Sorry if this comes off as bragging, but I am very grateful for all the media mentions and other opportunities that have come my way over the past couple months. I’ve decided to do a brain dump here before I forget everything. Here we go:
1. MIT, USU, eduCommons, and enPraxis were all mentioned in the January issue of EDU TECH, a higher ed magazine in India. The entire magazine is available here: http://issuu.com/eduindia/docs/january_2010.
2. The local Herald Journal newspaper did a nice article on the TwHistory.org project in January: http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_82e18eda-2b7e-56b8-9f0d-b31cb9acd272.html.
3. There was another article in the Herald Journal a couple weeks ago on some efforts I got involved with via Stanford to use Web 2.0 ideas to help provide crisis relief in Haiti and Chile. They had me talk on education, but I mainly touched on my vision for micro-learning in the short term. I spoke of “Train the Trainer” types of activities that could be implemented to spread basic skills and knowledge so the progress doesn’t stop when the aid workers leave. http://news.hjnews.com/features/article_7b8e2eda-2b9f-11df-9864-001cc4c002e0.html
4. Last week I interviewed Martha Kanter, Under Secretary of the US Department of Education last week about Open Educational Resources (OER). It’s a long story how I got this opportunity, but I think it’s significant. Under Secretary Kanter is directly under Arnie Duncan in the Obama Administration, responsible for higher ed. The interview was published today in the OCW Consortium March 2010 Newsletter. I have attached a PDF as well. It is noteworthy that with the passage of the Health Care and Education Affordability Act, approximately $3 billion in federal funding ($600,000,000/year for 5 years) has been allocated to states, non-profits, and other institutions for educational programs and projects to boost the college graduation rate and lower cost of post-secondary education. Open Educational Resources projects such as Open Textbooks fall into this category. Interestingly, Martha Kanter has been involved with OER efforts for over a decade, so it is likely that some OER programs will get a big boost from the current administration.
5. I co-wrote a grant proposal with Marion Jensen (another INST PhD student) to the Talis Incubator (a private organization that is funding innovative projects in Open Education space) to develop TwHistory.org, a site for online historical reenactments using Twitter. Our TwHistory proposal has made it to the final round, and was one of only eight proposals selected to advance.
6. I also helped write another Talis grant proposal with enPraxis, this one is focused on converting content packages between educational repositories. It too has advanced to the final round. I am thrilled that USU has two of the final eight spots in a very competitive round of Open Education funding. I expect that three of the eight finalists will be funded.