities

9. New ways of accrediting learning

10. Open scholarly journals: information is now more searchable

Taken one at a time how have these trends, tools or circumstances moved education closer to the concept of the “Edgeless University?”

1. Open repositories of online content have been around for years with the advent of Merlot.org in 2000. Now you can do a search for open course ware in general or discipline area specifically and find a plethora of resources.

a. Some of these are as follows with their mission or state purpose following:

i. Lecture Fox

1. Lecturefox is a free service. You can find high-quality classes from universities all over the world. We collect without exception lectures from official universities, and we have a special interest in lectures from the faculties physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. In the category “faculty mix” you can find miscellaneous lectures from other departments like electrical engineering, biology, psychology, economics, history and philosophy.

ii. Academic Earth

1. Academic Earth is a repository of video lectures from educators at Yale, MIT, Stanford, UCLA. Their mission is, in part; Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world class education.

iii. Flatworld knowledge

1. From their website they state: We preserve the best of the old – books by leading experts, rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head. Our books are free online. We offer convenient, low-cost choices for students – softcovers for under $30, audio books and chapters, self-print options, and more. Our books are open for instructors to modify and make their own (for their own course – not for anybody else’s). Our books are the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other.

2. Social Media, networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace

a. Defining their roles in education has been blogged about, research however I believe they have yet to be applied enough by a critical mass in education in order to determine their effectiveness in education.

b. That being said the number of users demonstrates that the use of these sites is gaining ground every day. While this may not necessarily mean that users consistently use the sites but more importantly that they have access to and the skill level to be able to use them in some manner for education or a tool similar to them.

i. A list of the sites and the number of registered users can be found at this Wikipedia site.

3. Semantic Web Tools:

a. Sites such as Twine

b. A full listing of Semantic Web Tools is here at Sweet Tools

4. Use of virtual learning

a. Growth in online

i. Affordability and availability of learning management systems

b. Online Education Database

c. Virtual Worlds for learning

d. Increased informal learning

e. Mobile learning

i. Studywhiz

ii. Brainhoney

iii. Driven because of ubiquity

5. Economy

a. Having a well educated population facilitates the economy of a country/nation

b. Improves quality of life

c. Secures the country’s role on the global stage

d. Improves a nation’s ability to work its way out of a recession

e. Also reduces a university’s ability to work raise funds for capital projects

6. Increase in the number of students

a. Driven by the economy and a demand in increased technical skills we will see people commit to lifelong learning more than ever before.

7. Open Courseware/Open content

a. MIT’s open courseware initiative

b. Open Education Resources : 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.

c. Open Courseware initiative

8. Open and Free Universities

a. Peer 2 Peer

i. From the website: Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses.

b. University of the People

i. From the website: University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality, low-cost and global pedagogical model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring collegiate level studies to even the most remote places on earth. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.

9. New and acceptable ways of accrediting learning

a. Certifications

b. Assessment

c. Projects/activities

d. ePortoflios/Portfolios

e. Employer certification

10. Open Scholarly journals/research

a. Directory of Open Access Journals

b. Open Access Journals in Education

c. Highwire Press Stanford University

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it does illustrate the bits and pieces of Bardwell’s Edgeless University being in place and coming together. The resources are available for a university to become edgeless, to be global, to be open ..how they harness and organize this is fundamental to future success.

Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Dennis W. Cheek, PhD stated  and many other also state as well that learning is at the very core what it is to be human, it is what humans do.

One could state that learning is learning whether it is defined as informal or formal and that it is the documented achievement  of quality indicators that give learning credibility.  Is it tangible evidence that the learning has successfully competed a learning task or achieved a learning objective that provides the learner with the credentials  necessary to provide evidence of educational attainment.

What are the specific definitions of formal and informal learning that delineates between the two?  Formal learning may be defined as learning that takes place with in a teacher-student relationship, however from this definition there is clearly no guarantee that this type of learning guarantees a student the type of documented credential necessary to demonstrate that he/she has achieved the learning outcomes.

Perhaps Jay Cross gives the final definition on both formal and informal learning as:

By contrast, informal learners usually set their own learning objectives. They learn when they feel a need to know. The proof of their learning is their ability to do something they could not do before. Informal learning often is a pastiche of small chunks of observing how others do things, asking questions, trial and error, sharing stories with others and casual conversation. Learners are pulled to informal learning.”

Further definitions of informal learning are:

Informal learning is semi-structured and occurs in a variety of places, such as learning at home, work, and through daily interactions and shared relationships among members of society. For many learners this includes speech acquisition, cultural norms and manners.  (retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_learning August 25, 2009)

Informal Learning – Occurs in everyday life and may not even be recognized as learning by the individual. For example, using a television guide may not be equated by an individual as having learned how to use a table. Related concepts/terms include: incidental learning.(retrieved from http://www.nald.ca/adultlearningcourse/glossary.htm#i  August 25, 2009)

Fundamentally the question to be asked may be —Should we recognize or accept informal learning and if so how do we measure achievement by the student towards certain learning objectives or outcomes?  Furthermore who sets these standards and how are they assessed?  Is that sort of learning  measurable and how? Through a review of portfolios, assessments, projects and activities?

There are many barriers to recognizing informal learning as credible and documenting achievement of learning objectives through informal learning.

There are many resources available for a learner to access in order to pursue hs/her informal learning goals.  These resources include podcasts available on Itunes U, Videos on You Tube Edu Channel, MIT’s open courseware,  OpenCourseWare Consortium, Academic Earth, and the learner may also want to access learning object repositories such as Merlot.     We should not overlook repositories of online documentaries, the Internet Archive, and sites like Connexions.

The challenge that lies before the education community in my opinion,  is how best to assess informal learning.  It seems that this is a change that we cannot resist, so it will benefit the self-directed learning and educational institutions to facilitate the validation of such learning.

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