Brainstorm in Progress: cable green

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Friday, January 31, 2014

Open Textbooks and Student Success

Cable Green (Photo: Jeffrey Beall)

The tirelessly brilliant and ubiquitous Cable Green sent out today's announcement from Creative Commons about the U.S. PIRG Education Fund report called, “Fixing the Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives." This report reinforces what the research is already showing - open textbooks can be a significant contributing factor to student success. The results we saw with projects like the Kaleidoscope Project was that students were actually doing better in courses that were using openly licensed, free textbooks. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the reasons at College of the Redwoods was that the faculty created textbooks were written for a particular student population to solve particular problems. The books actually addressed the needs of the community. You can still find articles out there about the so-called suspect quality of open education resources, but they are being written by folks who have not looked at what is out there now. Articles like “The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students” by TJ Bliss, John Hilton, David Wiley, and Kim Thanos go a long way to dispel those myths as does "A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in Middle and High School Science Classes," by David Wiley, John Levi Hilton III, Shelley Ellington, and Tiffany Hall.

Commercial textbooks have their own myths to deal with - like whether or not they are reliable!

This is a very dynamic time to be involved in open textbooks!

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Creative Commons Turns 10!

Cable Green (Photo: DTKindler Photo)

This note just in from the ubiquitous Cable Green:

As I'm sure you know, this year is Creative Commons' 10th Birthday! Starting this Friday, we'll be launching into a 10-day frenzy of celebrations leading up to 16 December - the day the first CC license suite was launched in 2002.

The celebrations will be wide ranging, including more than 20 celebrations worldwide, a dedicated website (http://10.creativecommons.org), interviews and featured resources, a social media campaign and our usual annual fundraising campaign.

As part of the CC community, there are many things you can do to help:

• Add a widget or banner to your website: you can find the official CC10 logo here: (scroll to the bottom of the page): http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC10
• Go to a party, or encourage your friends to attend. There are CC10 events planned on every continent (except Antarctica), starting tonight and continuing almost every day through December 16. There are even some online events and webinars. See them all listed at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC10
• Friend us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/creativecommons), follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/creativecommons), and let your friends know. The hashtag for the celebrations will be #CC10
• Give CC a birthday present! Write something, draw something, compose something - whatever you do well - and add it to our CC10 Flickr group: http://bit.ly/cc10flickr, or send it to us via Twitter, Facebook or at press@creativecommons.org
• And, of course, please encourage your friends and family to donate (or even donate yourself) at https://creativecommons.net/donate/

Most gratefully,
Cable

Cable Green,
PhD Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/education
http://twitter.com/cgreen

Creative Commons is turning 10!

Please give a birthday gift:

https://creativecommons.net/donate

Friday, December 16, 2011

Help Shape Creative Commons 4.0

Image by jorgeandresem via FlickrThis just in from the ubiquitous Cable Green:

Creative Commons has officially opened the public discussion process for version 4.0 of the CC license suite. Please see the announcement below, and join the discussion by subscribing to the CC license discussion list (link in blog post, below).

As we all know, the core part of any OER definition is the educational resource is either openly licensed or is in the public domain... so anyone can: reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. This is your chance to affect the licenses we all use to share OER.

One of the many reasons CC is considering versioning the licenses at this time is to address how can we improve the attribution requirements to ease citation in open educational resources (OER).
What would you like to see changed?

Starting now through February we are holding a requirements gathering period, an important (if not the most important) time to contribute ideas for improving the license suite. We hope you'll join the discussion and share your ideas for how we can improve the licenses for use with public sector information and data. And please do help us spread the word.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/30676

Thursday, October 20, 2011

OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability

Image via CrunchBaseJoin us for a webinar on October 31 hosted by SoftChalk.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962111696

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Title: OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability
Date: Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Spotlight on Innovation: Attacking High Text Costs While Improving Outcomes

Spotlight On Innovation:
Attacking High Text Costs While Improving Outcomes

Date: Monday, April 11th, 2011
Time: 3:30 pm ET / 12:30 pm PT
Duration: 50 minutes followed by a live Q&A session

As the high cost of college texts negatively impacts student retention and outcomes, what actions can faculty and institutions take to reverse this trend?

Register now for this webinar to learn about three of the most exciting initiatives aimed at driving costs down while enhancing innovation and outcomes.

Moderated by Eric Frank, President and Co-Founder of Flat World Knowledge, this panel will begin with an overview of what open texts are and how they've emerged as a force in past years, and then spotlight the innovative work of the University System of Ohio, Washington Open Course Library Project, and Virginia State University.

Join us on April 11th. Click below to register.