Making  new Connexions between learner, teacher and publisher

Open source education engages everyone in creating educational content

The beginning of a changing relationship with how we produce, procure and engage with information and learning. Connexions is a repository of free educational content where people can create and upload educaitonal material that is open to be modified, reorganized and even reassembled to create courses, books, reports etc. It is open for everyone to see and add information.

In a nutshell Connexions is a place where:

authors create and collaborate

instructors rapidly build and share custom collections

learners find and explore content

(www.cnx.org)

How it works

Finding Modules

Once on the web page you can begin by typing in a keyword or choosing either to search by subject, author, title, language or popularity(%). When you search by keyword a list will appear of available modules and offer specific information about the last time it was revised and the number of revisions it has undergone as well all the fore mentioned criteria ( popularity, language, author, etc)

After you click on the module of interest you will find a link under the title of who created it the option to email the author either to give feedback or to ask for permission to edit the module. Then followed by the educational content.

Other features include downloading the module as a pdf or EPUB file (so it can be read on different mobile devices). There are also instructions on how to download it to your device. You can also add the module to your favourites (login required) which will recall the last module you had open and offers special lens (definition) that can be used to bookmark modules and collections.

Reusing & Editing Modules

In order to reuse or edit a module you have to have permission. Once you have permission you can use the reuse / edit button to move the content into your personal workspace or a shared workgroup in order to make your edits

However if you don,t have permission to edit the content it doesn't stop you from modifying it through a derived copy and changing and publishing this copy. A derived copy is therefore when you make changes in accordance with your specific needs without altering the original version.

Creating a Personal or Shared Workspace

(in order to create or edit a module) as easy as 1,2,3

1. Create an account and log into you workspace

2. Create content, from scratch or import data from documents on you computer

3. Publish it

Other Points of Interest

Detailed instructions are also available on:

How to Reuse and Attribute content

How to cite content (licensed under the creative commons)

Publishing Material

Finally their complementary project is a publishing outfit where faculty have assembled peer reviewed modules to create a course textbook printed through the openstax college for an extremely reduced price in comparison to the regular cost of textbooks.

However anyone can construct their own textbooks custom made to the needs of their course, culture, classroom and audience and have them published.

REFERENCES

Connexions. Retrieved December 17, 2012 from http://cnx.org/

CreativeCommons. Retrieved December 17 2012 from http://creativecommons.org/

GOODmagazine (2011). Future Learning: Richard Baraniuk. Retrieved December 15 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOExdnESMkY

Openstax. Retrieved December 22, 2012 from http://openstaxcollege.org/books

OTHER RESOURCES

Compilation of Videos about Connexions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOExdnESMkY&list=PL9AA4CDB21E60F596&index=3

Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/richard-g-baraniuk

Tedtalks (2006). Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning. Retrieved December 15 2012 from http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html?quote=38

Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connexions

Wise (word innovation summit for education). Richard Baraniuk Connexions http://www.wise-qatar.org/content/richard-baraniuk-connexions