Today was a big day for open policy, with important hearings in the Washington State House and Senate on measures requiring open licensing of courseware developed with state funds. State Representative Reuven Carlyle sponsored the House bill (along with a number of other representatives), and testified at both hearings. The…
CA’s Digital Open Source Library and WA’s Open Course Library
California Bill Pushes for Free Online College Books (via KQED MindShift) Here’s a quick summary of the bills (there are actually 2): • The first CA bill would create 50 open textbooks for high-enrollment college courses that would be free online and available in print for ~$20. Book contracts would be…
Three Things You Should Know About the Open Course Library
It’s been 11 days since the launch of the Open Course Library and we had our 10,000th visitor today. The launch of these 42 courses was covered at least 67 times by reporters and bloggers, which will hopefully lead to increased faculty adoptions. The Student PIRGs has also written a…
Effect International: Building Schools, Reshaping Luck
I usually blog about open education and instructional technology, but I want to share a great campaign to help build schools and create sustainable educational programs in developing nations. The organization is called Effect International. Effect International has built a school in Bihar, India and is looking to build additional…
How To Protect Your IP Through Open Licensing (Thoughts on Pearson’s OpenClass LMS)
Pearson’s new OpenClass LMS hit the Google Apps Marketplace today. While this has already been covered in several places, I’ve had many discussions about the wide array of learning management systems out there, and the one question that comes up repeatedly is “how do we know they won’t just get…