Archive for October, 2009
Talis have produced a podcast of a review board round-table. The podcast provides insight into the Talis Incubator, as well as introducing members of the review board, commenting on their background and what they feel Talis can add to the area of Open Education.
For the unfamiliar, Talis is “an angel fund to further the cause of open education”. Talis launched at the ALT-C 2009 conference last month and provides funding of up to £15,000 to help individuals or small groups realise ideas which intend to further development of Open Education. In return, they request that all research and outcomes are returned to the community via ‘open source’.
Chris Clarke, Programme Manager for the Talis Education Division, gives an overview of the Incubator in the podcast – its motivations, some practical steps and time scales involved in applying and how the review board decides which submissions to take forward.
Other members of the review board involved in the podcast discussion are:
Prof. Andy Lane, former Director of OpenLearn at the Open University
(introduction at 00:08:30-00:12:30);
Steve Ryan from the Centre for Learning Technology at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(introduction at 00:12:35-00:15:16);
Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island
(introduction at 00:15:32-00:18:30).
The podcast runs for about an hour and is invaluable for anyone considering applying to the Incubator. To be considered for funding from Talis, you need to write a proposal according to the guidelines.
Direct mp3 download
October 29th, 2009
The UNESCO OER Community have published an Access2OER report, based on discussions earlier this year in February/March. The report is available in PDF or on their wiki. One of the main aims of the discussion was to stimulate new work in the area and generate new proposals, two of which are being actively pursued:
Introducing digital OER into Zambian primary schools through school-based professional development.
This project intends to overcome access barriers, and engage with OER for Zambian primary/secondary school mathematics teaching. Such barriers include issues around infrastructure, awareness and appropriateness of materials, though it is hoped that various experiences and solutions can be drawn upon to make this successful.
Funding is limited and will be used primarily to engage in Spring 2010 with teachers in Zambia through a North-South partnership. The outcomes will be reported at eLearning Africa in May 2010, at Lusaka. Further information is available here.
Continued engagement through the UK National Commission for UNESCO.
OER has been a long-standing theme within the Information Society Working Group. The second proposal, however, recommends a shift in focus to concentrate on issues around OER access and collaboration. To achieve this, UNESCO are running a series of meetings to further focus on feasible projects. The first meeting will take place in Nottingham on the 25th/26th in conjunction with the Nottingham Open Learning Conference and OER Africa
Also blogged by Bjoern Hassler over at Open Education News.
OpenLearn published a research report in July – news story.
October 29th, 2009
UNESCO (with support from their Communications and Information Sector) released their OER Toolkit today as a resource for academics and institutions, who are interested in participating in open education projects. The toolkit has also been created with a special focus on developing countries according to the press release, the draft facilitated by Philipp Schmidt of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
The toolkit is hosted on the OER_Wiki and will potentially be released as a refined PDF version in future if there is support from the community. As ever in the OER world, UNESCO advise that the toolkit is a work in progress (hence the wiki hosting) and as such may change and evolve over time as the outlook and oppotunities afforded the OER movement do.
The toolkit is primarily designed for academics with an interest in finding and using OER relevant to the courses they teach, or who wish to publish OER that they have developed – OpenLearn allows people to do this in the LabSpace. Some sections of the toolkit, however, are aimed at institutional decision-makers and academics that may aspire to set up their own OER projects. This content could also be of interest to institutional planners, IT staff or librarians who are interested in setting up an OER project and could benefit from understanding the academic’s perspective.
October 15th, 2009
Today is Blog Action Day and the subject is climate change. Over 8000 bloggers have signed up with an estimated readership of almost 12 million people. While I fear anything I say will be a further duplication, that’s really the point, to spread the message.
While we all believe we have a handle on climate change, how much do we really know and are we aware of small things we can do to have a positive impact? Personally, I don’t own a car and take the bus to work. I’m actually moving closer to work and will then be able to walk. I’m not obsessive but I recycle as much as I can and would say that 90% of general packaging now goes in a red bag as opposed to a black one. I started being more proactive about recycling 6 months ago and it’s quite scary to think how much recyclable material I was sending to landfill. I have a small bin on the counter in the kitchen now for regular waste and my 50L bin is now the recycling bin. I suspect many people do the converse and this is one simple way to literally turn climate change around.
I’m lucky that I live in a south-facing apartment and rarely need to use heating (I’ll simply wear an extra layer when I move). My wife is a vegetarian, I switch everything off at the mains (except for the PVR) at night, buy furniture from sustainable sources and, best excuse I’ve found so far, don’t have kids! So there you have it, simple, everyday actions like this mean my carbon footprint is pretty small and I’m sure many of us are able to implement at least one of these changes – though you shouldn’t really give up your kids.
The Open University (OU) had computers setup at their recent 40th anniversary event to calculate carbon footprint which I hope had an impact. The area certainly seemed popular – there’s some pictures of the events here on flickr. If we created the tools ourselves, they’re a well kept secret so here’s a good carbon footprint calculator.
OpenLearn, the OU’s site which gives free access to its learning materials has a number of study units relevant to climate change in the LearningSpace (detailed below). In the LabSpace, you can remix and reuse materials and there is also the opportunity for collaboration with others. There’s a collaborative space for the 10:10 Climate Change Campaign which also links to OU iTunesU podcasts, YouTube videos and use of the OU’s Cohere tool which makes sense of ideas/arguments and shows the connections between these and other people.
So there you have it. There’s plenty of information out there to become better informed and make a positive impact on climate change and global warming. Congratulations to Blog Action Day for informally raising the profile and getting people thinking and, hopefully, acting. You can follow Blog Action Day and OpenLearn on Twitter – @blogactionday & @OpenLearn.
OpenLearn courses related to climate change:
Climate change
Climate change is a key issue on today’s social and political agenda. This unit explores the basic science that underpins climate change and global warming.
Climate change: island life in a volatile world
What impact will global warming really have? This unit examines the potential problems faced by the people of the Pacific Island of Tuvalu as a result of rising sea levels. Where would you go if your island is only a few feet above sea level? Who would you blame?
Global warming
This unit provides an introduction to global warming. We will be considering the history of global warming by looking at the pattern of ice ages and analyisis of recorded temperatures. We will aim to gather meaningful information from this data. We will briefly assess the impact and influence of humans on global warming and, finally, we will examine climate models and how to predict future changes.
Managing coastal environments
Coastal environments are by their nature ever-changing. This unit looks at the example of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, England, describing how the current state of the estuary came to be. It examines the contests and conflicts that centre on the estuary in terms of managing the environment for human needs and the needs of the other species who make their habitat there.
Water and human health
Water is a natural resource that is vital for human survival and health, although only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s supply is available to humans and terrestrial animals. In this unit we look at threats, such as pollution, to water’s capacity to support life around the world.
October 15th, 2009
YouTube announces today (on the same day we welcome our new Vice Chancellor) that 45 university YouTube channels from six countries in Europe (France, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom) and Israel, will now be accessible through YouTube EDU, a portal for university content on YouTube. The portal launched for US universities in March. The European launch brings new functionality – users can now select videos by subject and language.
The Open University’s YouTube channel is the largest and most popular of the UK university channels – our 633 videos have been viewed over 1.6 million times and we have 2600 subscribers. In September, 77% of views came from outside the UK with most views coming from the US.
The Head Spin Trick viral alone received over 480,000 views, after The Thatcher Effect – a psychology experiment from the 80s – was discussed on BBC show QI. Other popular views are a playlist of 90 second lectures with big thinkers at The Open University; mind tricks such as We can read your mind and Mindbender; big questions such as How do they choose the next Dalai Lama?, How beautiful was Cleopatra?; and behind the scenes of OU/BBC broadcasts such as videos from the set of Bang Goes the Theory.
John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at The Open University, was good enough to comment while dashing round the country: “As we move from a media ecosystem dominated by broadcast television into one dominated by ‘pull’ media like the Web, universities have to be where the action – and the demand – is. Given that The Open University has multimedia in its institutional DNA, YouTube EDU is an obvious platform for us and it’s good to see that a significant number of our European partners have come to the same conclusion.”
YouTube staff have developed the portal in the 20% time they are allowed to dedicate to special projects. Anna De Paula Hanika, product marketing for YouTube in EMEA is one of the key people dedicating time to this along with Jack Sheldon. In their PR Anna says what YouTube EDU means to her: “YouTube EDU is a global classroom where everyone – from those who want to see what university courses are like, to intellectually curious graduates – can watch and engage with a range of academic videos that have been uploaded by some of the world’s most prestigious universities. Our education destination is a direct response to our community’s interest in this type of content and we look forward to adding even more institutions over time.”
The Open University launched four official channels on YouTube in August 2008 – OUView for videos about the University, OULearn for learning materials from OU courses and BBC broadcasts, OULife for student and staff events and OUResearch.
The channels aren’t just about OU video content but give us the opportunity to engage people in conversation about the content and encourage viewers to submit their own videos. Recently viewers of the BBC/OU Saving Britain’s Past series have posted videos describing what they consider as their heritage
The latest OU videos include interviews with leading experts in subjects such as Cannabis and consciousness and Why space missions fail,; ‘How to’ videos such as Making a CD case out of a card and How to make diamonds, How to spot a fake pound coin and a home makeover video on eco-renovations.
October 1st, 2009
