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A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
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A step toward web-scale open education
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| by Judy Breck |
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The Hewlett Foundation, Google and ccLearn have undertaken to build what they are calling an “open education web-scale search.” For the foundation, the project is part of their now more than half-a-decade long initiative to support open educational resources (OER). The search “smarts” will come from Google and the project will be administered by the new ccLearn based at Creative Commons.
“Web-scale” is a commons concept: the scale reaches across the full universe of availability making it possible for anyone in that universe to connect to what that person is looking for. As mobile devices deliver the web universe more and more effectively, the intersecting of web-scale and individual student scale will typify the learning dynamic of the knowledge commons.
Obviously, OER is a commons concept too: if educational resources are not open, they are locked away from the knowledge commons and can only be used by an elite who are allowed into the virtual vaults where the resources are walled away.
When history looks back on the decade of explosive growth of the Internet now ending— 1997-2007 — there will be a very puzzling question. That question will be: why didn’t the Internet change the schools around the world the way it changed communication, entertainment, business and so many other things?? Why is the picture above of the boy using a handheld to learn something that hasn’t happened yet? His parents use Blackberries to do business. He uses his handheld to download music. But only a few in his generation use even their desktops and laptops as the primary tool of their education. It is easy to complain about education — about schools, and money problems, and cultural things. But several decades of complaining have not accomplished a lot toward making education better.
Whatever the reasons it has lagged in embracing online resources and networking, it is time to move education into the 21st century. The new digital, connected world in which we find ourselves gives us a way to turn to new approaches for learning. The web-scale, commons approach can be a platform that will support a new enlightenment of global learning. The picture above represents something that can actually happen for kids worldwide within the next very few years.
Preparing for a new kind of education — in which a student with a mobile can learn on a web-scale — requires some important steps. These include for starters, getting mobiles better at interfacing the Internet, getting smarter mobiles to ever more youngsters and opening up many more educational resources online. The new partnership of the Hewlett Foundation, Google and ccLearn to build open education web-scale search is a strong step into the new learning commons. On the ccLearn page about the project are these invitations to participate:
"If you are an OER provider (site, institution, individual):
"We are collecting URLs for all existing OER sites and online materials, and we would be delighted to include your materials in the collection! This collection of URLs will be available to anyone who wants it — either to build a new service, repository, portal, or to improve the reach of an existing site. In classic OER manner, we wish to pool our shared knowledge and resources, and provide the resulting collection of URLs as a free “kernel” that anyone can use. Please read our FAQ for further information and instructions on submitting your URL collection.
"If you are interested in finding OER:
"We are working with the Hewlett Foundation and Google to develop this open education web-scale search; the process has just begun. The collection of URL’s will be available for anyone, including all members of the OER community, to use as needed. We will post regular updates on the development of this search tool, so please check back frequently. In September, we will also implement a listserv and other means of staying in touch with this and all other ccLearn projects."
tags: new-york united states education oer cclearn hewlett google mobile
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