Now is not the time to hold back.
Creative-Commons
OER and the Future of Knewton
Jose Ferriera, the CEO of Knewton, recently published a piece on edSurge arguing that scaling OER cannot “break the textbook industry” because, according to him, it has low production values, no instructional design, and is not enterprise grade. Unsurprisingly, David Wiley disagrees. I also disagree, but for somewhat different reasons than David’s.
Villanova Distance Learning Task Force: A case study in missing attribution
While doing research for a blog post about 2U filing for an IPO, I ran across a presentation given last year by the Villanova University Distance Learning Task Force for a Faculty Forum. In this presentation I found one of my graphics that was shared on e-Literate and in EDUCAUSE Review. I’m flattered that they […]
Boundless Is Totally #Winning
I was contacted by Boundless CEO Ariel Diaz regarding a concern he had with my blog post about the lawsuit outcome. This was not entirely surprising, and I was curious to see which aspects of the post concerned him. Was it my characterization of Boundless as not a content company? Was it my speculation that […]
Textbook Publishers and OERs
Not too long ago, The Chronicle ran an piece called “Publishers Criticize Federal Investment in Open Educational Resources.” The meat of the article was some quotes of textbook company executives on a panel at an SIIA conference speaking out against a provision in a United States Department of Labor grants program that requires course materials […]
What I'd Like to See Next in iTunes University
Update: Although you can’t copy and paste the podcatching URL from the iTunes client, it is apparently possible to expose the podcatching URL from the administration interface. I have no direct information about why this is so. However, it is consistent with Apple’s general approach to DRM. It may be that by making it easy […]
Search, Copyright, and Course Pack Affordances
I’m still very much interested in the idea of creating a system that enables professors to assemble course packs out of Open Access or, better yet, Creative Commons-licensed content. But my idea is broadening somewhat based on what I’m learning at my new job.