22.08.09
Since my own EduResources Portal closed in July 2007, I've been looking for other useful portal entry points to recommend to students and instructors who are searching for educational resources. I highly recommend the OER Commons as a valuable first stop. The Commons is extremely broad in scope, but so well organized that new users can orient to its resources quickly.
The OER materials can be browsed by categories or collections; resources are also searchable with key words. Additionally, the entry page displays the OER Top Ten and the Top 25 Tags for a quick scan of what other users are viewing. Visitors who register can set up their own OER Portfolio and also sign up to receive an E-News newsletter.
The "OER Matters" section provides links to News Stories, Articles and Reports, Conferences and Workshops, Discussion Forums, Organizations and Associations, Tools and Technology, and Blogs and Wikis. The Commons was created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) which is supported by the Hewlett Foundation. OER professionals will want to mark the OER Commons in their bookmarks and visit the site regularly (an rss feed is also available). _____JH
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"OER Commons is a teaching and learning network, from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware, from algebra to zoology, open to everyone to use and add to."
"Learn more about the worldwide movement to make teaching and learning materials free and accessible for use and re-use by everyone."
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12.01.09
I first read about Many Eyes in the business section of the Sunday 8/31/08 NY Times, where it was described by the Times writer Anne Eisenburg, "Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data." Eisenburg argues that Many Eyes does for users of data displays what YouTube does for videos and Flickr for photos: "Now they can share more technical types of displays: graphs, charts, and other visuals they create to help them analyze data buried in spreadsheets, tables, or text." Many Eyes was created by IBM scientists and developers to provide sophisticated visualization tools for data analyses and displays. The site should be of interest to students and to instructors, and to the general public. One of the most important contributions of the Web-- beyond quick communications and ready access to information, advice, and opinion-- is the access to sound, video, photo and other tools that were previously the province of specialists. (One caution--because Many Eyes is experimental the server is not always up, sometimes it is closed for development and updating.) ____JH
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"Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to 'democratize' visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. Jump right to our visualizations now, take a tour, or read on for a leisurely explanation of the project.
All of us in CUE's Visual Communication Lab are passionate about the potential of data visualization to spark insight. It is that magical moment we live for: an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. As visualization designers we have witnessed and experienced many of those wondrous sparks. But in recent years, we have become acutely aware that the visualizations and the sparks they generate, take on new value in a social setting. Visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data.
We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways."
22.08.09
The LeMill Web Community site is available for sharing online learning resources. The site is viewable in nine languages; to orient to what is offered take the Tour and consult the FAQ. Thanks to the Development Gateway for information about this site. ___JH
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"LeMill is a web community for finding, authoring and sharing learning resources. First at all, you can find learning resources. You can use the resources you find in your own teaching or learning. You can also add your own learning content to LeMill. You may edit your content and combine larger chunks of learning resources from individual media pieces. If you wish you may also join some of the groups producing or editing learning resources. In LeMill the content is always easily found where and whenever you need them."
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22.08.09
Science students and instructors will want to put this web address in their bookmarks because WWS provides a federated search of science sites around the world. By combining WWS with Scirus--plus a discipline-specific search and a general search in Google--a searcher will have made a serious first-pass at finding information. ____JH (Via the Development Gateway's E-Learning distribution.)
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"WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway—accelerating scientific discovery and progress through a multilateral partnership to enable federated searching of national and international scientific databases. Subsequent versions of WorldWideScience.org will offer access to additional sources as well as enhanced features"
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08.07.09
Written by Brandi Lynn If I could have one superhero power it would be the ability to snap my fingers and get to any destination I could dream of. But I’m a mere mortal so I had to become a a wing-wearin’, heel-stomping, drink-slinging flight attendant. People like asking the same questions over and over. My worst [...]
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22.08.09
This interesting transcript of an e-mail interview features Scott McLemee, a regular contributor to Inside Higher Ed, with a programmer, Aaron Swartz, who works on The Open Library Project. The short interview effectively captures the scope and vision of the project. ____JH
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Here's a sample:
"Q: How is Open Library funded? Are you working on it full time? And how many people are involved in the project?
A: It’s currently being funded by the Internet Archive, with the help of some state and federal library grants. We have some volunteers, but also about 5 people working full-time (a couple programmers, a designer, and a product manager)."
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22.08.09
This promising new weblog by Zaid Ali Alsagoff is devoted to open learning resources around the world; Zaid is located in Malaysia. His blog is especially valuable for its extensive listing of links to bloggers who write about eLearning and its multiple links to Learning Tools, eLearning sites, OpenCourseWare sites, University Podcasts, and Learning Repositories. Zaid is currently at work on a book about effective learning and teaching that is scheduled for release in June 2008. ____ JH
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