Photo by AntonioViva. I had an absolutely brilliant time at TEDxNYED over the weekend, reconnecting with old friends like Larry Lessig, George Siemens, Neeru Khosla, and Dan Cohen, and making new friends like Michael Wesch, Gina Bianchini, Amy Bruckman, Chris Lehmann, and Dan Meyer. The videos of our talks will be online in a few weeks. In the mean time, I’m posting the final version of the notes I wrote before creating slides for the talk. This is the fifth or sixth version of the notes, and due to time constraints not even all of this version got in - but much of it did. My words on stage didn’t mirror these rough notes directly, but the notes capture the spirit of the talk. You can view the slides for the talk on Slideshare. ...

I can hear Stephen now… eSchoolNews reports on a speech given today by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which they summarize with the byline, “Secretary calls federal investment in open courseware an ‘opportunity’ for education publishers.” From the article: To support technological innovation in learning, President Obama has proposed investing $500 million over ten years in an Online Skills Initiative designed to produce free and open online courses that contribute to post-secondary success, Duncan said. These courses can be used by students, schools, and self-directed learners, and they also will be freely available to commercial publishers. ...

In response to yesterday’s post, OCWC President Steve Carson left a link in the comment section to the organization’s 2010-2011 strategic plan. Reading through the plan provided a number of insights, but let me focus on two here and you can read the rest of the document for yourself. First, the OCWC budget for 2010 is $1,000,000. Second, the document includes a section called “Value Proposition to Members,” which includes the following explanation: ...

Yesterday OpenCourseWare Consortium President Steve Carson announceed that the OCWC has received commitments of $350k over the next five years from several of its university members. In a reference to concerns I (and others) have expressed about the sustainability of the OCW movement, Steve writes: “Not only are these universities sustaining their own publications, but they are making meaningful commitments to the global effort to openly publish educational materials.” So why don’t I feel happy at this news? I think it is because I just don’t understand how the OCWC adds value to the “global effort to openly publish educational materials.” ...

Just heard from my friend Bobbi Kurshan, the Executive Director of Curriki, that she will be leaving that post on March 1st. I wish her well. Curriki will be looking for a new ED shortly and will very much continue to stay active in the OER space (much like Hewlett has continued to do after Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix left). So, unless I’m missing someone, the list of OER leaders who have moved on in the last few years now includes: ...

Since my department at BYU has committed itself to open access publishing I’ve been able to get serious about putting my published writing in the university’s institutional repository called ScholarsArchive. So far I have 12 pieces in the collection, which are guaranteed to stay at these URLs for “a very long time” since the library is curating the repository. I’m happy as a clam that these pieces have permanent homes and that these pieces are freely available for the general public. ...

I’m happy to point to this comment by Vic Vuchic from the Hewlett Foundation on a previous post I wrote about what seems to be happening with OER. It’s a great perspective (that he is uniquely qualified to provide) that warmed my heart a bit. Some highlights: Hewlett made over $16 million in grants last year that were 100% OER focused… In 2009 alone, foundations such as Gates, Lumina, MacArthur and many others pumped over $10 million of investments into OER focused projects. VCs made a couple of forays into OER… And a number of governments made their first investments in OER. In all 2009 was a record year both in the amount and diversity of OER funding, which is amazing considering most other things in the world collapse financially. ...

Our good friend Cathy Casserly, former Director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative of the Hewlett Foundation, as just been elected to the Creative Commons Board of Directors. While there were already people on the CC board who cared about OER, the addition of Cathy means that the Board now has one of the most articulate OER champions around in their ranks. This is great news! Congrats to Cathy, CC, and anyone who cares about OER! ...

First, Mike and Cathy left the Hewlett Foundation, where they had provided incredible vision and incubation support for early OER efforts. (While Hewlett is still running its OER program there didn’t seem to be many OER-related grants made in 2009.) Then, a few weeks ago, I blogged about the departure of Ira and Chris from the Mellon Foundation, caused by the RIT program being merged into another program, where they had also provided vision and support for open educational software. ...

Newly minted Dr. Justin Johansen’s dissertation study, The Impact Of Opencourseware On Paid Enrollment In Distance Learning Courses, is now available from BYU’s Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) archive. This dissertation is the first piece of empirical work I am aware of that demonstrates clearly that a distance learning program can simultaneously (1) provide a significant public good by publishing opencourseware and (2) be revenue positive while doing it. In other words, Justin’s study not only demonstrates that it is possible to publish opencourseware without requesting donations from users or foundations, it goes further and demonstrates that it is possible to make money publishing opencourseware. And if you can make money publishing opencourseware, you can continue publishing opencourseware for a very long time. This capacity is also known as sustainability. ...