open content

Results--Survey on Open Source Adoption and Usage

scott — Fri, 9 Jan 2009 15:56:38 -0500

Thanks to all of you who participated in the Survey on Open Source Adoption and Usage. We have included the results of the survey (with any identifying comments redacted to ensure confidentiality) on the OSAAC website, located here: http://rhetoricalcommons.org/OSAAC/node/22. We have done some data analysis and are also providing the raw data in Microsoft Excel (.xls) format. In the near future, we will include an analysis of these findings in a joint publication. Once again, thank you for your participation. Ben McCorkle, Asst. Professor of English, OSU Marion, mccorkle.12[at]osu.edu

Survey of Open Source Adoption and Usage

scott — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:11:52 -0500

Greetings. We are conducting a preliminary online survey aimed at assessing the role of open source software in the scholarly and pedagogical practices of the Rhetoric & Composition and English Studies community. As a scholar and teacher of Rhetoric & Composition and/or of English Studies, you are being invited to participate in this survey. Please take a few moments to respond to this very brief ten-question survey on the subject at the link provided below.

access delayed is access denied

bleckb — Tue, 7 Oct 2008 10:38:12 -0400

InsideHigherEd.com reports that American Anthropology Association is making digital material free, if you can wait 35 years for the latest bits.

The American Anthropological Association [is making] “a groundbreaking move” that would provide “greater access for the global social science and anthropological communities to 86 years of classic, historic research articles.” The problem, critics say, is that the emphasis should have been on the word “historic,” because those 86 years worth of articles aren’t the most recent 86 years. Rather the association will apply its new policy for its flagship journal, American Anthropologist, only 35 years after material was published. The association has created open access to the scholarship of the ’50s and ’60s.

Kinda dulls the notions of being on the cutting edge of things. Read the full story

An Open Content Research Writing Text

pz — Thu, 1 May 2008 07:48:20 -0400

To all kairosnews-ers: I'd like to offer an open content research-writing text that I have been putting online over the past few weeks. See if you have any use for any of it in your classes. It is a work in progress, and I am still working on the formatting of the chapters. If you like something that is not formatted the way you'd like, help yourself to it and modify the text as you wish. The text is available at www.pz-writing.net/methods.

Make Textbooks Affordable

Clancy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:49:59 -0500

You guys are going to be very excited about this. Via Creative Commons comes the Make Textbooks Affordable Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs. I'll give you the first part of the faculty statement, which you can sign on the site:

Given that the cost of college textbooks has become a major affordability issue for low and middle income students, adding to the potential that these students will either drop out, take on additional loan debt to pay for textbooks, or undercut their own learning by forgoing the purchase of textbooks; and, Given that textbook publishers have not responded adequately to these concerns, but have continued to exacerbate this problem by raising prices and employing practices such as unnecessarily issuing new editions of textbooks; and, Given that faculty and students both share a concern about textbook affordability and its impact on student success; and, Given that we must address this problem without undermining the academic freedom of faculty to choose course content; Therefore, we state the following:

Read the rest...

on using wikipedia

bleckb — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:23:06 -0400

InsideHigherEd.com has an interesting article culled from a presentation on incorporating wikipedia into classroom assignments. Rather than disparaging the source, despite shortcomings real and imagined, it sounds like an intriguing task.

Martha Groom, a professor at the [University of Washington's] Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences program, [did] last fall by requiring term papers to be submitted to the popular, user-edited online encyclopedia.

Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance

bleckb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:38:47 -0400

The “Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance” Web site launches today (9/28/2007) with materials from 105 courses at seven Utah colleges – and with taxpayer monies funding the enterprise. “It’s a way,” [David Wiley, director of Utah State’s Center for Open and Sustainable Learning] says, “”to get some direct value back to people who fund higher education."

You can read more at Inside Higher Education: "Open Courseware goes Statewide." It will be interesting to see if this is part of a trend, or simply something of an aberration.

FLOSSCom Summer University - 'Learning the Open Source Way'

bleckb — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:12:38 -0400

This from the Humanist Discussion Group mailing list:

It started July 3, but runs to September. This just came my way, so it may be too late to get started, but sounds good nonetheless.

FLOSSCom Summer University - 'Learning the Open Source Way' - Free and Open Education - Virtual & On-Campus Summer University - Participate NOW!

The European Union funded FLOSSCom research project is investigating Free / Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) communities as learning environments. The project aims to identify principles of FLOSS communities that could be transferred to educational settings, e.g. how the community model could help to improve education.

For further information:
The FLOSSCom project
The Summer University Toolkit Development Space
The Summer University Work Space at Ubuntu / Launchpad

Open-Of-Course

Kletskous — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 07:21:51 -0400

Open-of-course is a new multilingual portal for free online courses and tutorials. On open-of-course all content is published as open content, so either it is in the public domain or under a creative commons license.

Through open-of-course we want to make it easier to find this kind of free information. Also we hope to stimulate the development of open content educational material. The focus is at the beginning mainly on educational material for open source software but as we grow, more subjects will be covered.

microsoft forces changes to higher ed report

bleckb — Fri, 1 Sep 2006 14:22:32 -0400

Inside Higher Education reports that the Microsoft representative to the Commission on the Future of Higher Education lobbied for changes to the final report regarding the language on open source. Here is the original language:

The commission encourages the creation of incentives to promote the development of open-source and open-content projects at universities and colleges across the United States, enabling the open sharing of educational materials from a variety of institutions, disciplines, and educational perspectives. Such a portal could stimulate innovation, and serve as the leading resource for teaching and learning. New initiatives such as OpenCourseWare, the Open Learning Initiative, the Sakai Project, and the Google Book project hold out the potential of providing universal access both to general knowledge and to higher education.

Open v. Closed Networks

scott — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:55:03 -0400

Via Boing Boing I found this James Boyle piece about open v. closed networks. Boyle has some interesting things to say about why so many policy makers and business leaders don't like open networks.

we still do not understand the kind of property that exists on networks. Most of our experience is with tangible property; fields that can be overgrazed if outsiders cannot be excluded. For that kind of property, control makes more sense. We still do not intuitively grasp the kind of property that cannot be exhausted by overuse (think of a piece of software) and that can become more valuable to us the more it is used by others (think of a communications standard).

We Own All Your Base (Library Edition).

scott — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:44:19 -0400

The Georgia Tech Library is running the following notice

Because of recent problems with systematic downloading of IEEE and ASCE journal articles that resulted in the suspension of our access, the Library has implemented downloading limits. We will continue to monitor this situation. Please note that downloading entire collections of data or entire issues of a journal or conference is a violation of copyright law and a violation of Georgia Tech's licenses with publishers.

Yet another reason why we need open content. Subscription prices are rising at a rapid pace. Every university I've been at has sent out "surveys" to find out which journals we "really" need because costs are outstripping budgets. Now we get "downloading limits" with no specifics about those limits. What if I'm interested in an entire special issue? Do these "downloading limits" mean I can only see one article per day? Per week? Per month? Soon to come, printing limits, time limits on how long one can read an article--already in use via NetLibrary, and perhaps even citation limits. Digital collections are great, but not when they come with high prices and restrictions. It appears the Georgia Tech Library is only borrowing the journals.

MIT's OpenCourse Ware Turns 5

platypus matt — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 09:54:44 -0400

Good news for those of us supporting MIT's OpenCourseWare project--it turns five today. It's good to see the project doing so well, and even maddening to think how long it's taking other universities to follow behind the trail MIT is blazing here. Of course, if you dig deeply into the site, you'll notice that not all these "courses" are very informative. Some consist of merely a course description and some project assignments. Still, the groundwork has been laid for a major contribution to pub

Remixed Propaganda Posters

platypus matt — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:35:43 -0500

There's an interesting link on Boing Boing today to this Photoshopping Contest for remixing WWII propaganda posters. Some of the entries are funny, some profound, some offensive, and others just plain silly. At any rate, it's grist for viz rhet. I can't help but think how fun it'd be to give an assignment like this to a class. Only trouble is, I don't know Photoshop. Hmm...

Open Source Tax Credit

scott — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 12:16:12 -0500

The Center for American Progress has a proposal for granting individuals a tax credit for work done on open source projects, up to "20 percent of [. . .] out-of-pocket costs." Corporations and self-employed folks can already write off their expenses, but this proposal would allow the "hobbyist" to do the same. While the proposal does talk a bit about the cultural and social benefits of open source, the manin trust is on the economic benefits of open source.

[It] enhances the development and dissemination of knowledge and ideas more broadly. Since the benefits to the broader software development community and the economy as a whole go well beyond the users of an individual software product, a policy that subsidizes open source development would increase economic efficiency.

The Anti-Lessig Reader

Clancy — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:21:36 -0500

Lawrence Lessig created a wiki for critics of his work, to assemble comprehensive counter-arguments for Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, The Future of Ideas, and Free Culture. Those of us working in the copyright/authorship/intellectual property area might find it useful.

Wikipedia v. Britannica

scott — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:13:12 -0500

Via Boing Boing comes this study by Nature that all the news about how unreliable Wikipedia can be might be more sound than fury.

[A]n expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule. The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

My students wrote a Wikipedia article this semester and we talked about how to use sources, including Wikipedia.

Royal Society Stands Against Open Access

platypus matt — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:13:43 -0500

Well, here's something that really makes my blood curdle. The Royal Society has taken a stand against open access journals. Their argument is the standard one that confuses means with ends. The presence of these free journals will make it less likely that scientists will pay high prices for paper ones. Therefore, we must eliminate the open access journals to protect the proprietary ones. It's really sad for me to see the Royal Society lumbering on like all the other dinosaurs. After all, the historically revolutionized scientific discourse by offering the first real scientific journal, Philosohpical Transactions, and made every effort to get that journal into the hands of scientists everywhere--even "foreign" ones. Of course, back then they were progressive and fighting against so many repressive nationalist forces, from home and abroad. They were also converting science from one of secrecy to one of full disclosure (making a gamble that scientists would trade their knowledge for good publicity and notoriety). However, I guess we should note that the first editor of PT, Henry Oldenburg, made his living editing, printing, and selling the journal--so I suppose there has always been this profit motive burning deep in the bowels of the RS. My guess is that at such a time when most scientists were leisure-class "gentlemen" of substantial private means, a few pounds for a journal was nothing to go on about. Now that most scientists are leisure-class men and women with substantial private and public means (in the form of grants), a few thousand dollars (or more!) for a print journal is nothing to go on about.

Open Content, Open Media?

scott — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:16:55 -0500

DailyKos has a front page diary on Open Content/Open Media that's worth a look. DailyKos is primarily a political blog but it's good to see the question of Open Content getting some interest from those traditionally more concerned with U.S. domestic politics. The article takes note of how some (Open Source Media) are jumping on the Open Content bandwagon in name only.

This use of the Open Content idea as a marketing tool (or an attempt to build a particular ethos) is something that those of truly interested in Open Content need to be aware of.

Newsforge releases free open office training vids

platypus matt — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:40:00 -0500

Here's good news for folks hoping to learn Open Office in a hurry--Newsforge has released 11 free OO training videos free of charge. I watched one on making presentations and was impressed by its clarity and concision. The videos will also be included on the CD accompanying Robin Miller's upcoming book on OO. I was thinking that even those these are for training purposes, they could also be useful for "selling" the product. Once people see how easy it is to do good work with OO, perhaps they'll be more willing

a few concerns about Wikibooks

ben vershbow — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:57:33 -0400

Kim White, my colleague at The Institute for the Future of the Book, just posted on our blog a small informal case study of the "collaboration of the month" textbook featured at Wikibooks -- a spin-off project of Wikipedia developing open-content textbooks. Worth taking a look. UPDATE: On fostering a better, more nuanced debate about Wikipedia and the open source model for education in general... HERE (We're keeping Wikibooks in the corner of our eye as we continue developing our own digital textbook project next\text.)

Sick of Writing Research Papers? Have the Wikipedia Community Do It!

Clancy — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 14:28:11 -0400

Write a craptacular draft full of factual errors, incredible sources, and grammatical/mechanical mistakes.
Post it to Wikipedia.
Wait a few days and let the community clean it up for you.
Turn it in!

The open source development model at work, so the article says. Maybe something we can address in the Caucus come March. Via Lifehacker.

Wikibooks Project Takes on Publishers. Wait! That's Me

Nickc — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 11:43:35 -0400

http://news.com.com/Wikibooks+takes+on+textbook+industry/2100-1025_3-5884291.html?tag=sas.email leads to a CNET news article by Daniel Terdiman on the Wikimedia Foundation's projects to create "a comprehensive, kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks that are free and freely distributable, based on an open-source development model." I'm really excited by this. As one who works in publishing, what this is really about isn't replacing publishers, but changing how we use our core skill sets. Textbook publishing has always been about providing pedagogical tools. Wikibooks won't replace entirely the pedagogical tool known as a textbook, but they can offer new ways to think about pedagogical tools.

Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out

cel4145 — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:42:02 -0400

Yippee! It's about time:

The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. . . . As part of this new policy, the state will support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, and PDFs (portable document format) as the standards for its office documents.

Yes. Only a techie writing teacher could get excited by government adoption of an open document format. But this is a big deal :)

the next\text project: what happens when textbooks go digital?

Kim White — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 13:34:52 -0400

Dear Kairos Readers, The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce the launch of next\text, a new project designed to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that will enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook. There are two stages to the next\text project. The first is a curated website showcasing significant projects currently in the field. The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions. These areas include, but are in no way limited to: "expanded" multimedia textbooks; "open-source" textbooks continually improved by teachers and students; dynamic, networked textbooks with live or regularly updating components; collaborative work spaces; and multi-user games.

Google and Open Access Save a Life

cel4145 — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:45:44 -0400

Open Access News notes this story from Google Blog about a father who was able to prevent an unnecessary, extremely dangerous medical procedure on his two week old newborn son. The boy had been brought to an ER with extremely low hemoglobin. When the doctor recommended the emergency procedure, the father quickly searched using Google via his mobile phone and found an OA article which indicated that the low hemoglobin, while rare, would likely reverse itself. While it is unlikely that OA in the field of Computers and Writing would ever have this life saving result, this story well represents why OA is more than just a publishing practice; it's an example of the importance of making scholarly knowledge publicly available. OA is just the right thing to do. Why do academics continue to do the wrong thing?

Open Access Webliography

JohnWalter — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 09:16:28 -0400

Adrian K. Ho and Charles W. Bailey, Jr. have made available online a pre-print of their article"Open Access Webliography" (Reference Services Review 33.3 (2005): 346-364). From the abstract:

The paper aims to present a wide range of useful freely available internet resources (e.g. directories, e-journals, FAQs, mailing lists, and weblogs) that allow the reader to investigate the major aspects of the important open access (OA) movement. Design/methodology/approach - The internet resources included in this webliography were identified during the course of one of the authors writing the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-prints and Open Access Journals. The authors evaluated, selected, categorized, and annotated these resources to construct this webliography, which complements the bibliography. Findings - The most useful resources have been annotated and organized into webliography sections. For example, the "Starting Points", "Debates", and "General Information" sections list resources that orient the reader to OA and the issues involved. The different "Directories (and Guides)" sections alert the reader to useful finding aids on relevant subjects. Originality/value - This webliography provides easy access to the most relevant internet resources for understanding and practicing OA. It affirms the significance of OA in scholarly communication, and it identifies the key parties involved in and/or contributing to the OA movement.

Wiki Lockdown?

poetcsw — Sat, 6 Aug 2005 02:07:30 -0400

Wikipedia, like the Los Angeles Times "Open Ed", New York Review of Books "User Notes", and other "open" editorial forums meant for peer editing and corrections, is now a frequent victim of vandals. The end result of this is a move to end, close, or limit user interactions. This same thing is happening with some Open Source projects, after some "contributions" turned out to include intentional buffer errors or other security issues. In any open society... From Reuters, 5-Aug-2005: Wikipedia plans to impose stricter editorial rules to prevent vandalism of its content, founder Jimmy Wales was quoted as saying Friday. In an interview with German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, Wales, who launched Wikipedia with partner Larry Sanger in 2001, said it needed to find a balance between protecting information from abuse and providing open access to improve entries. Citing a recent example of vandalism, Wales recalled how following the election of the new Pope Benedict in April, a user substituted the pontiff's photo on the Wikipedia site with that of the evil emperor from the "Star Wars" film series.

Open-Access Writing Center Journal Archives

Clancy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:09:25 -0400

Maybe it's been mentioned here before, but it's news to me: The people behind the Writing Centers Research Project are making the full-text archives of The Writing Center Journal available to the public. Nice!

To publish - or to e-publish?

cel4145 — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 10:52:33 -0400

Saw this piece on OA by Leslie Cannold of the University of Melbourne via a link from Open Access News:

In the electronic age, the academic's need for commercial publishers is becoming obsolete.

For academics, the ongoing debate about the impact of the internet on scholarly communication couldn't be more important.

This is because whatever evolves or is decided on will critically affect the way academics do business: how they use and create knowledge and obtain reward for being recognised by their peers.

To arrive at the best model for scholarly communication we must look past the enthusiastic championing of an open-access future, and publishing houses trumpeting new and viable business models, and return to first principles. Ignoring how we've always done it and why, we need to ask: what is it that academics need from and are trying to achieve with scholarly journal publication?

The answer is threefold. Academics want their own journal articles published quickly and disseminated widely, and to be credited in ways that enable them to maintain their job or even climb the ladder. They also need convenient access to the most up-to-date journal publications in their discipline's archives: access that has been curtailed in recent years because of the profiteering of large academic publishers determined to exploit their control over research findings, and the inability of most university library budgets to keep up.

The truth is that academics and universities hold most of the cards in the scholarly publishing game. This is not just because they do the research, write the papers and do the unpaid work required to provide quality assurance by reviewing the work of their peers. It is also because their primary objective is not to profit from the distribution of their work, but to have it read and cited by others.

Dvorak Dvalues Creative Commons

jtirrell — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 18:18:01 -0400

John C. Dvorak has a bit challenging Creative Commons for being an unnecessary middle layer between content producers and consumers: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838244,00.asp

New(ish) papers on free culture/open source

Clancy — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 12:30:07 -0400

Note: Both are PDFs!

The Future of the Internet -- And How to Save It by Jonathan Zittrain

Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm by Yochai Benkler

Via Marco Carbone's iLaw Cambridge 2005 H2O Playlist.

LA Times "gets it"

Bob — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:29:43 -0400

I'm forwarding a NY Times article (free reg. req'd, blah-blah) about the changes Michael Kinsley is proposing for the LA Times edtorial page. In essence, they're going to wikify the editorial page and allow readers to contribute. Sounds like there might also be a total content posting cap per user. I'm sure there's something over at LA Times as well. There are the expected howls in reaction, of course, and the usual arguments of authority, i.e., "What will happen to the institutional voice of he LA Times?" What's really interesting is that Kinsley cites Wikipedia specifcally as a model of inspiration.

What's so Special about the Wikipedia?

Cathy Ma — Sun, 5 Jun 2005 08:16:29 -0400

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that invites the participation of everyone. As long as you have internet access, you can be part of their editorial team. When most people expect the site to be flooded by vandalism given its open nature, the reverse is true. Instead of getting spammed by vandalism, the website sustains and expands in an exponential rate. Right now there are about half million articles on the English Wikipedia, which was the first language of Wikipedia until it evolved into more than 100 languages since 2001.

What's so special about the Wikipedia?

Cathy Ma — Mon, 2 May 2005 10:05:47 -0400

Abstract submitted for Computers and Writing online 2005 Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that invites the participation of everyone. As long as you have internet access, you can be part of their editorial team. For some people, the Wikipedia is a site for them to look up information perhaps in different languages. When most people expect the site to be flooded by vandalism given its open nature, the reverse is true. Instead of getting spammed by vandalism, the website sustains and expands in an exponential rate. Right now there are about half million articles on the English Wikipedia, which was the first language of Wikipedia until it evolved into more than 100 languages since 2001.

Barton's Dissertation Defense

platypus matt — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:39:00 -0400

Greetings, humanoids. Today I successfully defended my dissertation, "Dissertations: Past, Present, and Future." Overall, I was pleased with my performance. I was able to pretty much include all but one of my major academic interests in the diss (copyrights, hackers, wikis, new tech, politics, etc.) Anyway, I thought some people might want to hear it, so I made an audio recording of the whole thing and will make it available for you to stream or download. I also have the original PowerPoint presentation here (zipped because of photos). You may be interested in the questions I got asked and some of their responses--I had two scientists present, and their takes on the issues were quite distinct from the English professors in attendance. You also hear Moxley making some "Moxleyisms," though I won't mention my favorites...I think you'll discover which ones I'm talking about if you give it a list! Finally, if you want to read the whole dissertation (though keep in mind it still needs revision), that's available as well. Three of the committee members want to see it again before it goes into the depository, so I have quite a bit of work left to do on it...I was told that this wasn't because it wasn't any good, but rather that they're so interested in my work that they insist on seeing the changes I make. ;-) For sanity's sake, I'll take their word for it!

Using Open Source Models for Peer Reviewing

platypus matt — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:54:40 -0400

Whoa--Slashdot just posted this article about applying open source models to, among other things, the academic peer review process. The article was written by some members of the Young foundation and published on DEMOS.

From the formulation of public policy to more open forms of academic peer review, setting up mutual support groups for people facing similar health problems to collaborative forms of social innovation, the principles of open source promise to radically alter the we approach complex social problems.

CCCC Blogging Wrapup

Clancy — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:31:30 -0500

Here are my notes from the panels I attended:

Evaluating Academic Weblogs: Using Empirical Data to Assess Pedagogy and Student Achievement

The New Collegiality: Circulating Ideas about Writing and Teaching on Weblogs

Maybe not *that* spicy.

Photographs from CCCC 2005

The Aftermath of Access: From Critical to Creative Computer Literacies

Recovering Rhetorics of African American Political Agency

Writing Not Allowed? Lessig's Address at CCCC

Owning Knowledge: New Intersections of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Academia

Transnational Feminisms: Rhetorical and Pedagogical Practices

The Blogging SIG

Home Words: City Writing

CCCC-IP Caucus

Ourmedia: an Open Repository of Multimedia Texts

cel4145 — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:00:54 -0500

In looking at some new sites recently, I stumbled upon a great new project running on Drupal for expanding the public commons. In conjunction with Internet Archive, Bryght, Creative Commons and Wikipedia, Ourmedia is offering " free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches."

As David Bollier points out,

Schools: Networks: Citizenship

the internationale — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:13:41 -0500

Hi, New here but already asking for help..! I am working with an International School in England. I have created an Internet space where children at the school (the current group is aged 14-15) can work with other children to explore the idea of global citizenship. The site uses Wiki and Blog technologies to enable the young people to drive the project forward themselves with myself and the other staff there to help, prompt, advise but not run the project. I am looking for schools/organisations who would be interested in joining the project. At the moment the site is password-protected and, at least for the initial stages, I am looking at keeping the project just to invited schools. If it takes off of course I would like to open it up to the wider Internet. At this stage though my aim is to help the young people concentrate on the content and the connections they can make with other young people and with the issues.

Open Access Is "Here to Stay"

Clancy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:42:51 -0500

Open access advocates might find this Chronicle article encouraging. Via Political Theory Daily Review.

Tune in to hear Barton on Dr. Andy's Hour

platypus matt — Wed, 9 Feb 2005 14:31:32 -0500

I sometimes forget just how many people read Kairosnews. Just today I got a call from Dr. Andy of Dr. Andy's Poetry and Technology Hour, a radioshow dedicated to promoting--you guessed it, poetry and tech. Anyway, Andy is a regular reader of Knews and came across my post about Free Composition Textbooks and invited me to discuss the topic in greater detail on his show. Folks in Davis, CA can tune in to KDVS tonight at 5:30. The rest of us can listen it via the web. Maybe I'll get a chance to say "I NEED A JOB!" during the show.

"Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger"

cel4145 — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:21:25 -0500

I think the quote by John Barlow in the title of my post says it all. From Activists Urge Free Open Source Software. Link courtesy of Slashdot.

A Free Composition Textbook

platypus matt — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:02:28 -0500

I recently posted a question on TechRhet about free rhetoric and composition textbooks, but much to my dismay, no one responded! Is it because there are no such books, or just (probably more likely) that my message slipped under the radar? Anyway, here's the deal. I've been researching how to build these books collaboratively now for about three months. I've studied successful projects and think I know where things tend to go wrong and how to keep a project moving forward. I know that Dave Munger had been working on free books before, but I haven't heard any updates on that project yet. I talked to Jimmy Beavis (founder of Wikipedia) and he's keen on the idea, plus I investigated a site called Wiki Books that has some great models (though the books there are mostly scientific or mathematical).

Free Software Magazine

cel4145 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:51:26 -0500

There's a new online magazine, Free Software Magazine. For those of you who are not free software/open source advocates, don't let the title chase you away. The first issue release contains many articles on subjects other than free software of interest to the technorhetorician. Here are some selections, descriptions taken directly from the website:

Format Wars by Marco Fioretti. File formats: the past, the present and a possible future
XML: the answer to everything? by Kay Ethier, Scott Abel. This article weighs the pros and cons of XML for some applications (publishing), and explores why it is the best possible solution for many programming and publishing needs.
The magic of live CDs by Harish Pillay. What are live CDs, and how do they work?
The Commons by David M. Berry. The Commons as an Idea - Ideas as a Commons.

I found the writing both informative and accessible. These could make good readings for classes interested in these topics.

"How I Learned to Love Larry," So Why Can't We?

cel4145 — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:44:11 -0400

Here's another news flash just as amazing as Matt's note about the DMCA and Lexmark ruling. Put Hilary Rosen together with Larry Lessig and what do you get? Rosen advocating Creative Commons licensing in this month's Wired. What's next? Bill Gates open sourcing Windows? A composition journal publishing under a CC license? Maybe that last comment was a cheap shot. But today I was talking about Taylor and Riley's Open Source and Academia with the OSDDP instructors. It's a great text which outlines a lot of what we are doing with OSDDP. And had Dave B. and I known last spring when we first began thinking about how to create an open source community web-based project that Taylor and Riley were writing their piece, we could have collaborated. Their ideas would certainly have helped us. But in sending the link to their text to the other instructors, I realized that I couldn't just send them a copy of the text if I had wanted to. Ironically, while the authors, reviewers, and editors of CC Online worked with that article, apparently none of them bought into its open source principles enough to release it under a Creative Commons license. Why the gap here between theory and practice? Taylor and Riley have gone a long way toward making it clear. Open source principles are very much in sync with composition theory. Peer review, collaboration, sharing, process, revision, access, community: those are the keywords which describe open source so well and resonate so strongly within our field. Is sharing so oblivously obvious that people don't get it? What is it about "All Rights Reserved" which has such a strong appeal now that there is an alternative? If Hilary Rosen can get it, why can't we?

The Open Source Development Model Meets Professional Writing and Service Learning: OSDDP

cel4145 — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 18:24:36 -0400

In Open Source and Academia, Laurie Taylor and Brendan Riley point out some possible benefits of applying the open source development model in a service learning project:

While Open Source can connect to models for service learning, service learning can be done by an individual in service to the community. The Open Source model requires that a collaborative group undertake the project. Additionally, while a service learning project may last one semester, Open Source projects should strive to remain open for later revision for a longer period. Further, Open Source as a method requires that the discussion and documentation be available for later groups to implement or alter. Service learning is instead more focused on the individual experience with the project rather than later repeatability.

Now there is a live example with a couple of hundred professional writing students working within an open source development model community, Purdue University's Open Source Development and Documentation Project (OSDDP). The following is from our most recent press release, Open source networked learning helps writing students excel at Purdue University :

Lessing on Fair Use MP3

scott — Fri, 8 Oct 2004 01:11:51 -0400

web2.0weblog has an MP3 of Lawrence Lessig's presentation at the Web2.0 Conference. Good stuff that's worth a listen. Via BoingBoing

Rip. Sample. Mash. Share

cel4145 — Thu, 7 Oct 2004 22:39:44 -0400

In November, Wired subscribers and magazine purchasers will also receive a copy of The Wired CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. The CD contains songs from artists such as David Byrne, The Beastie Boys, and Gilberto Gil, all using the new Creative Commons sampling licences. MSNBC has a feature, and the Creative Commons The Wired CD page contains more information, including a short Flash introduction.

NIH Proposes Free Access For Public to Research Data

cel4145 — Mon, 6 Sep 2004 18:27:07 -0400

The September 6 Washington Post is reporting that the NIH is considering a major policy change toward open access principles:

"The committee is very concerned that there is insufficient public access to reports and data resulting from NIH-funded research," it read. "This situation . . . is contrary to the best interests of the U.S. taxpayers who paid for this research."

The report called upon NIH to devise a system that would ensure that NIH-funded research results be "freely and continuously available no later than six months after publication."

The report also notes that scientific journals are protesting that this will hurt their publication business. No doubt. This is a move away from a finanical model which allows organizations--both profit and not-for-profit--to capitalize on resources which should be public. These publishing groups have essentially been subsidized by grant-based research. Time for that well to run dry.