Open College InfoGraphic (Australia)

This infographic just came in from Krisca Te of Open Colleges, based in Sydney, Australia.  The data used is from a variety of sources.  See bottom right corner for source material. 

Curriki for Open (free) Content for Educators

This week, Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was the keynote speaker at Silicon Valley Education Fund's ShiftED Conference at Foothill College.  Scott is a great presenter and loves to throw zingers at his audience.  He kept his audience spellbound and essentially put forth the case for why America's educational system is broken, that there is not just a learning gap but a canyon.  We need to make dramatic changes immediately.

Scott sold his company to Oracle in 2010 and is now free to do as he pleases.  One of his passions is the concept of making it easy for educators to access free online lesson plans and other resources rather than spending precious money on new textbooks each year.  As he frequently points out, math has not changed so why keep evaluating and adopting and buying new math textbooks when resources could be better spent?  One of his top projects is Curriki, an online system created to support the development and free distribution of educational materials to anyone who needs them.  Curriki was first established in 2004, then became a tax exempt 501C3 non profit in 2006.

Curriki has lots of supporters from business and educational organizations.  According to Scott, the key is to compel teachers to take the TIME to upload their best work.  Seems to me there needs to be more incentives than just the desire to share.  What will that incentive be?  Recognition? A fun game? A way to win points of some sort? How about the option of special templates or branding/marketing tools?


Also, how can an educator or content contributor know if or how their lesson plans are being used?  Are analytics available to the content providers? I love the idea of open and free content available in the cloud, and the large number and quality of supporting organizations, but in a teacher's busy daily life, something other than yet another email is needed to remind them to visit Curriki.  How about something fun?

I'd like to find time to sit in a workshop with elementary, middle and high school teachers and teacher librarian who can compare Curriki to Shmoop and California's Brokers of Expertise.  

Free E-Books from Internet Archives

The Wall Street Journal carried a 6/29/10 news item about the Internet Archives and several public libraries offering free ebooks. The article is "Libraries Have a Novel Idea:Lenders Join Forces to Let Patrons Check Out Digital Scans of Shelved Book Collections" by Geoffrey Fowler.

A video news program also covers the OpenLibraries announcement.

hive.

2010 Horizon Report Preview

Horizon Report 2010 preview
The New Media Consortium released its list of six Horizon Report Topics for 2010 (PDF file) and the Horizon Report 2010 Preview (PDF file). It is "must reading" each year. Read it. Share it. Discuss it. The reports were originally for a higher education audience but now has a huge following.

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content
    
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Electronic Books
  • Simple Augmented Reality
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

An example of Open Content by the California School Library Association is their free, online professional development tutorials: School Library Learning 2.0, Classroom Learning 2.0, and Discovering Assistive Technology. Also Learning 2.0 for Teens. These and all sorts of free online courses are available anywhere in the world via the Internet.

Personally, I think gesture-based computing will become more mainstream sooner than 4-5 years. The Nintendo wii technology has amazing potential, not just fun and games. Nintendo competitors seek to outshine the wii. Microsoft announced Project Natal , which simplifies use by eliminating the use of a controller. Sony has a motion controller in development that includes a handheld, wandlike device that pairs with a camera, splitting the difference between Wii and Natal.

Critical Challenges (4) - the third challenge resonates most with me: "Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key 21st century skill, but there is a widening training gap for faculty and teachers. Often not seen as a priority for faculty or teacher training, digital media literacy is nonetheless a critical skill not only for students but for those who work with them. Faculty and instructors are beginning to realize that they are limiting their students by not helping them to develop and use digital media literacy skills across the curriculum. This
challenge is exacerbated by the fact that it is not clear exactly how to codify the skills or set standards for their measurement."

The Horizon Report documents are also available the Horizon Report Wiki. They are the result of the rounds of discussions and voting by the advisory board members. The final report will be officially released on January 20. The preview version of the report includes a section called Critical Challenges as well as a section for Key Trends. - Buffy Hamilton, AASL Blog, Nov. 23

Google Books Settlement - Who is Filing and What Are They Saying?

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), American Library Association (ALA), and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have created a 9-page document on which groups have filed what documents related to the Google Book Settlement. Brandon Butler, Law & Policy Fellow for ARL authored "The Google Book Settlement: Who Is Filing and What Are They Saying?"

There is a lengthy list of supporters (pro-users and pro-competition), filers with reservations (anti-users, anti-rightsholder), and opponents (anti-competitor, anti-rightsholder, Anti-user, Other). Check it out! Speaking of "battle of the books..."

Virtual Archives @ Stanford University Library

Mattie Taormina, Head of Public Service & Processing Manuscripts Librarian for
Stanford University’s Special Collections and University Archives hosted a virtual “Open House” in Second Life (SL) on Friday morning, 7-31-09. Avatars "dropped in" for an overview of Stanford's new Virtual Archives.

Now scholars (and anyone) can visit Stanford's closed stacks and browse manuscript collections—this option is not allowed in real life, so it opens the small collection to the world. According to Mattie, "Patrons can open virtual Hollinger boxes and a sampling of scanned documents from the real life box will appear along with a link to that collection’s online finding aid. They can then post their reference questions on the bulletin board which sends email to our Special Collections staff. Stanford's Virtual Archive provides access to patrons around the world without endangering the collection."

Second Life (SL) is an online world where visitors create avatars (representations of themselves), explore places like Stanford and other libraries, and interact with others from in real time. Today's tour brought together visitors (avatars) from across the country. See the above snapshot of the visitors to Stanford Virtual Archives and my avatar below, looking at an archival photo. Reference in SL occurs through in-world text and voice chat as well as our reference bulletin board. SL coordinates for Stanford Virtual Archives = 85/224/33.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO OPEN DIGITAL LIBRARIES / GOOGLE BOOKS SETTLEMENT

All Day OPEN WORKSHOP on Alternative Approaches to Digital Libraries and the Google Book Settlement, 7/31/09. Harvard Law School registration is required. *
Announcement:

"The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved . What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement? By exploring these alternatives, this workshop seeks, in the end, to help inform the debate over the Settlement and its terms and to illuminate some of the key policy considerations that are at stake. Its ultimate goal is to develop a series of options and proposals that could improve on the status quo in novel ways."

*Registration is not required for remote participation.
Follow the Berkman Center on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/berkmancenter
Join the IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/berkman (requires an IRC Client such as Chatzilla)
Questions? Contact Amar Ashar at ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Internet Archives - an Update by Brewster Kahle

Incoming BayNet Libraries President Andrea Mitchel invited Brewster Kahle, director and co-founder of the Internet Archive, to speak to area librarians about the Internet Archives and issues related to open content. BayNet is a multi-type library organization that promotes communication, professional development, cooperation, and innovative resource sharing among all types of San Francisco Bay Area Libraries and Information Centers.

Brewster spoke on "Universal Access to Knowledge" at the May 13th BayNet Libraries meeting in San Francisco. His presentation was an updated version of his earlier TED.com presentation (available on video) ending with an argument on the importance of open content and a call to action.

"Now is a good time to be a librarian" says Brewster. A lot is happening. There are struggles over who will own what (content). This is also a time to determine how to spend money better for libraries.

The Internet Archives is a non-profit organization that was created in San Francisco in 1996. It has grown in several ways. It now has 18 book scanning centers on several continents, including a center in San Francisco. The Internet Archives captures and stores:

• BOOKS (1,000 books/day at 10 cents/page);
  
• AUDIO (3,600 bands and concert recordings including rock n' roll);
  
• MOVING IMAGES (about 1,000 early movies and 1950-type public service, PR, lectures);
  
• MAPS;
  
• TELEVISION ARCHIVES;
  
• SOFTWARE (new!).
  
• New collections are regularly added.

Worried that these archives are vulnerable? It was comforting to learn that there are now a few "swap" backups, although Brewster would sleep better if there were 4-5 server locations that keep and maintain complete copies.

Open Content is any kind of creative work published that explicitly allows copying and modifying of its information by anyone -- such as the content on Wikipedia. According to Brewster, Google is the biggest competitor to the Internet Archives, but Google has a commercial business model rather than a non-profit, open content approach. Brewster urged librarians to petition Congress to "Let the Orphans free". Orphan works are items whose copyrights are unclaimed. Pending legislation is controversial because it favors Google. Internet Archives has recently hired Peter Brantly to get activists on board with the Open Content issue. Learn more about digitization, the Google Book Search Settlement, and the future of books and libraries!

You could easily spend hours on the Internet Archives site. Start with the "Wayback Machine" to see what your website looked like 10-15 years ago. Enjoy!