Discussion resources for The World is Open

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

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 book 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.

http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org/statement.asp?id2=37833

eLearning and Blended Learning

There are a variety of eLearning resources, 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 in the book which is: an international 'Online Learning Community' offering an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to engage with school or other complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units.

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:

"a project to create tools that increase the impact of open education resources by helping people find, filter, collaborate around, and remix them. As part of the project, work is underway to integrate the OCW Finder, OER Recommender, and Luvfoo. Plans are to improve these tools and add collaboration, personalized recommendation, widgets, and publishing features. COSL is holding an online meeting on March 26 to describe the Folksementic project and solicit input."

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

Bradwell's Edgeless University

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.

Flocks, Twines and Aardvarks OH MY!

We have had the industrial age, the information age, and what some have dubbed as the knowledge age..I propose that what we are now entering is the first phase of the Social Everything Age...I just received in the mail a book entitled Socioeconomics, by Erik Qualman Social Media, Social Networking, Social Learning----on and on! Or perhaps we are entering the Semantic Age which is difficult to define as I am not sure that a singular definition of Semantic has been identified yet..but perhaps that isn't important various definitions of Semantic are as follows:

Semantics is the study of meaning.


Semantics: is of or relating to meaning, especially meaning in language

Further searches on the term Semantic Web lead me to this:

Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content

For more in-depth reading on the Semantic Web I suggest reviewing A Semantic Web Primer by Grigoris Antoniou, Frank Van Harmelen available in Google Books.




I started this post with a single purpose of writing about Twine. I am using Twine as a social bookmarking tool, but have engaged in discussions with others which lead me to the conclusion that they found it to be much more. In the process of using it as a social bookmarking tool I started to join Twines, add items and interact with others. However the single purpose of focusing this posting on Twine lead me on a safari. I entitle this a safari because In the process of discovering Twine I also discovered Flock and AardvarK!


While I was thinking and planning this post on Twine I was reading about Semantic Tools from a feed in Google Reader and was reading about a Semantic Web tool called Aardvark. I signed up for Aardvark and based upon my personal interests I was quickly connected to a network of people who shared similar interests as me. Because was researching for this post on Twine I asked my network if they had any experience in using or applying Twine for education purposes, I swiftly receive a response back via Instant Messenger (which is also integrated with Aardvark as an option when you sign up). That response/dialogue is as follows:

Jordan:

I've been Using it since the beginning, and it's a great resource to aggregate pages of interest for a group or team; you can all add to a twine or have the twine aggregate from keywords or many other options. It's inherently social. I'm not sure how you would integrate it into a curriculum, but what education level are you interested in using it for?

You:

this would be at the college or university level. I thought if you could use discipline specific content from the web and put it into a twine the students could then access the content there and discuss/make comments on it..in addition current/related content could be added if seen as appropriate.

Jordan:

That seems like a perfect paradigm; as long as the guidelines for suitable content are explicitly defined there should be no problem: the comment system combine with individual aggregation of pertinent topics seems like something conducive to focused topical learning.

This dialogue occurred late on a Friday night, now I am excited to see what kind of discussion I could get going on a higher traffic date and time. I did find Jordan's responses very helpful. One can't help but be astounded that you can have this sort of exchange by firing a shot in the dark on an obscure topic almost instantaneously.


In the process of doing all of this I also came across Flock...One glance at the website and I realized this was a tool that I could use...in my attempt at defining this I will just say it's a "web browser for your social networking sites." I will work more on defining the application of Flock on the future but I am excited by it.


Twine was first rolled out in October 2007 as a semantic bookmarking tool by Radar Networks. There were many press announcement heralding this roll out, however by March 2008 writers in Read, Write Press were already expressing disappoint in the tool.

From a June 1 article in Fast Company by Dan Macsai about Twine I learned that:

Founder Nova Spivak...stated that Twine is: "Digg ... on Ritalin." Twine's unique visitors have grown more than 40% each month since its October 2008 debut, topping 80% in February 2009 -- more than 1 million uniques."

"

Based upon the article and my experience in using Twine it works like this:

You can join or establish your own threads, or "twines," centered around specific ideas ("social media"), people ("Barack Obama"), and events

Users fill them with content found around the Web.

The site then tracks the articles they add and the topics they follow, and assembles an interest-based personality profile.

Based on what Twine learns about you and the users in your shared Twine..., it sends you news and friend recommendations

Example of the Twine Digest:

50 Social News Websites You Can Use « SEO-INRA's Blog
Bookmark added by at 11:01 AM CDT
There are a great deal of social news sites on the Internet, sometimes too many. Most of them are dormant and are no longer active, largely because they were poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place.


Why Adults Have Fed Twitter's Growth - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Bookmark added by at 05:34 PM CDT
But one big reason for the disparity is simple: When Twitter became popular, teenagers already had their favorite Web sites for communicating, so they were not interested in a new one. The people who discovered Twitter were adults who were new to social networking.



Eco-friendly Human-based Energy Production
Bookmark added by at 06:01 AM CDT
As we are squeezing every bit of our lives to save on energy, some radical ideas pop-up, asking why don't we produce energy from our everyday deeds . Watching my two kids in the playground, I thought about the opportunity cost of the energy their crazy games could produce. It was a funny idea, ...


Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence - tech - 08 July 2009 - New Scientist
Bookmark added by at 05:55 PM CDT
EVER had the feeling something is missing? If so, you're in good company. Dmitri Mendeleev did in 1869 when he noticed four gaps in his periodic table . They turned out to be the undiscovered elements scandium, gallium, technetium and germanium. Paul Dirac did in 1929 when he looked deep into

As you review this posting I want you to be aware that these are things that I put together in a matter of a few hours, reviewed, had a dialogue with individuals and all at my "fingertips.." I am sure you have had similar experiences, however I am of the generation or background that is amazed by having all of this at hand.