The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes

The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/the-argument-for-free-classes-via-itunes/
The New York Times Business Innovation Technology Society (Bits) Blog recently featured a piece by Brad Stone about the increasingly popular iTunes U, Apple’s catalog of lectures from colleges and universities around the world. Launched two years ago, there are now 600 schools participating. iTunes U makes more than 250,000 individual classes available to the public. Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of Open University, a distance-learning institution based in Britain, states, “‘There are still a lot of universities in the world that define the value of their experience as somehow locking up their content and only giving people access to the content when they enroll in the program….The courage comes from taking the next leap of faith. Universities no longer define themselves by their content but the overall experience: the concept, the student support, the tutoring and mentoring, the teaching and learning they get and the quality of the assessment.’” Open University has “more than 375,000 downloads a week,” and recently had its 10-millionth download.

Share 2.0: Open Knowledge for the Public Interest in a Web 2.0 World

Share 2.0: Open Knowledge for the Public Interest in a Web 2.0 World
Presentation at FIPSE Annual Directors Meeting
Fairmont Hotel, Washington, DC. Tuesday, February 13, 2007
[pdf of presentation coming soon]

Description: This presentation will look at the general question of how we can help scholars to share their knowledge and digital resources in support of research, teaching, and public service (especially for K-12) using the new practices and technologies of the developing second-generation web. We will build from the work of the UC Berkeley Scholar’s Box FIPSE project to the look at the following broad themes:

• How we can lower the barriers for faculty and graduate students to create digital scholarly collections that both add value to the campus and can be shared for re-use by the public.
• The last several years have witnessed the growth of a major evolution in the web infrastructure and social software that is available for all citizens to create their own social media, to access and re-mix digital cultural heritage materials, and to participate in the public sphere. What are some of the key characteristics of this “web 2.0” world. And how can universities use and guide these new public technologies and social practices to support digital scholarship that benefits the public.
• How can we put in place a core foundation of public licensing, digital preservation, and archiving to enable the sharing and re-use of digital scholarly collections.
• How do we design digital collections that higher education and K-12 faculty can use to support inquiry based learning and knowledge creation by their students.

Presenters:

David A. Greenbaum, Director, FIPSE Scholar’s Box Project; Director, Data Services, Information Services and Technology, UC Berkeley

Michael Ashley, Anthropology Department; New Program Manager, Office of the Chief Information Officer, UC Berkeley

Noah Wittman, Program Manager, FIPSE Scholar’s Box Project, UC Berkeley

Welcome to Okapi!

Welcome to the OKAPI blog!

Open Knowledge and the Public Interest (OKAPI) is a team of creative and technical professionals and UC Berkeley faculty who are focused on bringing together people, tools and ideas to improve public scholarship on the UC Berkeley campus. Learn more about OKAPI.

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The OKAPI team (Noah, Michael, Liz, & Lizzy)