The National Association of College Stores is experimenting with distributing open textbooks via epub. Their pilot digital delivery program is operational at approximately 60 colleges and universities including Anne Arundel Community College Bookstore. CampusEBookstore.com offers over 200 literature titles as free open licensed content that are digitally enhanced using the epub format and can be read using PC and MAC computers and many of the EBook reading devices.
Archive for February, 2010
Copyright for Educators – P2P
February 22, 2010Register now for a free online course at P2P University on Copyright for Educators. Learn about copyright, open content material and licensing. The course is taught around practical case studies faced by teachers when using copyright material in their day to day teaching and educational instruction.
By answering the case scenarios and drafting and discussing the answers in groups, the participants learn:
• what copyright protects
• whether exceptions or blanket licenses apply
• when they need to seek permission
• what is an open education resource (OER)
• what is a creative common licence
• how OER and CC benefits teaching
Participants will also get to learn about how these issues are dealt with in different countries.
The goals of this course are:
1. to help you identify copyright issues in education and give you a firm grounding in copyright, exceptions and, licensing
2. to help you recognise open licences, and find open licence material and apply open licences to resources
3. to get you thinking, writing, and conversing about how to use copyright exceptions and open licenses to enable education.
CSU Affordable Learning Solutions
February 19, 2010California State University recently launched its Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign to assist faculty with use of quality educational content that is more affordable for their students.
The Affordable Learning Solutions website provides information about:
- Free course content
- Free textbooks
- Lower cost textbooks
- Library resources
- Authoring content
- Accessibility
- Sharing practices for using no/low cost digital content in CSU courses
- Recognizing faculty for their efforts in reducing costs for students
If you are already using no-cost or low-cost content in your classes, consider sharing your practices with your colleagues.
What is your favorite open textbook?
February 18, 2010EdTechPost wants to know: What is Your Favorite Open Textbook Example? Submit your choice today!
Connexions Highly Rated as OER Repository
February 7, 2010In his January 2010 paper titled “Using Free and Open Online Resources: Licensing and Collections“ Norm Friesen lists Connexions as one of the highest rated OER repositories.
His paper provides an “overview of the open or free resources and materials available from online collections and providers that may be of significant strategic value to schools, universities and to other organizations with educational mandates, such as museums and archives. The initial sections of this paper describe some of the most basic characteristics of open source, or more accurately, creative commons licensing for cultural and educational resources. These sections also outline criteria for the inclusion of items in the annotated listing that is provided in the remainder of the document. This listing provides details for a number of recommended collections.”
