Nouts Education News

List.it--Free Software for To Do's and Electronic Postits

12.01.09

Here's a way to start the New Year. Get the free List.it software for keeping track of information, notes, ideas, resources. The software requires registration before the download link can be obtained, but that step is easily done. Registrants will also be invited to participate in research about how electronic notes are used. List.it also requires that the user have the latest Firefox browser. The developer is MIT professor David Karger with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. See the Jan. 5 Campus Technology article for more information about the project. ___JH

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"List.it, which focuses on minimizing the time and effort needed to capture information, was developed not by looking at how people organize information, but by analyzing what kind of information they keep and make lists of. The tool resides in a Firefox browser sidebar, which can be pulled up and put away through a customizable hot key. A 'quick input box' allows users to enter information on the fly. A synching feature ensures that notes will be backed up; if the user has List.it installed on multiple computers, notes will be mirrored to all of them."

ZaidLearn--a New Blog about Open Learning Resources

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

WorldWideScience

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"

David Wiley's Open Course on Open Education

22.08.09

Here's the link the to wiki syllabus for David Wiley's Fall 2007 course about Open Education. There's still time to sign up for this online course. "The goals of the course are (1) to give you a firm grounding in the current state of the field of open education, including related topics like copyright, licensing, and sustainability, (2) to help you locate open education in the context of mainstream instructional technologies like learning objects, and (3) to get you thinking, writing, and dialoguing creatively and critically about current practices and possible alternative practices in open education." Those who don't want to participate in the course will still find value in the online readings and the links to OER sites. ____JH

Peer 2 Peer University

12.01.09

P2P University has received favorable coverage by a number of bloggers (including ZaidLearn and Stephen's Web).  I just want to add my endorsement of this promising direction of development. ___JH

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"The Peer 2 Peer University is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.Find out more about what P2PU courses look like, and consider creating your own. If you just want to stay informed, please add your name to our mailing list, and we will send you a message when we launch."

Paul Andrew's E-Learning Resources Guide

12.01.09

This is another useful compilation of e-learning resources, well-organized and thoughtfully selected. ____JH (Thanks to OL Daily for the citation.)

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• Free
• Easy to use
• Produce high quality resources that can be used on any web enabled platform

Sites & services are arranged into the categories that you can see in the navigation menu the on the left, please click on one to get started.

SciTalks/HumTalks/GovTalks/BusiTalks

22.08.09

These four sites collect video lectures on scientific, humanities, government, and business topics by prominent thinkers. I've sampled a number of the talks and found them to be extremely valuable. These sites could be very useful to instructors who want to supply supplementary materials for their courses. _____JH