All Blog Posts (295)

The ninth International Open Ed Conference 2012 was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from October 16 to 18. This conference brings together many of the thought leaders and practitioners in the open education movement from around the world to report on progress, compare notes, and collaborate.  This year’s conference got off to a rousing start as the Honorable John Yap, Minister of Advanced Education, Innovation and Technology for British…

ODG-COT senior marketing professional Deepa Sinha has written and issued a press release announcing the DynamicBooks sponsorship of the Open Doors - College Open Textbooks 2012-2013 program. Thanks to Deepa for…

Is anyone participating in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) or creating one?   I have been posting about them this year at http://www.serendipity35.net/index.php?/categories/43-MOOC and I am considering creating one this fall for next spring. These courses - often with many thousands of participants - seem to be the right place for open textbook use whether they are free or low cost. Check out my…

I spent the summer converting my old algebra study guide to ePub format and was able to have it listed in the Google Play store.

[ Click here to read my blog post about it ]

It was not that hard to do and the Google Play eBook reader is quite good!  It looks ok on all of my devices and transfers between them seamlessly. 

Downside:  You have to buy this FREE ebook.  Not…

I've just published a new Open Access brief introduction to writing and rhetoric.  It is entitled _What Is Writing? A Brief Introduction to Writing as an Act of Communication_.  You can access it here:

www.whatiswriting.org

College Open Textbooks has selected two texts, Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics by Dr. Timothy Tregarthen and Dr. Libby Rittenberg, as its featured books for August 2012.

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 17, 2012 -

College Open Textbooks is proud to announce that it has selected two outstanding texts, Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics by Dr. Timothy Tregarthen and Dr. Libby Rittenberg, as its…

You can download or view online the special issue of Distance Education, devoted to OERs and Social Inclusion. It's worth a look!…

While most of us are focused on the price of textbooks, what interests me most is the way Creative Commons can fix other problems with textbooks. I am not convinced that the monopoly held by four publishers has been healthy for the field of history. For example, I am not sure how every textbook came to follow nearly the exact same narrative when it comes to labor history. Why is it Homestead, Haymarket and Pullman Square every time? The Seattle General Strike, Bisbee Deportation, Ludlow…

Last week, the Online Teaching Conference was held at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, CA. Among the over 80 presentations were these gems from OER advocates.

OpenCourseware Development: Health Ed Case Study with …

The Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange (SIPX) is designed to automate the copyright clearance process, and is expected for rollout later this year for Stanford campuses. SIPX is a Web service comprised of:

• a) a…

http://whyopenedmatters.org/video/50/education-without-limits-why-o#

I just came across a very useful and informative article entitled "The Re-Use and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources." I'll try to make it even briefer with an outline of available technologies:

Authoring and Delivery Technology…

Aalto University in Finland has a new publication: Towards Peer Production in Public Services: Cases from Finland available for free download. The book's description reads: "There are many challenges and opportunities in designing,…

What a coincidence!  The day after I send a message out about copy editing for open textbooks, Merrill Perlman writes a rant about the need for editing on cnn.com.  The one thing I would add is that many embarrassing mistakes are not as obvious as the ones she cites.  I found several in my son's 9th grade physics textbook.

My original post was "…

One of the challenges to widespread OER adoption is that of finding everything that's available and discovering what's out there. I've tried in other posts to point to…

The list continues to grow, but here's a start:

450 Free Online Courses from Top Universities…

Here are some very helpful presentations you can share with constituents. Presenters include Jacqui Cain, Matt Gehrett,

James Glapa-Grossklag,

Una…