Saylor.org

Hello, and happy (Gregorian) new year! It was in September that we last tossed out a students & friends newsletter, and we regret that the October, November, and December issues were all eaten by the office dog. A lovely version of January’s letter went out this morning via our mailing list, which you’re quite welcome to join. We don’t mail often, and when we do, we try to make it count. Anyhow…if you didn’t get it by email, read on below for a pretty close approximation…

Go to:
Looking Back and to the future…
Consider This…
We’re Bloggers!
By the Numbers
Student & Professor Profiles

Looking Back and to the Future:
2012:

• Launched the iTunesU channel, ePortfolio, and Forums;
• Dropped 83 free textbooks on the market;
• Announced credit partnerships with Excelsior College & StraighterLine, and even turned out our own credit-recommended courses with some help from the National College Credit Recommendation Service.
• Surpassed the original slate of 241 courses to 277, with more to come! Our numbers also continue to grow in areas of study, staff, and secret projects of all kinds.

2013:

• In the Spring, we will launch our K-12 program with 14 English and Math courses at the secondary level; graduate courses in Business and Information Science are soon to come.
• We’re working hard to put a course o’ the week on iTunesU (ah, mobile trends).
• Speaking of mobile…Is there an ‘app for that’? Eh, not yet (for iOS, Android) but it’s on our plate.
• What else? More credit-recommended courses, areas of study, video content, and minor changes from user input to make things more user-friendly.

Consider This: Study Groups

“But,” you explain, “ I study for free online so I don’t have to deal with other people!” We understand; we might even empathize. But success in self-paced study requires motivation, which can be boosted by making learning a bit more social (and that can make learning a bit more fun).

The study groups are found in the ePortfolio and can be kept private/invitation-only, semi-private (moderated membership), or made open to all ePortfolio users.

We’re Bloggers!
If not always witty, we try our best to be informative. In the last few months, we’ve brought our blog to the front line of the saylor.org ‘verse, with a thousand views a month. And we are looking to make it more interesting, fun, relevant, etc. We invite you to read, share, and subscribe. Thoughts for improvement?  Do tell.

By the Numbers

• Courses on our site: 277
• Courses on iTunes U: 28
• Site visits (site +iTunes U) 2011: 166,000
• Site visits 2012: 3,000,000
• Forums users: 776
• Professors hanging out in forums: ~10
• ePortfolio users: 12,702
• Courses recommended for college credit: 3

Student & Professor Profiles

Are you after fame, fortune, notoriety? Okay, maybe we can’t quite help you there. But at least you can help us get to know you. We would love to feature a little bit about our students and professors in our blogs and newsletters. You handle the photograph, we ask the questions, et voilà! By all means, check out the student and professor profiles we’ve done so far, and then catch up with us at marketing@saylor.org.

Until Next Time…
We’d love to hear from you. If you like this, share it with your friends. If not, share it with us…How can this newsletter be better? How can our site and services improve? What do you need from us in 2013? We want to hear about your successes and triumphs too-however minor. Ooh…send a postcard? Our students and friends remain why we do what we do!

Photo credit: Walala Pancho via photopin CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This morning, as millions tuned into Twitter and Live Blog feeds Apple executives made two major announcements that, as we mentioned earlier this week, have the potential to greatly impact education. A few of us at the Saylor offices were glued to Time’s Live Blog feed this morning and one of Saylor’s staff members even waited eagerly outside the doors of the Guggenheim to hear just what Apple was releasing on this cold, wintery morning.

The Announcements!

And, big releases they were! Three in total, in fact. The first two announcements centered on changing the textbooks that we know today. Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, kicked off the conference by looking at what’s wrong with the educational system in the United States: kids are often bored and unstimulated; and teachers are often tied to standardized testing, often forgoing innovative teaching methods. As a result, U.S. students are lagging behind other countries, falling to 17^th in reading, 23^rd in science, and 31^st in math.

As a way to stimulate students and encourage teachers to be innovative in their teaching methods – and not to mention, save crumbling school districts huge amounts of money – Schiller introduced iBooks 2 and iBooks Author as complimentary ways to change the way textbooks are used – and created.

iBooks 2, demoed by Roger Rosner, Apple’s Vice President of Productivity and Software, features animated 3-D models, rotatable text, the ability for students to get glossary definitions by a simple touch, interactive review questions, highlighting and note-taking technologies, and study cards – all in one textbook! Books can be downloaded to an iPad where students will own them forever. These textbooks will be in a new section of Apple’s App Store, via the free iBook 2 app. Apple is starting with high school texts (with the approval of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Houghton Mifflin), all of which will be available for $14.99 or less.

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I check in with the Saylor Foundation’s Twitter feed multiple times each day for all the latest news in education and technology. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed a flurry of updates specific to the open education community. From the announcement that our favorite Open Education guru, David Wiley, was selected to be a senior fellow with Digital Promise, to MIT offering certificates for anyone who successfully completes one of the free courses via its new MITx program, it seems as thought 2012 is starting out with a bang in terms of free education.

Within the string of news updates, there were a couple noteworthy items that I’d like to share with you here.

Congressional bills, namely SOPA and PIPA

Last month, we posted our stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act, a proposed bill in the House of Representatives that aims to prevent “foreign online criminals from stealing and selling America’s intellectual property and keeping the profits for themselves.” Of major concern was this bill’s negative impact on Open Educational Resources. We were excited to read that, on January 14^th, Congress shelved this bill after massive public pressure, including a statement of opposition from the White House.

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