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The wealth of available educational resources can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Sites which currate these resources all have some built-in mechanism for sorting -- by subject matter, level of difficulty, source, etc. However, these pre-packaged collections are no replacement for currating your own prefered resources and materials into sets that correspond to your interests and courses. This series of posts will provide tutorials on how to create your own collections from sites which offer currated resource lists. While collections in MERLOT are formatted to work as a repository of related links, collections in Connexions are intended to cohere into something like a textbook – the modules are grouped together in a defined order, and can even be exported to PDFs that can be read through much like a traditional textbook would be. Much like an ebook, when viewed online the pages are arranged sequentially with a table of contents.

In order to create collections, you first need to register an account. The account is free and the information required to register is minimal, though you do need a valid email address since the account is useless until you activate it through their activation email and create a password. Once you create an account, you will find yourself at MyCNX Home, where one of the options listed under “Create and edit content” is “Create a new collection.”

Its latest foray into the education market, Google announced in July that it will begin to sell and rent digital textbooks through the Play store. The ebook market has been dominated by the likes of Amazon and Apple, with Amazon's Kindle-based textbooks maintining the lead in digital textbooks. While Google already features a few digital textbooks for purchase from smaller publishers, the new expansion is expected to create "a comprehensive catalog of higher education titles across science, mathematics, engineering, and more from all five major textbook publishers including Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan." Following on the heel's of Amazon's textbook rental model, Google will also allow users to rent textbooks for six months at discounted rates. The press release includes a list of some of the new top titles, including Complete Works by Plato, Constitutional Law, and Principles of Data Integration. Like other books available through the Play store, users will be able to access the textbooks across web and mobile platforms, as well as using the search, notes, highlight, and lookup functions.

3.

She and the tree be together

in the afternoon sun.  She is gently

fingering its bark; the tree is thinking only

about her.  How her hands are slow travelers

on its trunk.  Her hands are soft though

her feet are tough.  It is the first time for the tree

being climbed.  Can I hold her? wonders the tree.

Will my twigs tear? worries the tree.   Oh!

She is sitting now, in the understory. 

Here is a tree feeling human flesh resting,

neither perching, nor running, just resting. 

She is starting to imagine a story,

where the branch before her is the neck of a horse. 

Here is a tree that thinks itself a horse. 

2.

Here is a tree drowsing;

there she is, walking along the trail.

She is singular, thinks the tree,

a human, out in the heat, without a dog. 

Humans, like dogs and birds, are pests, the tree thinks

heat makes humans smell most foul.

She has walked too far into the mid-west sun,

too far away from the university. 

She lets out a sigh of relief

after laying her cheek against the trunk

its thick bark.  The tree is learning it can offer relief,

if not to itself, to another, and that is a sort of power.

She is not nesting or shitting; she is only

resting; she and the tree together.

1.

Here is a tree hoping

to be struck by lightening. 

It seeks relief from these dog days, 

when more water is rushing away than

is rushing toward it.  The river is leaving;

the tree can not. 

The tree is feeling invisible, to everything

Save the sun. 

Once a friend, the sun is now a foe. 

Isn’t dehydration, under the summer sun,

the worst way to die?

Here is a tree wanting

to flee from life, it was wanting to

flee from suffering, until she came into its life. 

Our last Comparing OER Repositories post focused on finding interactive materials related to chemistry. The results were mixed. The different searches revealed different breadths and depths of results, but no one stood out far above the others as the best option. With this post, we are going to run a similar series of tests, looking for thorough and extensive libraries, finding resources at college level (not just K-12), making sure that resources are reviewed. To get a sense of what’s available and where to find it, we will write a series of posts combing through four different OER repositories – OER Commons, Khan Academy, Connexions, and FREE – looking for three very different sets of material and evaluate the results as well as ease of use.

There are, as a quick search of this blog will show you, any number of websites available which aggregate OERs and educational course materials. However, as we often find with the internet, just because something is available doesn’t mean that it’s useful, and it can be difficult to sift through the sheer volume of available information to find what’s really useful for you. For college-level instructors navigating the world of OERs, some of the obvious concerns include finding sites with thorough and extensive libraries, finding resources at college level (not just K-12), making sure that resources are reviewed. To get a sense of what’s available and where to find it, we will write a series of posts combing through four different OER repositories – OER Commons, Khan Academy, Connexions, and FREE – looking for three very different sets of material and evaluate the results as well as ease of use.

The people at EdSurge are thinking the same thing as many edtech afficiandos -- with so many products and services on the market, wouldn't it be great to be able to test them out and find the right one without having to invest before you know what you want? This summer, EdSurge is going to try and help with their "Clear & Simple" trials program. The premise of the program is to let educators try out new edtech for 60 days completely free. Instead of a bare-bones "trial" version, the program allows the testers to access the full version, without any commitment to resubscribe or continue at the end of the 60 day test. All vendors participating in the program have signed on to the same basic terms.

Like most of EdSurge's programs, many of the programs in the Clear & Simple trial are targeted towards K-8 or K-12 educators. Many of them focus on tracking and assessing student mastery of Common Core standards, which are not easily repurposed for college uses. However, some of the programs such as Gobstopper and All In Learning, definitely have potential for the liberal arts blended classroom.

The wealth of available educational resources can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Sites which currate these resources all have some built-in mechanism for sorting -- by subject matter, level of difficulty, source, etc. However, these pre-packaged collections are no replacement for currating your own prefered resources and materials into sets that correspond to your interests and courses. This series of posts will provide tutorials on how to create your own collections from sites which offer currated resource lists. This post will focus on MERLOT.

Once the great menace of the classroom, cellphones and other mobile devices are gaining functionality as an educational tool, both in and out of the classroom. Though many educators may be skeptical about introducing or encouraging the use of these devices, creators of OERs and other educational materials are increasingly working to harness their potential for interesting and diverse uses. While there isn't necessarily cohesion to the pool of uses, the diversity is part of the appeal. It's worth experimenting with the different possibilities to see if and where they can be useful to you.

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