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Category Archives: Open Educational Resources

Can Creative Commons effect social change in education?

I joined CC two years ago this January, and since then my views about CC’s role in culture and education have evolved. Back then, I was pretty much a novice to this space, though sharing in education sounded like a no brainer to me. But I’ve had time to grow with my program (CC Learn), [...]

Effective Advocacy Without Ideology in Open Education

Recently George Siemens posted some thoughts on the topic of openness as an ideology, and a dialogue began to take shape around whether the open education movement is best served by pragmatists or ideologues. In true blogger fashion, I want to ignore a lot of the context and put my own spin on the topic [...]

Peer 2 Peer in action in Berlin

Photo by John Britton CC BY-SA
A Peer 2 Peer University co-founder recently posed this question to our tight knit community of volunteers: “Where are we in terms of P2PU’s evolution (one guy with his shirt off, or three people falling over themselves?)” Of course, this question was in reference to this infamous YouTube video of [...]

All educational use as “fair use”?

Something I hear frequently is this wish that all “educational uses” be considered “fair uses,” thereby presumably freeing the resources from the usual constraints of copyright. How shall we count the ways that this seemingly simple idea is confused at best, and horribly wrong at worst? Let’s see…
1. Define “educational use” for me. Does it [...]

Beyond the Textbook: The Illusion of Quality in K-12 Education

Current textbook initiatives give the impression that educational quality will suffer without textbooks. In response to economic crises, these initiatives focus on saving the textbook, by either reducing its cost or digitizing many of its components. However, this public perception, that educational quality will suffer without textbooks, begs the question.

Comments on “In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History”

Digital textbooks and open learning are in the news again, just in time for back to school. The New York Times has published an article called “In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History” by Tamar Lewin, who profiles the increasing adoption of digital textbooks by school districts as a way of cutting costs and as [...]

Presenting at the WhippleHill User Conference 2009

I like Boston; it’s unassuming. The city doesn’t pretend to be anything but what it is, namely, a smallish town with high rises in some directions and green, trimmed shrubbery in others. Granted, I have not seen much of the city; having wandered to the Commons after my talk, I managed to surprise only Paul [...]