Connecting to others, is enabled by open source software. So this is not a blogpost on theory, but on practicalities of connectivism reality. The open source community celebrated Software Freedom Day on 20 September. "Transparency is key in enabling people to participate in the creation of wealth and well-being in society.

If an eLearning course will be build with audiovisual aids, in most cases you will draw up or write a storyboard . The storyboard is useful to: make sure you cover all the learning objectives, test the continuity of the story/narrative you use to enlighten your learners keep the team of developers informed of their expected input and when their input is due. Celtx is a great storyboard software. It just upgraded to their 1.0 version ( cross platform and delivered in a lot of languages ).

I've recently become a fan of Open Source Living , a site that rounds up the best of the many and varied OS apps that are out there. I find it rather more useful day-to-day than the more far-ranging but rather bewildering SourceForge , probably because while that site seems more targeted at developers, OSLiving is a bit more selective - it seems to weed out the thousands of half finished, one-man-in-a-bedroom-every-second-Sunday-in-months-ending-with-'y' type apps that fill out any search on SourceForge.... Moodle is of course THE open source e-learning item of the moment*1.

Posts related to the use of Open Source eLearning: Interesting Distribute Publishing Model and Open Source Open Source eLearning Business Model Innovation Geography Based and Innovation in eLearning Where are open source eLearning applications?

Titles include: Existentialism in Literature & Film General Psychology European Civilization from Renaissance to Present Open Source and Distribution of Digital Information Get More Free Courses from UC Berkeley Here University of California - Davis An individual course on Quantum Mechanics iTunes Feed Web Site UCLA Burkle Center Podcasts Feed Web Site The Burkle Center for International Relations fosters research on the role of the United States in global security, military, political, social and economic

Mark Surman got me focussed on Open Educational Resources (OER) again with his great post on the Cape Town Declaration. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration is document that will be posted on the WWW in the beginning of 2008 and which builds upon other Open Education evolutions such as Free & Open Source Software Portal from Unesco who put their ideas into open education from as early as 1984 onwards.

Good post by Harold Jarche - Where are open source learning applications? In it he points to the learning space and says that the current status of open-source learning applications is: Innovators - Elgg Learning Landscape and several others Early Adopters - Moodle and a few others Early Majority - nobody Late Majority - forget about it I would tend to agree with him that there are relatively few open-source learning applications, but would add a few thoughts...

A lot has been written on the ups and downs of open source software and movements and building on that philosophy, the topic of open source content in education (not umbiased I linked to 'old' - read March 2003 - comprehensive article on the topic by George Siemens and building on a discussion with Stephen Downes. I believe in open content sharing) . But fear for sharing keeps existing in the hearts of a lot of people.

The .Edu Toolbox Learning Resources in Delicious Blog Form Home FAQs Popular Rankings By Subject By Year Specialty Rankings Top Online Colleges RSS The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset: 60+ Directories, Search Engines, and Web Tools February 19, 2009 Open courseware has expanded to the extent that directories, lists, search engines, archives and Web tools are available free to anyone who chooses to learn through the Internet....

For free. (I’m a recent convert, perhaps on the path to open source evangelism.) So what are some of the hurdles to overcome in the corporate market? Here are just a few: It’s free. Because it’s open source, there are no licensing costs. This, apparently, freaks people out. Free must mean sub par, right? Wrong. Moodle and other open source products have huge communities behind them. Talented individuals who can program like hell and believe in the open source philosophy. Support. There’s no vendor who creates Moodle per say.