Open Learning Network

General News

Sad to say goodbye to Liam and Scott at team meeting this week.

HESTIA wins Google Award

Google Ancient Places, a joint project between The Open University, the University of Southampton and the University of California at Berkeley, received funding from Google to explore digitised literature.

Google Ancient Places will let users search for books related to specific geographic location during a particular time period, which are then visualised on Google Earth or Google Maps.

OLnet is collaborating with HESTIA on this fascinating project. If you want to learn more about HESTIA check out Herodotus World: Exploring the ancient world with Google and join our research group at HESTIA: Researching and learning with Herodotus' Earth and Herodotus Narrative Timelines

Wikisym 2010

Giota Alevizou and Kasia Kozinska participated in the Wikisym 2010 (the 6th international conference on wikis and open collaboration: http://www.wikisym.org/ws2010/Program) and Wikimania 2010 (annual international conference of the Wikimedia community: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), co-hosted this year in Gdansk, Poland between 6 and 11 July. Their Wikisym contributions in the panel that Giota organised with Andrea Forte from Drexel University 'Engaging with Open Education' (http://www.wikisym.org/ws2010/Engaging+with+Open+Education) can be found in the conference proceedings (available through the ACM international http://tinyurl.com/3xm778j) and on slideshare (Giota: http://www.slideshare.net/giotita/giota-wikisym10-v2, Kasia: http://www.slideshare.net/giotita/katarzyna-kozinskawikisym2010). A transcript and visual material of the participation in the open space session on augmenting the quality and user experience in open resources, focusing on the case of wikipedia can be found here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Quality_Assessment_Tools_for_WP_Readers#Discussion_transcript

More reflective blog posts and Clouds will follow on issues on issues pertinent to the work of Olnet and around: international issues in OER policy, transcultural collaboration and translation initiatives, wikis and wikimedia in education, OER impact, literacy and deep learning. 
 

Useful Links

From Will: Funky announcement about IMS partnership for OER discovery using semantic web http://www.imsglobal.org/pressreleases/pr100713.html
 

Scott's reflections on his second week with OLnet: http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/2010/07/13/olnet-fellowship-week-2-reflections/ and cloudscape writeup of his research project with us: http://cloudworks.ac.uk//cloudscape/view/2150

Digital Content Quarterly issue 3 (JISC): http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/07/22/out-now-digital-content-quarterly-issue-3/

A staff guide to Open Educational Resources (from Leeds Met) http://www.box.net/shared/oqa2312an4