Open Educational Resources Overview: Books & Ebooks

Assembled from the wisdom of 36 legendary art teachers - all of them artists or critics at the top of their field - Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life is an ideal curriculum for the aspiring artist. Each of the book's "tutors" has provided a unique lesson that aims to provoke, inspire and stimulate the aspiring artist. These lessons cover some combination of the following: technical advice (e.g. don't make a sculpture bigger than your studio door), assignments (some of which will take five minutes to complete, others five years), tips for avoiding creative ruts (including suggestions for mind‐expanding materials to read, watch or listen to), principles of careful looking (demonstrated with images of artworks, photographs, films or even billboard advertisements), advice on the daily practice of art (how to balance time alone in the studio with building an artistic community), career pointers (how to prepare for a studio visit from a curator or gallerist) and personal anecdotes (e.g. stories from the instructor's own humble beginnings). Taken together, these lessons offer the reader a set of tools for thinking, seeing and living as an artist. Not only is Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life the first illustrated text book of its kind for artists, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art, providing first hand revelations into the philosophies and techniques of some of the world's best artists and writers.

The community college is poised to contribute beyond its own community to across the world. To do so-to advance the work for the betterment of students and communities-it must engage internationally while building capacity. Recognizing the growing importance of educating students in a globalized world, this volume explores the community college in an international context. It addresses global ideals, values, competencies, and understanding in a local context and shows: How individual community colleges have internationalized How models and partnerships can aid progression to comprehensive internationalization How international systems consider adoption and adaptation. The authors point to a crucial vision for the future: Globalization has moved the U.S. community college steadily from international education as an add-on to international education as a choice, and now to international education as a crucial, integrated mission that has drawn increased interest from other nations intent on an educated, skilled citizenry. The community college is no longer about the United States; the community college is for all of us, a world phenomenon. This is the 161st volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today′s open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinct and expanding educational mission.

The gap between institutional ambition, resources, and performance is what prompted Richard Alfred and his authors to develop this book. It is written at a time when community colleges are facing problems with increasing demand and limited resources that have forced them to search for efficiency and new ways of supporting growth. The purpose of Community Colleges on the Horizon is to open up a new way of thinking about institutional growth and development and leadership and management based on the concept of abundance-elevating dynamics in institutions that lead to extraordinary performance and outcomes that surpass expectations. The authors describe different circumstances colleges will find themselves in as a function of their leadership, their resources (both tangible and intangible), and the capabilities of their staff. This book is not for the complacent; it is not for those who are unwilling to look openly at their institutions. It will be most useful for those who believe their institution can and should do better, for those who prefer action to words, for those who are unafraid to challenge convention, for those who are ready to pursue opportunity and change, and, ultimately, for those who believe that their institution has unexploited potential.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014! Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), this one-of-a-kind book demonstrates the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive open educational resources (OERs) into the teaching and learning process. The author examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor's curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution's learning management system.

A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder's online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. Today millions of students, parents, and teachers use the Khan Academy's free videos and software, which have expanded to encompass nearly every conceivable subject; and Academy techniques are being employed with exciting results in a growing number of classrooms around the globe. Like many innovators, Khan rethinks existing assumptions and imagines what education could be if freed from them. And his core idea-liberating teachers from lecturing and state-mandated calendars and opening up class time for truly human interaction-has become his life's passion. Schools seek his advice about connecting to students in a digital age, and people of all ages and backgrounds flock to the site to utilize this fresh approach to learning. In THE ONE WORLD SCHOOLHOUSE, Khan presents his radical vision for the future of education, as well as his own remarkable story, for the first time. In these pages, you will discover, among other things: How both students and teachers are being bound by a broken top-down model invented in Prussia two centuries ago Why technology will make classrooms more human and teachers more important How and why we can afford to pay educators the same as other professionals How we can bring creativity and true human interactivity back to learning Why we should be very optimistic about the future of learning. Parents and politicians routinely bemoan the state of our education system. Statistics suggest we've fallen behind the rest of the world in literacy, math, and sciences. With a shrewd reading of history, Khan explains how this crisis presented itself, and why a return to "mastery learning," abandoned in the twentieth century and ingeniously revived by tools like the Khan Academy, could offer the best opportunity to level the playing field, and to give all of our children a world-class education now. More than just a solution, THE ONE WORLD SCHOOLHOUSE serves as a call for free, universal, global education, and an explanation of how Khan's simple yet revolutionary thinking can help achieve this inspiring goal.

Tap into the power of social media and increase course effectiveness! Faculty will learn to choose the appropriate social media tool for the intended learning outcome, design engaging and innovative activities, and better meet pedagogical needs. In addition, the author offers strategies for assessing and documenting the effectiveness of using these tools in your course. Administrators and student affairs professionals will also find a wealth of information useful for planning faculty development programs and communicating with students. Although the book focuses on higher education, tools and techniques presented here can be easily generalized for K-12 classrooms or organizational learn­ing. The best practices and faculty development tips can be informative for individuals involved in any kind of professional development or network-building.

In this provocative volume, higher education experts explore innovative ways that colleges and universities can unbundle the various elements of the college experience while assessing costs and benefits and realizing savings. Stretching the Higher Education Dollar traces the reform continuum from incremental to more ambitious efforts. Topics include effective strategies for reallocating resources to capture efficiencies, opportunities with massive open online courses (MOOCs), and ideas for building low-cost degree pathways from the ground up. Though the pace of change in higher education is fast and furious, Stretching the Higher Education Dollar offers promising ideas for navigating the new fiscal, political, and technological environment.

Teaching Online: A Practical Guide is a practical, concise guide for educators teaching online. This updated edition has been fully revamped and reflects important changes that have occurred since the second edition's publication. A leader in the online field, this best- selling resource maintains its reader friendly tone and offers exceptional practical advice, new teaching examples, faculty interviews, and an updated resource section. New to this edition: new chapter on how faculty and instructional designers can work collaboratively expanded chapter on Open Educational Resources, copyright, and intellectual property more international relevance, with global examples and interviews with faculty in a wide variety of regions new interactive Companion Website that invites readers to post questions to the author, offers real-life case studies submitted by users, and includes an updated, online version of the resource section. Focusing on the "how" and "whys" of implementation rather than theory, this text is a must-have resource for anyone teaching online or for students enrolled in Distance Learning and Educational Technology Masters Programs.

Behind the lectern stands the professor, deploying course management systems, online quizzes, wireless clickers, PowerPoint slides, podcasts, and plagiarism-detection software. In the seats are the students, armed with smartphones, laptops, tablets, music players, and social networking. Although these two forces seem poised to do battle with each other, they are really both taking part in a war on learning itself. In this book, Elizabeth Losh examines current efforts to "reform" higher education by applying technological solutions to problems in teaching and learning. She finds that many of these initiatives fail because they treat education as a product rather than a process. Highly touted schemes -- video games for the classroom, for example, or the distribution of iPads -- let students down because they promote consumption rather than intellectual development. Losh analyzes recent trends in postsecondary education and the rhetoric around them, often drawing on first-person accounts. In an effort to identify educational technologies that might actually work, she looks at strategies including MOOCs (massive open online courses), the gamification of subject matter, remix pedagogy, video lectures (from Randy Pausch to "the Baked Professor"), and educational virtual worlds. Finally, Losh outlines six basic principles of digital learning and describes several successful university-based initiatives. Her book will be essential reading for campus decision makers -- and for anyone who cares about education and technology.

Facebook, Twitter, Google...today's tech-savvy students are always plugged in. However, all too often their teachers and administrators aren't experienced in the use of these familiar digital tools. If schools are to prepare students for the future, administrators and educators must harness the power of digital technologies and social media. With contributions from authorities on the topic of educational technology, What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media is a compendium of the most useful tools for any education setting. Throughout the book, experts including Will Richardson, Vicki Davis, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Richard Byrne, Joyce Valenza, and many others explain how administrators and teachers can best integrate technology into schools, helping to make sense of the often-confusing world of social media and digital tools. They offer the most current information for the educational use of blogs, wikis and podcasts, online learning, open-source courseware, educational gaming, social networking, online mind mapping, mobile phones, and more, and include examples of these methods currently at work in schools. As the book clearly illustrates, when these tools are combined with thoughtful and deliberate pedagogical practice, it can create a transformative experience for students, educators, and administrators alike. What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media reveals the power of information technology and social networks in the classroom and throughout the education community.

Education is the harbinger of change; technological learning in the Information Age is at the cusp of that change, bringing new technologies, enhanced interfaces, dialogue, mobile learning and networked resources that shape content, sharing and distribution of information. These aspects influence the people and society of the "climate century". The Information Age follows the production of data in previously unheard quantities. In the early days of widespread computer usage, we had a plethora of theories with only a paucity of data. Now, the data we produce is so large that it requires new analytics and new patterns of interpretative meaning. New methods of storage and analysis are needed in order to quantify 'big data.' But we live in uncertain times, in which even the climate--like financial markets is more volatile than it was in the pre-industrial second millennium, making technological adaptation ever more critical. This technological adaptation needs to occur in conjunction with an attitude which fosters a 'caring curiosity' for the biosphere which sustains us. Education is about gaining qualifications, but it is also about intrinsically dispelling uncertainty in the quest for knowledge and techniques to enhance the experience of life and living. Cloud 9: Learning in the Information Age explores some of the methods and learning techniques and technologies that help us to do this.

This resource aims to provide teachers with the rationale, model and examples they need to develop interactive approaches that will promote learning when using Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) in the classroom.

The New York Times declared 2012 to be "The Year of the MOOC" as millions of students enrolled in massive open online courses (known as MOOCs), millions of investment dollars flowed to the companies making them, and the media declared MOOCs to be earth-shaking game-changers in higher education. During the inevitable backlash that followed, critics highlighted MOOCs' high dropout rate, the low chance of earning back initial investments, and the potential for any earth-shaking game change to make things worse instead of better. In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Jonathan Haber offers an account of MOOCs that avoids both hype and doomsaying. Instead, he provides an engaging, straightforward explanation of a rare phenomenon: an education innovation that captures the imagination of the public while moving at the speed of an Internet startup. Haber explains the origins of MOOCs, what they consist of, the controversies surrounding them, and their possible future role in education. He proposes a new definition of MOOCs based on the culture of experimentation from which they emerged, and adds a student perspective -- missing in most MOOC discussion. Haber's unique Degree of Freedom experiment, during which he attempted to learn the equivalent of a four-year liberal arts degree in one year using only MOOCs and other forms of free education, informs his discussion. Haber urges us to avoid the fallacy of thinking that because MOOCs cannot solve all educational challenges they are not worth pursuing, and he helps us understand what MOOCs -- despite their limitations -- still offer the world. His book is required reading for anyone trying to sort out the competing claims, aspirations, and accusations that color the MOOC debate.

Education is the key to economic, social and environmental progress, and governments around the world are looking to improve their education systems. The future of education in the 21st century is not simply about reaching more people, but about improving the quality and diversity of educational opportunities. How to best organise and support teaching and learning requires imagination, creativity and innovation. Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials that make use of tools such as open licensing to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes. The OER community has grown considerably over the past 10 years and the impact of OER on educational systems has become a pervasive element of educational policy This report aims to highlight state of the art developments and practices in OER, but also to demonstrate how OER can be a tool for innovation in teaching and learning.