Assessment
NERCOMP Event: Supporting Data Analysis Across the Curriculum
Cyberinfrastructure: Leveraging Change at our Institutions. An interview with James J. O'Donnell
Open Source Software Tools: Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration
Tim Berners-Lee presented the second annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration (MATC) yesterday at the Fall Task Force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). $650,000 in prize money went to 10 nonprofits for "leadership in the collaborative development of open source software tools with application to scholarship in the arts and humanities."
While more information is available on the CNI site, the winners are as follows:
- American Museum of the Moving Image (Astoria, NY: www.movingimage.us) for the development and release of the OpenCollection museum collection management system (www.opencollection.org) [$100,000].
- Duke University (Durham, NC: www.duke.edu) for leadership and development work on the OpenCroquet open source 3-D virtual worlds environment (www.opencroquet.org)[$100,000].
- Open Polytechnic of New Zealand (Wellington, NZ: www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz) for leadership and development work on several open source projects including the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (http://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle/) [$100,000].
- Georgia Public Library Service of the University System of Georgia (Atlanta, GA: www.georgialibraries.org) for the development and release of the Evergreen open-source library automation system (www.open-ils.org) [$50,000].
- Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT: www.middlebury.edu) for the development and release of the Segue interactive learning management system [$50,000].
- Participatory Culture Foundation (Worcester, MA: www.participatoryculture.org) for the development and release of the open source Miro media player (www.getmiro.com) [$50,000].
- Talboks-och Punkstkriftsbiblioteket (The Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille: Enskede, Sweden: www.tpb.se) for the development and release of open source tools supporting the Daisy Project for talking books for the visually impaired [$50,000].
- University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, IL: www.illinois.edu): one award for the development and release of the Firefox Accessibility Extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1891) [$50,000]; and one award for the development and release of the OpenEAI enterprise application integration project (www.openEAI.org) [$50,000].
- University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario: www.utoronto.ca) for the development and release of the ATutor learning management system (www.atutor.ca) [$50,000].
A Voluntary System of Accountability
The Voluntary System of Accountability is a joint project of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC). Responding to the challenges of the Spellings Commission, the VSA aims to make publicly available information about a wide variety of factors, ranging from accurate tuition costs to institutional performance in meeting core learning outcomes.
Of particular interest is the "Core Educational Outcomes Task Force," which has "decided on a preliminary set of learning outcomes tests that, at a minimum, measure critical thinking, analytic reasoning and written communication, and that also can be used in a value added format. Those tests are: C-Base, CLA, CAAP, MAPP, GRE and ACT WorkKeys." The Task Force is currently evaluating these tests for possible piloting.
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- Visit http://www.aascu.org/accountability/default.htm
George Siemens at the ODCE 2007 Conference
"When you look at knowledge as the central aspect, or the central product of education today, it would suggest that if knowledge itself changes significantly or substantially, that we also would need to consider the framework and the design of the organizations that we use to create, disseminate, share, evaluate that knowledge."
George Siemens, author of Knowing Knowledge, Associate Director of Research and Development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, and founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., was the keynote speaker at the Ohio Digital Commons for Education Conference in Columbus, Ohio (March 4-6).
In this address, Siemens shared some of his thoughts on knowledge and technology and their implications for educational organizations.Assessing Learning Objects: The Importance of Values, Purpose and Design
Tetra Collaboration
An interesting open source development in the U.K. announced last week; from the press release:
The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Hull, and the UHI Millennium Institute announce the formation of the Tetra Collaboration, the outcome of a series of meetings and a major summit held at the University of Oxford on the 25th-26th September 2006.
The goal of the Tetra Collaboration is to coordinate activities across the member organisations so as to more efficiently develop and deploy open source enterprise applications of use to UK and European universities and colleges. By working together we can share common solutions to better serve the needs of students and academics, and each of the institutions named is committed to making tangible contributions into the collaboration.
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- Visit http://www.bodington.org/tetra.php
Review of "Connecting Technology & Liberal Education: Theories and Case Studies" A NERCOMP event (4/5/06)
Cyberinfrastructure = Hardware + Software + Bandwidth + People
Digitized Audio Commentary in First Year Writing Classes
