EDUCAUSE | Open Source and Instructional Technologies

Dynamics of Supporting Sakai Through Local and Global Collaboration

gdobbin — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:06:36 -0500

This ECAR research bulletin discusses the adjustments that the Indiana University information technology organization made, and continues to make, in order to support membership in Sakai. It has been said that supporting Sakai can seem like trying to change a tire on a moving car. As co-founder of and active participant in the Sakai collaboration, the effects of IU’s decision—the unexpected, the challenging, and the delightful—are discussed in terms of the intra- and interuniversity realities of highly collaborative efforts.

Citation for this work: Goodrum, David, Jan R. Holloway, Anastasia S. Morrone, Lance Speelmon, and Elizabeth A. Van Gordon. “Dynamics of Supporting Sakai Through Local and Global Collaboration” (Research Bulletin, Issue 11). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Mark Notess, Development Manager & Usability Specialist at Indiana University

gbayne — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:47:36 -0600

In this 12 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Mark Notess, Development Manager & Usability Specialist at Indiana University. He is involved in several online learning and research tool development projects including the Variations 3 Digital Music Library Project, and Integrating Licensed Library Resources with Sakai. He also co-authored an article with Lisa Lorenzen-Huber entitled, "Online Learning for Seniors: Barriers and Opportunities". He spoke with Carie Windham at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference in Seattle, Washington.

E07 Podcast: An Interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & IT at The University of British Columbia

gbayne — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:21:27 -0600

In this 21 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & Information Technology at The University of British Columbia. He has recently been involved in a project called Ancient Spaces at UBC, which uses gaming and virtual world technology to recreate locations from antiquity. He also participated in a session at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference entitled, "Indigenous Cultures: From Observing to Experiencing, from Videography to 3D VR Immersion".

Ulrich Rauch organizes the implementation of educational technologies for instructors, students and staff in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. As the director of a technical and an instructional support unit, and as trained sociologist, Ulrich combines his experience as an instructor with his perspective on learning technologies to research and apply e-learning strategies in support of collaborative learning.

Human Futures for Technology and Education

ckeller — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 10:41:14 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In January 2007, Michael Wesch released a video on the history of the Web called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video quickly tracks the transformations of the Web from its beginnings as a place to retrieve information into a vibrant user-generated and user-organized platform of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social networks, and folksonomies that encourage, enhance, and capitalize on collaboration. At the video's end, Wesch suggests that these transformations require us to begin rethinking virtually everything, from authorship and copyright to our sense of identity and selfhood. These new technologies also have profound implications for education. What possibilities and challenges do they bring to our teaching? What should we be teaching to students who are habituated to a new media environment where Google and Wikipedia are always at their fingertips? How are these technologies changing the way students learn and assess information? In short, we need to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and whom we think we are teaching. For this presentation, Wesch creates another video in the same genre as "The Machine is Us/ing Us." Like the earlier video, this video quickly tracks the important moments in the history of education and attempts to capture the possibilities and challenges of the current moment in such a way as to pose and clarify some of the most important questions facing us as educators today.

The University in a Networked Economy and Society

ckeller — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:14:50 -0500

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. When Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, came out, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig said, "This is -- by far -- the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this." This work examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may have transformative consequences for economy and society. Benkler's presentation outlines the characteristics of the networked information economy and the roles of collaboration and commons-based production of information, knowledge, and culture, and it suggests avenues to apply these broad trends to education and education-related policy.

Open-source Group Wants Educational Patent Reversed

drupal — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:48:59 -0600

"A legal center is trying to overturn a patent it says threatens three open-source educational projects, a sign of the tension between patent holders and the collaborative programming community."

Blackboard Patents Challenged

drupal — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:36:48 -0600

"Open source group asked U.S. to revoke rights asserted by software giant. Sides trade charges on why compromise talks collapsed."

Is There an OpenCourseWare Site in Your Future?

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:42 -0500

Do you want a site like MIT's OpenCourseWare site, but don't have millions of dollars to spend? Come learn how to start an OpenCourseWare project. Topics will include moving existing materials from closed learning management systems into an open-access format using eduCommons, gaining faculty and institutional support, and dealing with intellectual property.

Open Education 2006: Community, Culture, and Content

drupal — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:47:58 -0500

Open Education 2006: Community, Culture, and Content was a multidisciplinary event designed to promote the discussion of the variety of research, development, and other activities necessary to move the field of open education forward. The proceedings include over 30 papers on topics such as Open educational resources, Tools and software supporting open education and Reusing and remixing open educational resources.

Cultura: A Method and Open Source Tool for Teaching Language and Culture

drupal — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:42:44 -0600

Several years ago, an MIT professor developed a novel method for explaining and teaching cultural nuances in her language classes. MIT's Academic Computing office has developed a Web-based application to support the pedagogy, and we're taking steps to release it as an open source application.

alt-i-lab 2004:Advancing Learning Technology Interoperability

drupal — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 09:21:44 -0500

alt-i-lab 2004 is the 2nd annual meeting of creators, vendors, users, and buyers of learning technology. The purpose of the meeting was advancing learning technology interoperability. The participants are informed business and technical decision makers and technology leaders from the vendor and consumer communities. This is a working meeting in which informed participants assessed the status of the field through presentations, demonstrations, and discussion sessions to make plans for solving challenging interoperability problems.