FLOSS In School - Open Source Software in the Education System

“cel4145″ writes a short complaint about The Journal of Open and Distance Learning being available only through a paywall.

Cory Doctorow has a new post discussing a new law in Brazil that prevents the use of DRM to lock up content in the public domain. From the post:

It’s a fine and balanced approach to copyright law: your software locks have the power of law where they act to uphold the law. When they take away rights the law gives, they are themselves illegal.

Steve Carson is announcing that MIT OCW has reached 2,000 courses. From the post:

Since the site was launched in 2002, OCW materials have been visited on the MIT site or partner translation sites 98 million times by an estimated 70 million visitors from around the world.

Noam Cohen is reporting that Wikimedia is planning to expand its staff. From the article:

By hiring more employees and raising more money, the foundation hopes to nearly double the number of unique visitors to the site by 2015, to 680 million a month…

Tony Hirst has a new post on producing OER through an open source production model. From the post:

In short: maybe we shouldn’t just be releasing content created in a closed process as Open Educational Resources (OERs); rather, we should be producing them in public using an open source production model?

Andres Guadamuz has a new post commenting on the recent U.S. lawsuit filed involving Creative Commons. From the post:

There seems to be a myth that free and open licences, including CC, require court cases in order to prove that they are enforceable.

Cameron Neylon has a new post on the task of sorting through large amounts of open content. From the post:

The great strength of the web is that you can allow publication of anything at very low marginal cost without limiting the ability of people to find what they are interested in, at least in principle. Discovery mechanisms are good enough, while being a long way from perfect, to make it possible to mostly find what you’re looking for while avoiding what you’re not looking for.

Jeane Quentin has a new post on “remixing education.” From the post:

Not exactly something you’d expect a traditional publisher to condone. But could it be a learning tool that engages kids where they’re at?

The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) has passed a resolution requiring all content produced through competitive grants to be openly licensed. From the post:

All 34 Colleges will benefit by having access to digital software, educational resources (e.g., courses, textbooks and journals) and knowledge funded through competitive funding. Digital products from competitive grants will be shared in online repositories for easy access to high quality educational resources.

Thanks to Cable Green for the link.

Charles Dervarics has a new post on the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act taking effect July 1. From the post:

While the new rules cannot directly influence pricing, student and consumer groups say they will give students more information and more time to look around for the best prices.

Katherine Fletcher has a new post announcing that Connexions will be offering ePub versions of its collections. Note that textbook publisher CK12 also has ePub. From Fletcher’s post:

EPUB is supported by the major mobile devices and e-book readers including Apple’s iPad and iPhone, Sony’s eReader, and enTourage’s eDGe.

David Pogue has a new post discussing copyright in the context of classical sheet music. The post is of interest in that it is the second post in the NYT on copyright affecting ordinary consumers. Randy Cohen also has a post on the ethics of copying an e-book. From Pogue’s post:

You’d think it’d be pretty easy to live within the copyright laws, or at least to understand them: if you want something of value, you pay for it.

Brian Frank has a new post on the “tyranny of credentials.” From the post:

By complaining about the “tyranny of credentials” I was aiming at the stranglehold that that whole way of thinking has on the theory and practice of learning. I mean, there are some things that are best learned in classrooms, some things that are best learned through apprenticeships, etc, and then there are things we can only learn by taking responsibility for mastering them ourselves.

Jeff Shelstad, CEO of textbook publisher Flatworld Knowledge, has a new post on the future of textbooks. From the post:

Cash-strapped, tech-savvy students who yearn to be treated like consumers are left with few alternatives. In an effort to survive financially, they turn to used books, rentals, online piracy sites, and a robust gray market of low-cost international editions, all of which hurt authors and bookstores.

D’Arcy Norman has a new post giving a review of BigBlueButton, an open source synchronous learning program. There has been increased interest in BigBlueButton after Blackboard announced its purchase of Wimba and Elluminate. From Norman’s post:

So far, it looks pretty darned impressive.

Bridget McCrea has a new post on the success of the University of South Florida use of open content. From the post:

Years before most institutions of higher education would start paying attention to the “open content” concept, the University of South Florida’s mechanical engineering department was already in the throes of setting up its own “come one, come all” approach…

Glyn Moody has a new post commenting on a recently filed case regarding use of content licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (CC BY-NC-ND). From the post:

The paucity of court cases is not because people think the licences are irrelevant or obviously invalid, but the opposite: because the received view is clearly that both the GPL and CC licences are so well written and so strong that it would be foolish to challenge them in them court.

Michael Hiltzik is reporting on the University of California system’s fight against the Nature Publishing Group. From the post:

“Why are we paying to read the results of our own research?” asks Patrick O. Brown, a biochemist at Stanford’s School of Medicine.

Stephen Downes has a new post on the World eBook Fair, an aggregation site for books, some of which are open. From Downes’ post:

It’s free (and apparently all-you-can-eat) for a month, $8.95 for the rest of the year. As I said, far from perfect. But, you know, these rates approach what it would cost me to store what I would want to read from the library on my own hard drive at home.

Neeru Khosla will be presenting at a webinar on open textbooks. Khosla is Founder of CK12 Foundation.