Friday, June 29, 2007

Open Educational Resources: new eBook from OECD


OECD has just published a new book, called "Giving Knowledge Away for Free", and has made it available as a free eBook. OECD wrote "Learning resources are often considered key intellectual property in a competitive higher education world. However, more and more institutions and individuals are sharing their digital learning resources over the Internet, openly and for free, as Open Educational Resources (OER). This study, building on previous OECD work on e-learning, asks why this is happening, who is involved and what the most important implications of this development are."

You can download the free PDF or buy the print version from the OECD bookshop.

Namibian Schoolnet: Open source for education


Peter at OpenFree recently interviewed Uwe Thiem, from Schoolnet Namibia.

"Namibia's open source based SchoolNet project provides computer labs to schools all across the country. Some are in very remote locations that are not traditionally suitable for this type of technology. It has been quite successful and has won many international awards."

They are also distributing open content (a.k.a. open educational resources or OER) for schools via Project Gutenburg and Wikipedia.
Take a look
.