Top 50 University Open Courseware Collections

The DIY Learning blog has compiled a list of the top 50 open courseware collections.  Courseware collections are digitally published educational materials organized as courses (1) and include video, audio, and text files.

Check out the DIY Learning List

(1) OCW Consortium's Definition

1 Million Free Books - Coming soon to an e-reader* near you.

"Spring Design, the developers of the Alex Reader, a two-screen digital reader featuring both b&w E-Ink and full-color LCD screens, has reached an agreement with Google to provide access to more than a million public domain digital books online or through download. The newly developed Alex Reader runs on the Google-developed Android OS and offers full web browsing functionality through the color screen and the Android Web browser."

Full story at Publisher's Weekly.

(*No word yet on what this one will cost.)

"The Future Deserves a Past"

"The Book Mechanic," an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Some years ago, Terry Belanger found a striking way to reveal the reverence that many citizens of the digital age continue to feel for old books. It is a sentiment he finds fascinating but only rarely appropriate or useful. Belanger, who retired in September as director of an educational institute called Rare Book School but who continues to teach there, brings an old volume to class, speaks about its binding and typography, and then, still discussing the book, rips it in half and tears it into pieces. As his horrified students watch in disbelief, Belanger tosses the shards into a nearby trash can and murmurs, "Bibliography isn't for sissies."

Interesting article about an interesting character. The author deals with the "death-of-the-book" canard well, and makes a point that I, as a special collections librarian, love to make: the book is one of humanity's most enduring technologies.

What is too often forgotten is that the book itself is a remarkable technology, easily one of the most socially significant in human history. Amazingly, books are still among our most reliable tools for preserving information. They never give you an error message or fail to open because of incompatibility with newer technologies.

Article from Wired's Gadget Lab

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education.

“About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”
Conversely, the problem with the internet is there’s too much information, and it’s difficult to determine which data is valuable.

Librarians can help you determine which data is the right data: we call it that skill "information literacy."

Prezi - presentation software without slides(!)

I came across Prezi recently when browsing the eLearning//Don't Waste Your Time blog feed in my Google Reader subscriptions. The author of that blog took Prezi on a test run by composing a "prezi" about his iPhone. It seems like a pretty cool tool for adding some spice to your presentations, and its being web-based may add some convenience. I haven't tried it yet, but the designers claim you can learn to use it in ten minutes. Tutorials are available at the Prezi website.

Below is a sample Prezi presentation.