System Technology Plan for WA CTCs

The WA Community and Technical College system has drafted a Technology Plan to guide future system level investments and strategy for how our colleges use technology to support 21^st century learning spaces, student services and administrative applications.....

AND it makes suggestions for how Open Educational Resources might be incorporated into our future thinking.

What do you think? What needs to be changed? Your comments are most welcome!

Misc. Open Textbook Resources

I was asked to put together some open textbook resources for a colleague last week. I thought other might find the list useful:

Watch this! http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/25

Gov Textbook Reports

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05806.pdf

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/turnthepage.pdf

Traditional textbooks company models

http://www.safaribooksonline.com/

http://www.coursesmart.com/

New Textbook Models

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/minisite/

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

http://www.cafescribe.com/test.php

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/15/textbooks

http://www.maketextbooksaffordable.org

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/print_on_demand_space_heats_up.php

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2842&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/15/textbook_costs/

Other Textbooks Resources:

http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration

http://edlabor.house.gov/micro/coaa_textbook.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020700627.html

http://www.plos.org/cms/node/204

http://campustechnology.com/articles/52879/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/22/EDRTUJ346.DTL

Indian Universities Create Free Collection of Lecture Videos That Rivals MIT's

A group of seven technical universities in India have teamed up to create a free YouTube library of engineering courses. There are more than 50 courses online already—with all of the lectures delivered in English. (from the Chronicle)

You can access the full list of IIT courses here.

Sharing eLearning Content

Sharing eLearning Content – A Synthesis and Commentary

“It is a holy grail of eLearning that content, be it raw media assets, information or learning objects, learning activities, or learning designs, should be made once and used in learning many times, either unchanged or modified. Behind this aspiration lies a complex web of interdependent issues, which are the subject matter of this report.

The prime motivators are:

1. the improvements in quality and consistency that can be achieved if many people with complementary expertise and experience are able to contribute;
   
   
2. the efficient use and reuse of the public money that is spent to develop these sometimes very expensive collections, objects or artifacts;
   
   
3. the subsequent freeing of staff effort to concentrate on pedagogical issues and the delivery of materials consistently within institutions (and then across institutions).” . . .

Jorum to move to open access

From ITC...

“It was announced today that Jorum, the UK national repository for learning and teaching materials funded by JISC, is to offer open educational resources. This will make it easier for lecturers and teaching staff to share and re-use each other's teaching resources.”

Jorum is a free online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions, helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials. Jorum accepts learning and teaching resources across all subject areas for both Higher and Further education in the UK. However the amount of content in each subject area is dependent on the community and people like you. Resources range from simple materials such as Word documents or Powerpoint presentations, to complex learning packages that combine various multimedia formats such as video, audio and animation. Once you have registered for a Jorum account you will be able to contribute, search and download resources.

California Open Source Textbook Project

I was listening to Wikinomics this past week, while cross-crossing WA, and stumbled upon the California Open Source Textbook Project. I like their bold purpose statement:

COSTP benefits will be 1) the complete elimination of the current $400M+ line item for California's K-12 textbooks; 2) a significant increase in the range of content afforded to California's K-12 textbooks; 3) a permanent end to California's textbook shortages; and 4) creation of fully portable content holdings database that scales with classroom technologies as they are introduced.

Thus, COSTP will provide a new model for textbook creation in the State of California by 1) leveraging free, already-existing, and widely available K-12 educational content in the public domain; 2) better leveraging the substantial curriculum-based intellectual capital of California's best K-12 teachers; and 3) using innovative copyright tools to secure new and dormant K-12 textbook content that would not otherwise be made available.

Yes!