A couple of quick links to folks covering the Commission meeting where I got to testify last week: http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/02/2006020601n.htm http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/06/commission I think they liked it! I hope there is a positive impact…

So, I’m working on making the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license easier for people to understand as part of my fellowship at CIS. I’d appreciate your thoughts on the following language. Once we get the language right, we’ll be adding visuals. Educators are sharers by nature - the very essence of teaching is sharing what we know with others. And while none of us has the time to work with as many students as we wish we could, the Internet affords us an incredible opportunity to share our educational materials with as many people as are interested. ...

So the Commission meeting is over and my testimony is given. There were three speakers on the panel on “Innovative Teaching and Learning Strategies.” First was Tom Magnanti, Dean of Engineering at MIT. He spoke very clearly about the benefits of MIT OCW and the role of OCW in the future of education. He recommended the creation of a national OCW repository including materials from secondary / high school levels through graduate school. ...

Following up on Steven’s post Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources from a few days ago, here is my paper for the OECD meeting in Sweden next week. I had a length constraint of 2-3 pages, which fortunately Steven didn’t have. ...

One of the risks of writing things is that your readers will, whether through ill-will or simple misunderstanding, completely miss whatever message you’re trying to communicate. Such is the case with my RIP-ping on Learning Objects post. I must have read ten blog posts or emails now thanking me for putting the nail in the learning objects coffin. Are people even reading what I’m writing? Let me quote myself: There have been lots of articles around the blogosphere of late ringing the death bell for learning objects. It’s hard to tell if they’re right or not…. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about these declarations since they started appearing, and I’ve come to the somewhat troubling conclusion that I don’t think I care if learning objects are dead or not…. So whether learning objects are dead or not, I couldn’t say. And to some extent, who cares? ...

Ulises strikes again with another excellent post, Blog as Dissertation Literature Review, which is worth reading just for the references. It’s so awesome to know there are smart people thinkin about these things. I can just hear the students outside my door now… :)

A rare weekend post to announce that I’ve been awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Instructional Technology at Utah State University. Thanks to everyone for their help, encouragement, and support. And this is more than a passing thank you. I mean sincerely: Thanks to the Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix at the Hewlett Foundation for funding my work Thanks to Elizabeth at the National Science Foundation for funding my work ...

My blogging mentor Brian Lamb has asked anyone and everyone to answer a few questions. Here’s my 2 bits, Brian. What is most significant about the emergence of blogs and/or wikis? Their democratizing effect on communication and their power to interconnect everyone and everything. They’re so easy to use that everyone can, and almost everyone seems to be. The network effect being created by massively interconnecting content and people is so much more than just a few more links on your page or nodes in your social network. There is a qualitative change in behavior. It’s like running the Slime model in Netlogo with fewer than 70 agents, and then running it again with more than 90. You wouldn’t think that just a few more people doing exactly the same thing everyone else was already doing could make any difference. But we do see a distinct change in the behavior of the group. Blogs and wikis are enabling that… Lain’s words are becoming more and more true: “No matter where you are… everyone is always connected.” ...

Next week I have the opportunity to present a few remarks to the US Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Since I had to submit my comments ahead of time, they’re actually done, and I thought I would share. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts you have, as I don’t actually talk to the Commission until next Friday. (UPDATE 06 Feb 06: I have included the new Introduction and Summary as delivered to the Commission.) ...

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my RIP-ping on learning objects article has been summarzed at some length in Spanish. This is what open licensing is all about…