Free content for community colleges (well and everybody else)! Free!

Developing content based on model of MIT Open CourseWare success, but for community college level courses.

Foothill-De Anza approached by Hewlett Foundation to lead effort for more general education level courses, community college level curriculum. Based on success with FHDA success in ETUDES (Easy To Use Distance Education Software), home grown course management system,

Project name: Sharing Of Free Intellectual Assets (SOFIA) open content initiative http://sofia.fhda.edu/

Sofia – the wisdom and intellectual virtue achieved when striving after the best ends and using the best means”
– Aristotle

Alan’s cheap, half-baked summary: The goals of the project are lofty, admirable, well planned, et . Everything looks like it should. What is not clear is how the content will be shared, is it the course as a bundle, is it unbundled, can one use pieces?? It also begs the questions others have asked about MIT’s Open CourseWare project- isn’t there more to the course than then content? Regardless, I’ll be curious to see how these free courses are rolled out and received.

So this is Denver… It is not secret, but the Denver airport is an entire city unto itself. You get off a plane, get on a train, hop on a boat, cross a mountain… and then wait 40 minutes, praying, for your luggage. Then, you find out the airport is so far east of the […]

Email is the communication norm. It is no more special than the phone. But it is the worst way to manage information over time or the “KM” buzzword (which by the way I have never understood— “mamaging knowledge”, it sounds like managing “wisdom” or quantifying ethics or s snipe hunt). I have noticed recently, in […]

Our Ocotillo Online Learning Group meetings have really taken off nicely this year. This group, now its fifth year, began as a “Blackboard Users Group” but we have broadened it to include demos and exchanges for people using any sort of online technology. I recall in the old days a few meetings with an audience […]

flickr foto Beachedavailable on my flickr Waiting for the tide to rise at 6000 feet above sea level. At the end of the valley in the little town of Strawberry, AZ, this boat is ready for a ride… The wait might be a few hundred million years.. This was just a new test of an […]

Well the boys are in town… John and George are on their way to Tempe (no this is not a Dead Beatles reunion, it is the other John and George). After their shindig at ASU, I am counting on meeting up for some drinks at the Billet Bar in downtown Scottsdale and then maybe up […]

Based on the descriptions elsewhere, in addition to the web bookmark service Furl I am starting to also use the social bookmarking site del.icio.us – the latter for its rip-mix use of free form “:tags” to collect bookmarks made bu other del.icio.us-ers (sidebar, I enjoy “furling” sites but do you say “del.icio.us-ing” a site?). In […]

Gerry caught me on iChat tonight and let me know he was having trouble reaching Flickr— he’s right! What’s happening? And it looks like they are based in Vancouver… Did Mount St. Helens blow a big cork and blast it north? I hope not! Maybe flickr is just flickering.