Saylor.org

There’s a legal phrase, cui bono, which means, roughly, “who benefits?” — it’s meant as a reminder to look at what people involved in a law case stand to gain. It’s a question, and a real question, that we can ask ourselves about pursuing a four-year college education.

Diane Rehm (The Diane Rehm Show, WAMU American University Radio) didn’t go to college…she got a job in radio out of high school and, thirty-four years later, is asking her guests and audience the question Who Benefits from College And Why? (8 May 2013.)

An audio archive should be is available shortly at the link, but as usual the comments — strident, anecdotal, passionate, cynical, wise, curious — tell much of the story.

We don’t mean to undersell the value of a college degree — most of us here at the Saylor Foundation have one or more of them, and we partner with some wonderful, innovative schools to help students get theirs. But with U.S. student debt at $1 trillion and a perception that certain degrees (e.g. in the Arts and Humanities) don’t necessarily open doors, concerns naturally arise.

Give it a listen, and share your thoughts. Where does Saylor.org (et al.) fit in? What’s your path?

If you want a good, brief primer on xMOOCs, business models for online education, California higher ed politics, open educational resources, and free/open textbooks — all on one page — you could do worse than Abby Clobridge’s “The Wild West of MOOCs“.

She mentions the Saylor Foundation…ever heard of ‘em?

Yesterday we released our course ENGL001: English Composition I on our iTunes U channel. In the spirit of Good Writing, we present the infographic below, courtesy of OnlineCollege.org. Now, we expect some controversy here…is texting destroying the communication skills of the younger generation, embiggening them, or just adding to the rich bounty of the language?

Before you decide, you should know that the history of the much-maligned emoticon is older than you probably expect…and the smiley face has a few backers, like some guy named Nabokov.

Infographic CC BY-NC-ND by OnlineCollege.org.
Emoticon image public domain, via Wikimedia.

True confession time: I have explored, but not signed up for, Memrise. And lest I inadvertently mislead anyone, this lovely web app is not openly licensed or open source to the best of my knowledge. So why am I sharing it here, on a Saylor.org blog, where we love to talk about OER and open access and Creative Commons? Well, a couple three reasons:

1. We talk about other stuff all the time; take a look at any (ironically named) OER Newsletter in our archives to confirm;
2. We’ve mentioned Memrise once upon a time, got reminded of it via a friend on Twitter, and we see that it’s come a long way;
3. Shameless self-promotion. If you’d like to learn the science behind this site, you could do worse than take our free Cognitive Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Psychology of Learning and Behavior courses. And we’ve got language courses on the way soon…best get your language chops ready now!

The details, then:

What
A free online community that “uses images & science to make learning languages and facts child’s play.” Per their About Us page, the ingredients are fairly simple: science, fun, and community. More specifically, the site uses learning and memory techniques to help users get and retain fact-based knowledge, simultaneously doing its level best to make memorization fun.

Who
Their Team page will say it better than I can, but these folks have expertise in memory, cognitive science, and design.

Highlights
I’m going to be self-serving and mention the ample Simplified Mandarin vocabulary offerings, but if you want to impress your friends with your knowledge of Morse Code, there’s that too.

<< Photo credit: EJP Photo via photopin CC BY-NC-SA >>

If you have a great resource (especially one that falls into an OER box), tell us — in the comments, via social media, or straight to David, who’s keeping track of this sort of thing.

We’re going to aim to have these out mid-month from here on out; as always, if you’ve got links that belong in one of the categories below (or if we’re foolishly missing a category), drop us a line! See the end for more info on the credits.

Open License

KA Lite [BY-NC-SA 2.0]
Historically, network connectivity has been the bane of teachers and students everywhere, and one of the biggest obstacles to deploying technology to ‘improve’ learning…when it takes 25 minutes of an hour-long block to get all the students on charged & networked computers, well, that’s not so nice. This offline implementation of Khan Academy’s openly-licensed content might solve at least some of those problems — it can be installed on any Windows or Linux server for use on a local network, or even on “roving vans.” Actually, their ‘more info’ sheet covers most of the use cases you haven’t yet imagined. The Power of Open, people…it’s a thing.
[Link]

LoudLit.org [BY-NC-ND 2.5]
Free audio recordings for a number of classic novels, stories, children’s books, and poems. Nothing wrong with that. We gave a listen to part of Chapter 1 of Huck Finn…great voicing and sound quality!
[Link]

RealWorldMath.org [BY-NC-SA 3.0]
From the site: “Real World Math is a collection of free math activities for Google Earth designed for students and educators.” In other words…fun. Credit: ES
[Link]

Open Access

Knowmia
K-12 video curation, brought to you by some of the same folks who were behind the Flip video recorder (which enjoyed a brief, brilliant time in the sun before smartphones came into their own). Credit: ES
[Link]

JSTOR Register & Read
Some of you may know about or remember JSTOR’s release of early journal content (content that had passed out of copyright back into the public domain), and this new program is equally exciting…for registered individual users, the company is making selected content from about 1,200 journals available for online reading. According to the info page (see the link), the content is “from the first volume and issue published for these journals through a recent year (generally 3-5 years ago).” Credit: Hamish M.
[Link]

“Is Open Access Finally on the Ascendancy?” (BioScience)
This optimistic (and brief!) article has been making the rounds the past few days. Well worth a look, and OA is always worth the discussion!
[Link]

Tools

FOIA Online (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
From the site: “As of December 10, 2012, the Department of the Treasury will implement FOIAonline in a limited capacity to receive FOIA requests and provide the processing status of requests identified by tracking numbers through FOIA online.” Credit: HNN
[Link]

Cerego
Still an invite-only beta (you can request one at the link), these folk “use brain science to help you learn faster and remember longer.” Credit: ES
[Link]

Groupnotes
Also still in the free invite-only phase (but there’s a demo). From the site: “Groupnotes is a collaborative tool that you can use to easily share, annotate, and comment on websites.” Credit: ES
[Link]

WorkFlowy
A list making application…nothing new there, but this one’s got some impressive testimonials from
Credit: SR
[Link]

News

Education to Employment: Designing a system that works (McKinsey)
Old news for a new year: there is a disconnect between education and employment; this downloadable report dives right on in. Credit: ES
[Link]

Serious. Fun.

Trace Effects (U.S. State Department)
From the site: “A collaborative English language video game experience for students ages 12-16. Learn English and explore American culture through puzzles, games, and adventures in an interactive world.” Credit: ES
[Link]

Impact of Major on Career Path for 15600 Williams College Alums (Satyan Devadoss, Hayley Brooks, Kaison Tanabe)
Notwithstanding the fact that it looks a bit like an anatomical drawing of muscle fibers (our apologies if you can’t un-see that now), and further notwithstanding that it’s peculiar to a single institution (Go Ephs!), this data visualization is pretty darn cool.
Credit: ES
[Link]

Spent (Flash Game)
Some of us here are old enough to have read a lot of a certain series of “gamebooks”. And old enough, at least, to know that text-based adventures were one of the first going concerns in personal computer gaming. “Spent” is kind of an emotionally-serious upgrade of the classic Lemonade Stand, in which the player attempts to make a budget last all month in the face of all-too-common frustrations. Working students will certainly sympathize (but may want a little less reality in their gaming). Regardless, “Spent” is a great example of how people can use the Internet to communicate in compelling ways…creatives take note!
Credit: ES
[Link]

Dead Sea Scrolls…at 1215 dpi (Israel Antiquities Authority, Google)
In an ancient OER newsletter, we mentioned the high-res Dead Sea Scrolls that Google had helped put online. Now, they’ve helped take it several steps further by assisting the Israel Antiquities Authority with launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library. 5,000 images in infrared and color, at 1215 dpi resolution. Awesome.
[Link]

DIY.org
The concept is deliciously simple: the site presents real-world ‘maker’ challenges (DIY = “Do It Yourself”), which the maker can then complete, share back to the site, and earn “patches”. It’s all about climbing the mountain because it’s there, and many or most of the challenges can be done on the cheap. Almost completely random aside: The School of Life. Huh.
Credit: ES
[Link]

Credits
ES = EdSurge (www.edsurge.com)
HNN = History News Network (www.hnn.us)
SR = The Scout Report (scout.wisc.edu/scout-report)