Other responsibilities have interfered with my cranking out a second part to my last post, Can Open Education Work for Associations? or publishing the August edition of the Free Learning Monitor, which is now officially late. In the meantime, a number of interesting things are going on in the open education world. Some readers will have already seen them, but I know not all readers here track the OER blogs. Here are some highlights:

• Flatworld Knowledge Marches On
  Flatworld, which is out to address “the silly cost and inflexible nature of textbook” announced last week that it has 20 new titles under contract. It also began beta-testing of its open textbook model at 20 participating colleges and universities.

• OER Handbook Goes to Print
  This via George Siemens by way of David Wiley. The Handbook is “designed to help educators find, use, develop and share OER to enhance their effectiveness online and in the classroom.”

• Elgg 1.0 Launches
  Via Stephen Downes, the first full release of open source social networking software Elgg has launched. I’m sure updated Moodle integrations won’t be far behind, if they are not already out there.

• Introduction to OER Tutorial
  Via Open Education News, Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) announced that Dr. Judy Baker, Director of the Consortium produced an 11 module tutorial entitled “Introduction to Open educational Resources.” If you are looking for a solid introduction to Open Education, this looks like a good starting point.

• Open Source Business Resource
  Via Creative Commons, the August issue of the Open Source Business Resource (OSBR) is dedicated to education. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but “Why Give Knowledge Away for Free? The Case for Open Educational Resources” by Jan Hylén sounds particularly relevant to the second installment of Can Open Education Work for Associations? - which I now need to get back to writing.

Openly yours,

Jeff Cobb
Mission to Learn

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Related posts:

1. Open Education Site “Free Learning” Launches
2. Can Open Education Work for Associations? (Part I)
3. Open Education News Launches
4. Can Open Education Work for Associations (Part III)
5. The Tragedy of Open Education? A Look at a New Blog