Wow.  It is not so often that you can point to truly enlightened legislation and national policy, but here is one such case.  Pat Masson, just posted some links on the Educause Openness Constituency Group to a fantastic little article titled Government promotes open source for public sector, whose content strikes me as remarkable.  The article provides a very cursory description of a UK government policy that promotes Open Source Software, Open Technology Standards, and Re-Use.  What could …

I just had a great experience participating in a group discussion that was based on a TED video talk with Philip Rosedale titled “Second Life, where anything is possible.”  I find the Second Life phenomena very interesting.  It is one of the few topic areas where the smartest people I know, hold very different opinions from each other.   Not that all of my reference group ever agrees on any particular topic, but opinion about the value of Second Life …

As you saw in a previous post, last Wednesday was the official opening of the Penn State World Campus space in the virtual world of Second Life.  We spent the day chatting with students from around the world, other World Campus staff, and colleagues from other universities.  Over the course of twelve hours, we saw 78 unique visitors, 139 visits and the average time spent in the space was 52 minutes.

Spending time chatting with our students and getting …

It’s About Access, Right?
One of our goals at Penn State is to increase access to online courses, programs, and services for a broad spectrum of students, including students confronting barriers related to disabilities. In fact, as is the case with many distance education providers, access has historically been at the very center of the World Campus’s purpose and self-identify.  Online education may provide a perfect opportunity for students dealing with barriers related to mobility; however, for other kinds of disabilities, …

Next week, on January 28, the Penn State World Campus island in Second Life will officially open.  Our space in Second Life has already allowed us to connect with students, staff and faculty from World Campus and other Penn State campuses.  We have hosted a virtual tailgate during All University Day at Penn State, we’ve gathered together to watch a live webcast of the Penn State homecoming parade, and we’ve listened to amazing live musicians at benefit concerts for the …

“Systems for Supportive Open Teaching,” the 26th installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on November 26, 2008, by Andy Lane. Andy has been at The Open University since 1983 and, in addition to serving as a Professor of Environmental Systems, has held various offices in the former Technology Faculty (now Faculty of Maths, Computing and Technology) including being Head of the Systems Department and Dean of the Technology Faculty.

In 2006 he was appointed …

Here are some ideas that I have been mulling over lately. They also follow on well from the recent contributions from Martin Weller around exploring new ways of being open and Cole Camplese on embedding student expectations.

Education is a process that generally involves learners, teachers and sets of educational resources that can be mediating artifacts in the educational process, arranged in some structured way (see Lane, 2008a). It …

I want to welcome Andy Lane and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software and Open Educational Resources on Education series on Terra Incognita. In his posting Andy will be referring to Open Learning and Open Educational Resources activities and projects at The UK Open University, while asking some critical questions about what it means to talk about Open Teaching, whether using OERs or not, and how might that teaching be organized so …

“Embedding Student Expectations,” the 25th installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on November 5, 2008, by Cole Camplese. Cole serves as the Director of Education Technology Services at the Pennsylvania State University. As Director, it is his responsibility to oversee University-wide initiatives with a focus on impacting teaching and learning with technology. In reality Cole makes fantastic use of his role, serving as a prime mover and advocate for creativity within (and far beyond) …

I hope that you’ll bear with me as I bring a slightly different approach to the posts here at Terra Incognita. My interests and passions fall directly in the argument for openness and transparency across all forms of teaching and learning. I am not going to write a case for opening learning or open courseware, but I will attempt to engage you in a discussion related to our overall willingness to change some of our fundamental models to empower those …