Open Educational Resources (OER)
One of the few new (for myself in my working life at least) bits of information I have picked up on here at ICL is Open Educational Resources (OER). That’s probably because it is outside of my usual area of expertise (which is more the technical implementation of e-Learning), but I found the concept never the less interesting and very similar to the Open Source Software concept which I have been working with for quite a while.
From what I have been picking up at the conference here (and a few
quick searches) there are quite a few projects and UNESCO seems to be particularily active in this arena. One problem that I can see is the fragmentation of this concept and a lack of any delivery standards. But as with all innovations that are in the Early Adopter stage there will have to be a process of consolidation once the dust has settled. From the prospective of a user and potential contributor (as well as for myself in integrating this with various LMS solutions) this obviously creates the problem of which one of the available projects to choose at this stage.
Major projects:
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Connexions – Stanford University (this was the one presented at ICL)
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Open Course Ware – MIT
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Open Society Institute – Soros Foundation
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Open World Learning Institute – Minnesota
If I have missed anything obvious please let me know. I think these projects deserve some support.
Resources:
Stephen Downes – Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources
As per usual I would be interested in finding out which educators in Australia use and feedback from practical use of these resources.
Seeing a students life from the other side again ….
Since my working world is centered a little more on educational topics at the moment (while attending ICL) I came across this Youtube Video which I think is a very good visual example of what’s commonly referred to as Education 2.0.
Personally I hope that I actually comprehend this and a good part of my working life is spend improving this situation. The fact that I am sitting in a ‘lecture’ myself and watching a Youtube video should hopefully illustrate that I am can (despite my actual age) understand the students perspective quite well. ;-
Using Nokia Mobile Webserver in an educational environment.
The ability to host your own content from your mobile phone opens some interesting possibilities to engage students and will allow the integration of user generated content in the education process. David Johnson from the University of Reading is working on serving portfolio data from your mobile.
Some of the current limitation of this approach:
-cost of the bandwidth
-speed
The ability to proxy the users content on the Mobile Web server Gateway as well as the ability to integrate content outside of the mobile phone seem to be the main points that will have to be improved for this to become a more mainstream technology. Another area of concern (or another potential use of this technology – depending on your viewpoint) is the backup of data from the mobile phone. The ability to proxy the content on the Gateway could also be used as a backup of the content that is hosted within the MWS on the mobile phone.
Some of this work is already on the way. David Johnson (see above) is currently working on some Webservice API for MWS that should allow the use of MWS served content in mashups with other content sources.
Configuring the Nokia E-Series SIP for Nodephone (Internode)
This is Part 3 of the Nokia SIP settings. This time for NodePhone (Internode – Australia). It has been hard to find this information (particularily the Registrar Server settings). NOTE: The Realm setting in the Registrar Server are CASE-SENSITIVE. For some screenshots check the ENGIN Australia setup entry.
General
Profile name: nodephone
Service profile: IETF
Default access point: {Your WLAN Access Point}
Public user name: sip:{NodePhone Phone No}@sip.internode.on.net
User compression: No
Registration: When needed
Use security: No
Proxy Server (not required)
Proxy Server Address: none
Realm: none
Username: none
Password: none
Allow loose routing: none
Transport Type: none
Port : none
Registrar Server:
Registrar Server Address: sip:203.2.134.1
Realm: BroadWorks (Note:CASE-SENSITIVE)
User name: {NodePhone Phone No}
Password: *****
Transport type: UDP
Port : 5060
Configuring the Nokia E-Series SIP for sipgate.at
This is Part 2 of the Nokia SIP settings. This time for sipgate.at
(Austria), but it should also work for other SIPGate domains. It has
been hard to get this information from the providers themselves. For
some screenshots check the ENGIN Australia setup entry.
General
Profile name: sipgate
Service profile: IETF
Default access point: {Your WLAN Access Point}
Public user name: sip:{SIPGate UserID}@sipgate.at
User compression: No
Registration: When needed
Use security: No
Proxy Server
Proxy Server Address: sip:sipgate.at
Realm: sipgate.at
Username: {SIPGate UserID}
Password: *****
Allow loose routing: Yes
Transport Type: UDP
Port : 5060
Registrar Server:
Registrar Server Address: sip:sipgate.at
Realm: sipgate.at
User name: {SIPGate UserID}
Password: *****
Transport type: UDP
Port : 5060