DIY U

164th New York, standing in inspection formation, ca.1863 from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

So prompted by a nonprofit that had some questions for me, I put out a call on Twitter for places to find excellent learning resources online. Chapter 7 of my book includes a resource guide that covers the best known places like MIT Open Courseware, the Open Courseware Consortium, Connexions, OER Commons, ItunesU,
http://academicearth.org/ and Youtube EDU. Here’s a bunch more that didn’t exist when I was writing the book or that I just didn’t know about. Thanks, Twitter folks!

I think what the world may still be waiting for is a centralized repository with a critical mass of users and community features, so that learners and educators can vote up or down, comment or modify the best stuff…and maybe a marketplace of commercial service providers on top of that to sell you a printed/curated/digitally remastered version of the material to meet a specific need, or to connect you with educators, or with assessors that can help you figure out how to get credit for a particular course…ok, I’m dreaming now.

STARTUPS
http://einztein.com/ Going into beta testing later this year, a place to find and vote on the best courseware resources online.

http://www.saylor.org/ Just started, but promising:organizing free courseware into academic programs or majors.

http://nixty.com/ Very interesting idea: designed as a platform to help educators create courses around open courseware, and help learners assemble portfolios of courses.

Smithsonian Commons (prototype) http://www.si.edu/commons/prototype/
A nascent attempt to make the nation’s archives freely available to the world.

DIRECTORIES
http://iberry.com/ A small nonprofit maintains this very large open courseware directory for higher learning. Cool community features: anyone can submit or comment on a link. They also have a section on learner support networks built around open courseware.

http://freelearning.ca/ A collaborative initiative of British Columbia’s colleges featuring lots of cool stuff, including a Kayak-like Google search box that combs lots of OER sites for learning resources.

Learning is For Everyone An organization for homeschoolers presents this curated list of resources by subject, from arts to economics and K through adult.

Muskogee Public Schools K-12 Open Ed Wiki Just like it says. A list of resources for K-12.

SUBJECT SPECIFIC

(history)  http://www.gilderlehrman.org/

A multimedia resources site for teachers on 19th century black history http://www.craftingfreedom.org/. This site follows the lives of nine African-Americans born into slavery in the 19th century, with videos and lesson plans. It happens to be by my aunt, Laurel Sneed. I imagine there may be hundreds on this model, lovingly crafted repositories of resources that are openly available to teachers.

(web design) http://interact.webstandards.org/curriculum/

http://teachingwithted.pbworks.com/ A wiki about teaching with TED.

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/ New York Times content for teachers.

OTHER

Around Venezia from Icam on Vimeo.

Video from Openculture.com
http://www.openculture.com/ Clearly a well-edited blog and site bringing a TEDster sensibility to chronicling “the best” cultural & educational media on the web. I am going to bookmark these and would look here for highbrow entertainment as much as for “lifelong learning.” Also! A list of language lessons in various languages. Love!

Got more? Post in the comments!