Assessing the Potential Toward Open Educational Practices in Kyrgyzstan
Anita R Walz, Jyldyz Bekbalaeva, Open Praxis, 2018/04/20
This is the first reference to Kyrgyzstan in the almost 30,000 posts in OLDaily over the last 20 years, and proof that open education has become a completely worldwide phenomenon. According to the abstract, "Analysis of the results revealed a higher than expected gravitation toward student-centered pedagogy than previously assumed. The study also identified broad use of digital downloads as learning materials, conflation of open educational resources with free online resources." This actually doesn't surprise me, because OERs and student-centered pedagogy go hand-in-hand. More...

Open Invitation to Contribute to the Draft OER Recommendation Text
UNESCO, 2018/04/20
According to this website, "A draft UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) text is currently being prepared. This open invitation is to call for inputs on the above-mentioned draft text." You can read the draft on the website (7 page PDF). More...

OER18 Open to all
Phil Barker, Sharing and learning, 2018/04/20
Phil Barker argues that we should not be recommending Eric Raymond's work. Raymond authored, if you may recall, the enormously influential The Cathedral and the Bazaar paper recommending distributed open source organization. Barker argues that Raymond is a libertarian, a gun nut, and has regressive views regarding women and gays. " I do not think we should be recommending this person’s work to the OER community," says Barker. Now I personally find Raymond's politics reprehensible (assuming the Wikipedia account is correct). More...

Open the Gateless Gate: OER and Open Education
Geoff Cain, Brainstorm in Progress, 2018/04/18
I love how Geoff Cain mixes a new spirit of optimism and positivity with a couple of 'get off my lawn' moments. The positivity he finds in the Open Pedagogy Notebook created by Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani to “support community sharing of learning materials and ideas around access to knowledge and knowledge creation.” I've added the feed to my reader. More...

Open Educational Practices and Micro-Credentialing: A pilot project
Justin Mason, Open Pedagogy Notebook, 2018/04/18
What caught my eye was this description of "a competency-based micro-credentialing program called the University Learning Store (ULS).... conceived of as an online store for learning, where students can purchase mini-courses both to acquire and to be assessed on discreet competencies." Offered by the University of Wisconsin Extension's Continuing Education, Outreach and E-learning (CEOEL) it's (to me) a natural locus for experimentation. More...

Open Science Training Handbook
Sonja Bezjak, et.al., GitBooks, 2018/04/17
The Open Science Handbook has launched version 1.0 on Gitbooks. "The Handbook is available under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal) and is oriented to practical teaching of Open Science principles. It was written by 14 experts during a book sprint organized by FOSTER and the TIB Hannover in February 2018. After including suggestions from the community the handbook was moved to Github and we can announce the release of version 1.0 now." It is intended to be a living text and will be revised through contributions in the future. More...