Free online event: Blastoff - Taking Education into OERbit

You are invited to participate in this free online event!

December 7, 20:30 - 22:00 GMT
Facilitator: Paul Stacey

Join Paul Stacey on the Starship BCcampus in this journey through the universe of Open Educational Resources (OER). Learn how OER are opening up a new education frontier. Visit OER colonies throughout education space and see for yourself what an OER is and how they are being used to create credentials. Find out how you can use OER in your own teaching and learning practice. Discover how the future of OER is being shaped by Foundations, public government Ministries, and everyday educators who simply choose to become OER space cadets. Buckle up as Paul takes you into OERbit! This session is part of the Professional Learning Series organized by BCcampus, eCampusAlberta, and Alberta North.

Access the details in the Professional Learning Series group at SCoPE.

Wellcome Collection

The Wellcome Collection, "200 years of human culture", has very interesting images that are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use, under one of two Creative Commons licences.

L0024012  
Credit: Wellcome Library, London  
MANUSCRIPTS: WIHM Western MS 4268
ROSSI Bernardino, a notebook of surgical lectures, 
Naples 1738.
Illustration of dental instruments. Collection: Archives & Manuscripts
Library reference no.: WMS and MS 4268
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK: England & Wales

The World is Open

This book comes highly recommended: World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education by Curtis Bonk (aka TravelinEdMan). As a special holiday bonus event at SCoPE Curtis will be joining us for a Q&A.

When: Monday, December 21, 2009, 22:00 GMT

Where: Elluminate

If you don't have the book, visit the World is Open site to access the book prequel and postscript, links to the original articles, many book excerpts, and Web resources. Or if you don't have time to read, come anyway!

We're gathering YOUR questions ahead of time in this SCoPE forum.

Free book on mobile learning in higher education

Free book on mobile learning in higher education « Tony Bates:

"Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney and Brian Ferry (editors), (2009) New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education, Wollongong, Australia: Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong, 138p

This book is fully downloadable from here.

The purpose of this e-book is to explore the use of mobile devices in learning in higher education, and to provide examples of good pedagogy."

Thanks to Tony Bates for bringing this book to our attention, who in turn thanks Richard Elliot. :-)

Open Access Week

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

Plan to participate in Open Access Week, October 19-23, 2009. Activities are planned for that week by organizations all over the world. Of particular interest is a series of noon hour webcasts organized by Athabasca University.

The objective of AU’s Open Access Week is to promote understanding, adoption, use and production of open access resources for formal and informal teaching and learning.

Athabasca University will present a series of five noon-hour webcasts exploring major issues and opportunities presented by open access. Each session will feature an internationally known promoter and developer of open access resources, research or ideas.

Each session will be offered via Elluminate web conference from noon to 1 p.m. Mountain Time (11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Pacific)

Monday, October 19 - The Open Access Scholar

The review, publication and interaction associated with open access dissemination of research is the focus of this presentation, featuring Dr. Terry Anderson, editor of the open access journal The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
http://tinyurl.com/obwmka

Tuesday, October 20 - Open Access Research Opportunities and Strategies

Much remains to be discovered in relation to the technology, economy, politics and psychology of effectively producing and using open access content. Patrick McAndrew and Candice Thiele are co-directing OLnet, an international research network designed to assist with and co-ordinate research into the most effective use of these opportunities and to gain both basic and applied knowledge relating to open access content. In this session, they will highlight research opportunities, methodologies and results of current projects.
http://tinyurl.com/npuhh7

Wednesday, October 21 - Open Access Publication

Publication models for scholarly monographs, featuring the pioneering work of Athabasca University Press, Canada’s first open access press. Dr. Frits Pannekoek, president of Athabasca University, will discuss the vision and the challenges of editing, producing and distributing paper books, while licensing the free download of the full text.
http://tinyurl.com/qne9b4

Thursday, October 22 - Open Access Archives and Repositories

Governments and research funding organizations are increasingly reluctant to fund research that is not widely distributed and affordable, creating the need for repositories through which scholars can legally distribute their research results and data. Steve Schafer, director of Athabasca University Library, will discuss how open access relates to and enhances library services. Tony Tin, founder of Athabasca University's repository, AU Space, will talk about and demonstrate AU’s growing collection and discuss the challenges and opportunities of self-archiving.
http://tinyurl.com/ogwgcj

Friday, October 23 - Open Educational Resources

The production, licensing, use and re-use of learning objects accessible through open access distribution will be the focus of this presentation. Noted author and scholar Dr. Rory McGreal will share his knowledge of the increasing opportunities and challenges associated with the open access publication of learning materials.
http://tinyurl.com/kv87un

The CU Online Handbook

The CU Online Handbook is a free publication that is available for download (PDF). The book is edited by Patrick R. Lowenthal, David Thomas, Anna Thai, and Brian Yuhnke. Here is a preview of the Table of Contents:

Trends and Issues with Online Learning
1. From Reluctant and Reticent to Engaged and Enthusiastic: The Passage to Online Teaching
Susan Giullian

2. Preparing Special Education Teachers Through Online Instruction
Donna Sobel

3. Using eCollege to Facilitate Learning, Provide for Program Coherence, Manage Accountability Innovations, and Ensure the Evolution of a Principal Licensure
Program
Connie Fulmer

4. Make, Share, Find: Web 2.0 and Informal Learning
Phil Antonelli

Technology in Action
5. The Advantages of a Ning Social Network Within a Higher Education Program
Laura Summers

6. Fresh and Forward-thinking: Using Blogs for Educational Purposes
Joanna C. Dunlap & Ellen Stevens

7. Hanging on by a Thread
Dorothy F. Garrison-Wade

8. Instructional Uses of Twitter
Joanna C. Dunlap & Patrick R. Lowenthal

9. Using Audio for Giving Feedback to Project Teams: A Useful Complement to Track Changes
Brent G. Wilson

10. Wordle… Just for Phluff?
Joanna C. Dunlap

11. A Teaching Video Project Brought to Closure
Farah A. Ibrahim

12. Improving the Design of PowerPoint Presentations
Patrick R. Lowenthal

DiscoverEd

We all appreciate the many open educational resources available these days. However, finding these resources can sometimes be a time-consuming process. This new tool looks like it could be very useful!

DiscoverEd is an experimental project from ccLearn which attempts to provide scalable search and discovery for educational resources on the web.

Facilitating Online | OER Commons

This new resource by Tony Carr, Shaheeda Jaffer, and Jeanne Smuts from University of Cape Town is comprehensive, and freely available for your use with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 license.

Facilitating Online | OER Commons: "The Centre for Educational Technology (CET) produced a Course Leader’s Guide as an Open Educational Resource to assist educators and trainers who wish to implement a course on online facilitation within their institution or across several institutions. The guide contains the course model, week-by-week learning activities, general guidance to the course leader on how to implement and customise the course and specific guidelines on each learning activity."