The Connexions Blog

Winners and Reusers

2009-11-17T09:45:00.007-06:00

The results of the Open Education Cup 2008-2009 have been announced in a press release on HPCwire. Congratulations to Tim Stitt, Ph.D., of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) and Kenneth Leroy Busbee of Houston Community College, the winners of this year's cup. The winning modules can be found in the High Performance Computing Open Education Cup 2008-2009 lens: http://cnx.org/lenses/hpcopenedcup/material

Also within the lens you will find the collection High Performance Computing, authored by Charles Severance. O'Reilly published the first edition of "High Performance Computing" by Kevin Dowd, but in 1996 when Charles Severance found out that the text was going out of print, he immediately sent an letter to the publisher, "imploring them to keep the book going as it was the only book of its kind in the marketplace." Eventually this complaint letter led to a series of conversations resulting in Dr. Severance partnering with O'Reilly and writing the second edition of the book. Dr. Severance describes the process this way, "In true "open-source" fashion - since I complained about it - I got to fix it. During Fall 1997, while I was using the book to teach my HPC course, I re-wrote the book one chapter at a time, fueled by multiple late-night lattes and the fear of not having anything ready for the weeks lecture." Lucky for us, after the book went out of print, O'Reilly released the book under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Dr. Severance was gracious enough to choose Connexions as the place to reuse his book.

See Charles Severance's blog post about the new life of his book in Connexions.

Save the Date: February 2nd for Connexions Conference 2010

2009-11-09T21:34:00.004-06:00

Conference web site
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA

Build your Community
Over 1,700 authors are developing, publishing, and sharing educational content used by 1.2 million people all over the world. The conference will highlight how communities are using Connexions to further education and scholarship. Last year, presentations by major organizations as well as individual grassroots authors were the highlight of the conference.

Build from a position of strength
Enterprise Rhaptos, which will be launched in January 2010, will allow organizations to download and run their own version of Rhaptos, the software that powers Connexions and will allow partners around the world to help advance Connexions features. Lens Based Branding, released on October 31, 2009, allows Connexions Consortium members to brand content in their lens with their logo and a branding banner. Full Branding, also released on October 31, 2009, will allow anyone to display Connexions content on their own site with a completely custom look. Come find out about all these new ways to work with Connexions and highlight your content.

Build a bridge to the future
The Connexions Consortium was founded in July 2009 with 15 founding member organizations. The Consortium is charged with leading the way forward for the Connexions platform. Information about the Connexions Consortium can be found at http://cnxconsortium.org/. Consortium partners will be attending the conference and highlighting the benefits of consortium membership.

Students save while learning

2009-10-09T06:00:00.008-05:00

This feature article in the Hewlett Foundation news shows how students at community colleges around the country have saved approximately $80,000 by using a single open textbook from Connexions. Collaborative Statistics has been adopted by eight colleges, and one high school and adoption continues to spread as more faculty and students hear about this book and the open education movement.

Siyavula jumping through hoops to teach lenses

2009-10-06T12:26:00.000-05:00

Previously on the Connexions blog, we brought you an update on the Siyavula project and their Teachers' Weekend workshop, where teachers were trained to use Connexions to upload and share curriculum in South Africa. Among the activities was one that used hula-hoops to explain how organizations, communities and individuals can use Connexions lenses to select and highlight useful, relevant, and/or high-quality content. This picture illustrates how participants were able to use the hoops to physically group items in the "repository" to build their lenses.

Feedback from attendees indicated that the hula hoop explanation was powerful and memorable. No word yet on who won the hula hoop freestyle dance competition held after class. :)

Under Construction: New features, new help area on the way

2009-09-21T11:17:00.006-05:00

For those of you who have been following the blog for while, you've probably noticed that we haven't been posting quite as much of late. There are two big reasons for this.

First, we recently said goodbye to Kyle, who has been a major contributor to the blog from its inception both as an author and designer. Alas, despite our best efforts, we could not convince him that the slave wages and table scraps we were offering as payment were better than finishing his degree, so he's now back at Rice as a full-time student. Maybe in a few years when he's off working as a NASA engineer he will look back and realize just exactly how much he misses us, but until that day comes, we'll have to find a way to soldier on without him. Good luck, Kyle!

The second major blog speed bump is related to some of the work we've been doing to enhance the site, which has kept us all pretty busy. In the coming weeks Connexions will be upgrading its collection structures - the "blueprints" that define textbooks, courses, etc. - to use a new XML format called CollXML. While we won't be offering the ability to edit CollXML documents directly just yet, this work is setting the stage for a slew of new collection-related features that we hope to introduce over the coming months that will give collection authors even greater control over their work. For now, the new CollXML export function will provide opportunities for outside developers to take full advantage of the content in the Connexions repository.

You may soon find yourself updating your content to the newest version of CNXML, version 0.7. For those of you who remember the CNXML 0.6 upgrade earlier this year, don't worry - this is NOT a major change from the previous language, but is primarily an administrative update to support the CollXML rollout. The one difference for authors is that we are making it easier to include alternate images for online and pdf formats, allowing you greater control of what is (and is not!) displayed to the reader based on how they are viewing the content. Additional details and documentation will be available when the update rolls out later this month.

We've also been working hard to restructure the Connexions "Help" pages (http://cnx.org/help/). Several of these resources are being merged, moved, and/or expanded in order to help visitors and authors better find the most relevant guides and tutorials. As a part of this effort we've also identified and "retired" several outdated or duplicate tutorials, so if you have bookmarked some of those pages you may need to update your links. These changes will make life a lot easier for those looking for help, but as always you can email techsupport@cnx.org if you have any questions or comments.

And the fun doesn't stop there ... next month we're planning to release a major update for organizations interested in promoting their brand along with the content they provide. Stay tuned, these updates are scheduled to be released sometime around Halloween ...

Revisionist History

2009-09-01T21:57:00.003-05:00

So I was sitting on my couch, reading another article about Robert Bobb's fight to save Detroit's public schools, this time with a little bit of help of one William Cosby Jr., Ed.D. And I'm struck again by how much potential there is for open education to do a world of good here, for a district so desperate that it's closing 40 schools and laying off 1,000 teachers. As I read this, I began thinking more about Dr. Cosby's activism and tough-love approach to race, crime, socio-economic struggles, and so on, how he is not content to allow those around him to bemoan their circumstances but rather calls them to action to right the wrongs in their world ...

And that's when it struck me. We often talk about Connexions being a platform for so-called "shut outs" - authors who for one reason or another don't have access to traditional publishing media to spread their work and ideas - and I began to realize that there's an angle to this, an important question at the center of our educational philosophy, that we haven't fully considered in this discussion: what is the real story behind the world we live in?

Consider for a moment the subject of US History (those of you reading from outside the US will likely have your own variation on this same theme). There are often complaints that our history textbooks are too centered on the actions of white men, and neglect the contributions of Native Americans, Blacks, Latinos, women, etc. Normally the conversation ends there - after all, what can you do but complain and hope that somebody, somewhere, is motivated to write a better textbook?

But now we have Connexions. Now we have an opportunity to - literally - rewrite history as it is taught to our students. Educators no longer have to choose between history books that restrict certain views, but can instead provide any combination of historical and cultural perspectives by including modules with different points of view that otherwise may never make it into the traditional texts. When our teachers, parents, or community leaders get frustrated that their kids aren't hearing the full story, they can feel empowered to so something about it: to write and share those stories, and give the educators the ammunition they need to effect change.

Coming back to the story in Detroit ... I think about the districts who are hurting the most right now by budget issues. Detroit. Houston. New Orleans. Washington. The State of California. All hurting financially, and all serving populations traditionally shortchanged by revisionist history. And you have to ask yourself: How awesome would it be for these districts to, at the same time, realize the monetary saving provided by free textbooks AND the add ability to provide a pluralistic view of the content they teach?

The K-12 arena is the Holy Grail of open education - a opportunity to ease the burden of education on society while ensuring that each and every student has access to high-quality educational content. Ironically, one of our biggest hurdles in this fight is that the books are, well, free. The problem is that too often, people assume that if you are giving something away, it must not be worth anything. But if we can show district leaders a tangible advantage that has nothing to do with price - show them how a site like Connexions can help present a more complete view of our society and the topics our educators teach - I think a lot of those same players will begin to understand the true value of OERs, and will find the political cover necessary to begin adopting such materials.

We need to stop promoting open resources primarily as a way to save money, and show them off for what they are: powerful pedagogical tools for a pluralistic society. If we can do this - if we can show our educators and administrators and legislators that we can provide better materials (for a lower price to boot) - we might just find ourselves making greater headway within the public school system. How great would it be for Connexions to be the platform of choice for promoting an inclusive curriculum, a way for educators to provide their students with a complete and accurate view of the world in which they live rather than blindly accepting the version places in front of them by strangers?

And hey, if someone can figure out a way to get Bill Cosby to shill for us, all the better. :)

Update: Siyavula's first Teachers' Weekend

2009-08-31T14:46:00.008-05:00

Our friends at Siyavula have written up an interesting and exciting piece about their first Teachers' Weekend workshop. Participating teachers were trained to use the Connexions platform to upload and share their respective curriculum for grades 1 through 9. From the article:

We are almost finished with the uploading of English and Afrikaans content for all learning areas for grades 1-9 (you can see it here) and we felt that enough had been done to start getting teachers involved on a large scale. So we jumped right in with a weekend workshop for teachers. We had a great turnout and we had to turn away many enquiries for participation in the weeks leading up to the event. A total of 70 teachers eventually participated in the weekend.

The objective of the weekend was to:
show the power of the Connexions platform for using, building, sharing and adapting resources;
promote the formation of new communities forming that use Connexions as a use to support their activities and provide the possibility of for new communities to form; and
provide an environment that can enhance existing communities or swap and share groups.

Congratulations to Siyavula for a job well done!

View from the top ...

2009-08-25T16:28:00.005-05:00

Today marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first demonstration of his telescope, and those of you using Google today may have noticed their homage:

Curiosity got the better of us, so we clicked and ... Connexions! Yes, the #1 return from Google for the search "Galileo's telescope" returns a module by Albert Van Helden, long one of our most popular (and sure to top the charts this week based on the traffic we're getting from Google today!):

We often talk about our site having good "Google karma" - when search engines visit our site, they are able to learn a great deal about the page due to a combination of rich content metadata, search-friendly XML structures, and the modular nature of our site which provides a number of links to and from each piece of content. The result, as you can see above, is that search engines tend to return Connexions content very high in the list of results, meaning greater visibility for authors and their work.

Congratulations to Dr. Van Helden - it's not every day you score a number 1 hit on Google!

Did somebody say free beer?

2009-08-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

Think free as in speech, not free beer.

When we say that Connexions offers users access to "free textbooks and learning materials", most people assume that we're talking about materials that can be used without paying for them. And that's certainly true.

But our materials aren't just free in the monetary, "free beer" sense; they're also free in the liberty, "free speech" sense. Authors are free to modify existing content - through updates, corrections, translations, customizations, localizations, etc. - to meet their own needs. They are also free to take these materials and use them outside of Connexions. In fact, the only restriction that is placed on our users is that they give credit where credit is due by providing attribution.

I am often asked why we elected to go with the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) license, rather than one of the other Creative Commons licenses. For example, many open content enthusiasts promote the use of the "share-alike" restriction, which compels anybody using licensed content to make their derived works available under the same terms. Others question the lack of a non-commercial restriction, arguing that authors who willingly give up opportunities to profit from their works should not have to stand by while others cash in on their efforts by repackaging and selling derivatives (or exact clones) of the original material.

The short answer is this: the more restrictions we place on these works, the less free ("as in speech") they become, and the less flexibility we have as a community to use those resources. Instead, we choose to free ourselves of these limitations, engaging authors, learners, and even publishers to promote the free exchange of ideas so that everybody can benefit from our combined wealth of knowledge.

Is the CC-by license the best choice for every open content project out there? No, it's not. But we feel that it is the right choice for Connexions, and the right choice to support our mission to provide free - truly free - educational materials that benefit the entire community.

Speaking of which, did I hear someone say free beer?

Talk back:

How do you feel about the choice to use the CC-by license for Connexions content? Do you see this as a barrier for authors who might otherwise contribute, or an opportunity for innovators to develop new ways to use knowledge to its fullest potential? Do you feel that this license benefits authors by promoting the use of their content by others or lacks respect for the value of their work? We'd love to hear what you have to say!

Connexions now supports Google Analytics!

2009-08-21T16:20:00.003-05:00

Connexions is pleased to announce support for Google Analytics!

Authors can now add their Google Analytics tracking code to the metadata page of their modules and collections in order to keep track of and analyze traffic to their content. For more information on how to use this feature, please see our Google Analytics help page.

We have had several requests for this feature in the past and would love to hear what you think. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let us know!

Freeing the Content Actions from their sidebar prison

2009-08-18T10:21:00.014-05:00

If you've visited a Connexions module or collection since yesterday evening, you may have noticed that the Content Actions box has mysteriously disappeared. Don't worry, though-- its useful features have simply moved to different locations on the page!

Over the course of several feature-laden years, the Content Actions box has grown from a tiny list of helpful links to a gigantic hunk of repository real estate. In order to make each content page more user-friendly we've moved most of the Content Actions to a panel near the top of each page. There, you'll find the familiar links to download the document PDF, add the module to a lens (including My Favorites), and print the page.

Module ratings have been relocated under the module title, and a link to e-mail the module authors has also been added.

A few specific changes have taken place for collections. You can now order a hardbound copy of the collection by clicking the "Order printed collection" button. This link is now located on the right-hand side of any page within the collection. The "Previous" and "Next" links available while browsing a collection have been moved under the "Order printed collection" button.

We'd love to hear your feedback about the new Content Actions toolbar. Please leave us a comment with your thoughts or suggestions!

Connexions author Kenny Felder participates in CA free textbook initiative

2009-08-11T12:19:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Connexions author Kenny Felder! His book, Advanced Algebra II, was submitted as part of California Gov. Schwarzenegger's Digital Textbook Initiative. Earlier today the governor's office, along with the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN), announced that the book was successfully reviewed and will be included in a list of free textbooks available to California schools next year.

You can read more about this exciting development here.

Be sure to check out Advanced Algebra II, and let's all give Kenny a much deserved round of applause for his efforts!

What's in it for me?

2009-08-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

One of the best parts of my job here at Connexions is explaining our philosophy and commitment to open education to potential authors, educators, and students. This is one of the easiest things I've ever been paid to do, as the challenge for me is trying not to come across as a zealot who doesn't know when to shut up and stop selling past the close.

The first question folks ask when hearing about Connexions for the first time is usually something along the lines of, "What exactly is open education?"

To the educators, I explain how open education - and Connexions in particular - allows them the opportunity to create customized books targeted to meet the unique needs of specific districts, schools, classrooms, or even individual students. I explain how teachers and professors can reuse existing modules and/or create their own original works, giving them complete control over the materials used in their courses. I show them how Connexions materials available online can also be downloaded in PDF form to post on course websites, printed off as handouts, or even ordered as print-on-demand textbooks.  

At this point in the conversation, the educators are sold. They want to know more.

To the students, I start with two words: "Free textbooks." Then I go into the day-to-day advantages. "Read your textbooks online or download all of your course materials to your computer and print them off whenever you want." "Encourage your professors to adopt and customize existing content so you don't have to buy large, bulky texts full of chapters that will likely never be covered." "Think about how you can use Connexions to create collaborative projects with students in your class or across the globe.  "

The students look at me with a smile. "You had me at 'free'," they say.

At this point in the conversation, we turn to the authors. So far they've been polite, listening in as their counterparts get excited and happy enough to share in their enthusiasm ... until they ask the question.

You know what question I'm talking about, the one that seems a bit selfish and out of place amid all of the warm-fuzzies that you get talking about free education and the sharing of ideas, even though everybody has been thinking about it since the beginning of the conversation.

It's OK. It's an important question, and one that needs to be addressed, so please don't be shy. Go ahead and ask.

"What's in it for me?"

The reason authors ask this question isn't because they're greedy or self-centered. Far from it. They ask it because the whole concept of open education doesn't fit the traditional models for academic publication. Content has to come from somewhere, and the conventional wisdom is that it comes from an author seeking royalties for their work through commercial sales of a published book.

But is that really accurate? If we're only talking about money, this doesn't add up. With a few notable exceptions, most textbook authors don't stand to make much money from royalties. Sure, they may take home a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars a year, but when you factor in all of the hours they spent creating and revising draft after draft after draft of the material, chances are you'd end up making more cash by forgetting about the Ph.D. and taking a job at the local drive-thru burger joint. Most of the time, the only people who make any real money are the publishers, and while it's true that they provide a valuable service, it's staggering to think of how disproportionate the profit-sharing model really is.

So if the money isn't a factor, then why do it? Most authors will cite the same two or three reasons. "I need publications so I can get tenure." "I want to make a name for myself." And, of course, the real reason that everybody got into this line of work in the first place: "I want to advance my field." These issues were driving scholars to become master teachers and make breakthroughs in research long before the publishers got involved in the academic scene. Money isn't the main motivator here, and it's important for everybody - authors included - to keep that in mind when talking about authors getting rewarded for their hard work and valuable contributions.

The reality is that authors can still enjoy all of these benefits by publishing their content under an open license, and in many cases more effectively. Below is a short list of ways in which publishing in Connexions can actually be MORE beneficial to authors than working under the traditional model:

Authors do not need to finish their work before publication. While most editors wouldn't think of going to press without a finished product, Connexions allows authors to publish one-module at a time, allowing them to make their ideas available to the public faster.

Authors wishing to profit from their work under the traditional model can release individual modules under an open license, allowing potential customers to gauge the quality, accuracy, and relevance of their works though self-contained, bite-sized samples.

Graduate students and new professors can take advantage of the self-publication model to begin establishing a name for themselves earlier in their careers. Publishing early drafts of their research and teaching materials allows for a formative feedback process involving experts worldwide, and because authors retain their copyrights they still have the option of traditional publication once those materials have been fully refined and developed.

Connexions opens doors for many authors who are shut out of the traditional publication process. Professionals without advanced degrees, non-native English speakers with difficulty writing for editors, and iconoclasts who seek to challenge conventional wisdom within their field are just a few of the many groups that may never find success under the traditional publication model for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of their ideas.

Textbooks that are written to fill niches within a field may not be considered profitable enough by publishers' standards to ever make it into print. Self-publishing through Connexions ensures that an author's work is always available for anybody who wants it, no matter how esoteric or narrow in scope.

Publishing in Connexions allows authors to share their work worldwide at no cost to the user, giving them access to literally millions of would-be readers instead of the few thousand that had no choice but to shell out $140 for a copy in the bookstore that semester. This greatly increases the utility and visibility of their work and, by extension, their contribution to their field.

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list, and I could go on and on. But as I said before, my job is to sell the philosophy, not to scare people away. :)

Usually, at this point in the conversation, the authors in the audience have begun to understand how they can benefit from Connexions and the open education philosophy. But there still remains one unanswered question that is of particular importance to those still trying to establish their careers:

"Will this count towards tenure?"

And that, friends, is a question best left for a separate column. The short version is that there's no good reason that it shouldn't, but each case (and each department's tenure review process) is unique. If you think this might be a problem, I strongly encourage you to engage the senior members of your department and strike up a conversation about how open education can simultaneously lower the cost and raise the quality of education for students, while at the same time establishing a reputation for the department as a forward-thinking, quality-oriented organization. In the end, all we can do is make our case and hope that the obvious merits - coupled with an army of open education converts among the students, faculty, and administration - will be enough to ensure that tenure decisions are based on merit and quality of work, rather than conformity to a long-broken system that fails everyone involved - especially the authors.

Talk back:

What are your feelings about the role of open education in the careers of young academics? Do you see potential for change or a barrier to innovation? Do you think that open education opens doors for authors or places an unrealistically low value for their contributions? We'd love to hear what you have to say!

Connexions, Free Textbooks Featured in KHOU's "School Zone" Report

2009-08-04T16:01:00.007-05:00

Connexions was featured this morning on KHOU's 11 News This Morning Early Edition as part of its ongoing "School Zone" series. Connexions Executive Director Joel Thierstein was on camera to explain how the open education movement can lead to powerful changes not only for the higher education market, but also for K-12 education as states look to find ways to provide affordable education for all students.

For those of you who missed it, click here to view the report (link opens in new window).

Add Connexions to your Firefox search bar

2009-07-28T11:15:00.011-05:00

Did you know that you can add Connexions to your browser's search bar? Thanks to Connexions' support of the OpenSearch standard, you can use your favorite browser (or any OpenSearch-enabled software) to scour the repository for your favorite modules and collections.

I'll demonstrate how to do this in Firefox 3.

First, browse to http://cnx.org.

Once the page loads, click on the search engine icon located next to the Firefox search bar. For most people this will be Google's "G" icon (but it depends on which search engine you are currently using).

Click on "Add Connexions" in the dropdown menu.

And there you go!

Now you're ready to search to your heart's content, without loading the Connexions home page first. You can revert back to your a different search engine by clicking on the icon next to the search bar and selecting the site you wish to use.

Connexions founder wins the World Technology Award for Education!

2009-07-27T14:15:00.005-05:00

Who knew that Connexions' own Dr. Rich Baraniuk was causing such a commotion in the technology world? Congradulations, Rich, on being a World Technology Award winner!

From Rice University's press release:

"It was a great honor to receive the award, especially since it will bring more attention to Connexions and our globe-spanning community of users," said Baraniuk, who also presented an overview of the state-of-the-art of education technology at the World Technology Summit event held in New York City July 15 and 16.

The World Technology Network awards this prestegous prize to individuals and businesses that make a lasting impact in their field of work or study.

One More Thing ...

2009-07-27T13:35:00.000-05:00

... I'm just saying ...

Featured Content: Applied Probability

2009-07-23T10:38:00.005-05:00

Paul Pfeiffer's Applied Probability is a collection for college students versed in basic calculus and looking to learn about the practical aspects of probability. The course guides readers through important probability concepts such as distributions, random variables and functions, variance, and more, using problem sets and guided MATLAB examples.

This collection is the culmination of many years of hard work by Dr. Pfeiffer. We wish him the best, and congratulate him on being selected as this week's feature!

Remember, you can always suggest new featured content by using the Recommend Featured Content form.

(image courtesy of Thunderchild on flickr)

Finding Open Education Resources

2009-07-13T09:29:00.007-05:00

I just got back from a meeting about how to make open education resources easier to find and use in the classroom -- OER_Discovery_2009. In order for us to do the best job helping faculty, teachers, and students find material, we need to hear what is easy and what is hard right now.

Are you teaching? What sorts of barriers to finding good resources do you have?

How do you find new materials for your class?

Colleague suggestions?
Google searches?
YouTube searches?
Specialized searches at education sites that you frequent?

Are you worried about copyright restrictions and whether or not you can use or modify the resource?
What is most frustrating to you about looking for resources?

If you have information to share, please comment on this blog, or email cnx@cnx.org.

Connexions Consortium Launched

2009-07-10T16:07:00.004-05:00

Connexions is pleased to announce the launch of the Connexions Consortium.

The Connexions Consortium is dedicated to the design and development of collaborative, open source code, software efforts and open access educational content that are targeted at supporting education, research and related scholarly activities. The Consortium is a group of organizations and individuals, who work together to advance open source educational technology and open access educational content

Our mission:

To deliver an application framework and associated collaboration, research, and teaching and learning environment tools and components that are designed to work together for education content management, research support and various forms of collaboration;

To support research, collaboration and community building around the Consortium application framework and associated research and learning environment tools and components that are designed to work together for education content management, research support and various forms of collaboration;

To solicit grants and other funding to permit the development and refinement of the Connexions application framework and associated research and learning environment tools and components that are designed to work together for education content management, research support and various forms of collaboration;

To promote economic efficiencies for IT in education and research settings through cooperation, leverage of shared investments and innovation;

To serve as an effective voice for open and community source software for research, collaboration, and teaching and learning environment efforts in education.

To learn more about the Connexions Consortium or to find out how to become a member, please visit the Consortium website at http://cnxconsortium.org/. Sign up by July 31, 2009 to become a Founding Member of the Consortium.

Pasting content from a workgroup directly into a collection

2009-07-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Let's say you have about a hundred modules sitting in your personal workspace (or maybe a Workgroup) and you're itching to compile them into one crowning achievement. Maybe you're building your personal memoirs to share with friends and print-on-demand. Maybe you're writing a textbook on marine biology. Whatever your motivation, you've already created these modules and you'd like to package them inside a Connexions collection.

This would be a monumentally boring and time-consuming task if you were to add each module individually (Believe me: Both Jonathan and I have taken this soul-crushing route when creating collections in the past). However, someone finally clued us in that you can copy and paste PUBLISHED modules directly from your workgroup into a collection.

From your personal workspace or workgroup, check all of the boxes next to the PUBLISHED modules you would like to add to your collection. Find the blue "Copy" button located at the bottom of the list of modules. Press it. I'm not a developer so I can't expound on the technical details, but I believe that the module "pointers" are copied into a strange cyber-void that only our Systems Architect fully understands. Now, create a new collection or go to the collection composer page for the collection you wish to populate. Click the folder you wish to insert the modules into and press the blue "Paste" button.

Viola! All of those modules are now in your collection, ready to be organized, retitled, or shuffled to your heart's content.

You'll notice I used the word "PUBLISHED" up there in my explanation-- that's because you cannot insert unpublished modules into a collection. Please make sure you publish your modules before trying to add them to a collection.

Good as MEW: Redesigned authoring area, MathML Editor, and more!

2009-07-01T15:05:00.006-05:00

Connexions released a slew of new features and updates to the site yesterday. They're all welcome improvements to the authoring area, so you should probably head on over to the site and get busy writing modules after you read this nifty post :-)

First, let me give you a little background. This round of development effort has been known internally by about fifty different names: MyCNX Dasboard, Module Edit Workflow, Authoring Interface Redesign, and for me, Kyle's Big Tutorial-Updating Extravaganza. Most of us just called it MEW (Module Edit Workflow) for short. MEW has grown over the course of the past few months to include side projects like Phil's awesome, web-based MathML editor (but I'll get to that in a moment).

Now let's take a look at some of the most prominent changes MEW has brought to Connexions.

MyCNX Home Page

The first big change you might notice after logging in is the redesigned MyCNX area:

We've retooled this page to be a little more intuitive. The navigation sidebar on the left now features collapsible menus that will point you toward your work areas, modules, and collections. You can also create a new module or collection from the home page without navigating to a workspace or workgroup. Oh, and your most recently edited modules and collections are right there, so you can quickly get back onto writing your epic open-education textbook after you log in.

You can read all about the MyCNX area by visiting the "MyCNX and the Work Areas" module I recently updated for MEW.

Show/Hide Sidebars

Let's face it: There is limited real estate on your computer screen and authoring in Connexions used to be a bit of a pain when working on a tiny monitor. To help you feel a little less claustrophobic while writing modules (or composing collections), we've introduced a new widget called the Show/Hide Sidebars icon.

Click on it and the navigation sidebars will collapse, giving you more room to get into your authoring groove. Click it again and, voilà, the sidebars return! It's just that easy.

The Connexions MathML Editor

We've really saved the best for last here, folks! When you're editing modules using Edit-In-Place, you may notice a new link near the top of the editing box that says "MathML Editor." Click it.

Oh, my! What in the world is this? It's a fully-functional, web-based MathML Editor! Gone are the days of building equations in MathML code or purchasing software that only works on one platform.

Now you can generate semantically-correct Content MathML on-the-fly and paste it into your Connexions module. Phil Schatz was the driving force behind this addition to the suite of Connexions authoring tools, and I think he deserves a special pat on the back.

You can read more about the Connexions MathML Editor by checking out the new "MathML Editor Introduction"module, located in the Documentation Lens.

It's been a long and winding road to get all these changes out the door, and I'd like to give a big shout-out to our hard-working staff for their tireless contributions. Thanks to you guys, authoring in Connexions is now easier than ever.

Update: Siyavula-Connexions Partnership

2009-06-29T16:21:00.000-05:00

Back in November we announced an exciting new partnership between Connexions and the South Africa-based Siyavula project. This collaboration, with the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation, aims to make a full suite of learning materials available for all subjects and all grade levels (K-12).

Since we made that announcement the folks at Siyavula have been hard at work, with over 2,000 modules published already and roughly as many more expected over the course of the summer. In addition to these content contributions, the Siyavula development team has also designed and implemented several site features and enhancements, including improvements to the content lensing system and the ability for users to rate modules.

With so many quality learning modules and even more software features in the pipeline, this collaboration has already been a major success for both parties, opening the door for a global community of authors, educators, and students to take advantage of these learning resources. We want to extend a special thank you to the folks at Siyavula and the Shuttleworth Foundation, and look forward to a fruitful, long-term partnership.

Connexions author Ed Doering praised for innovative teaching

2009-06-28T19:36:00.000-05:00

The Terre Haute Tribune-Star features an article on Ed Doering, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and author of the collection "Musical Signal Processing with LabVIEW". The article highlights Doering's innovation through online instruction using Connexions' modular, open system and National Instruments' interactive LabVIEW plugins.

From the article:

“It’s shocking to know that at any minute my voice is being heard in Shanghai [China], Manila [Philippines] or Santiago [Chile]. That’s what makes technology so fascinating,” Doering says. “I enjoy using new technology to reach out to students when they need it most.”

Rose prof embraces technology to expand educational horizons (Terre Haute Tribune-Star)

Ed Doering on Connexions

Using alternative images in print

2009-06-27T07:24:00.004-05:00

Since the introduction of CNXML 0.6, Connexions authors have had a pretty cool but often overlooked tool at their disposal: Print-alternative images for media objects. In other words, authors can specify a video to embed online and an image to display instead when viewing the content in print. Let's take a look at how you can add print-alternative images to your interactive Connexions content!

Connexions totally re-vamped the way media elements are included and displayed back when CNXML 0.6 rolled out. The snippet below specifies an embedded video with an image alternative (the important part is highlighted):


<media id="building-on-past" alt="Building on the past.">
  <video mime-type="video/mpeg"src="Building_on_the_Past.mpg"
         autoplay="false" width="320" height="260" />
  <image mime-type="image/jpeg"
         src="building_on_the_Past_title_screen.jpg" />
</media>

Check it out: There is an image element under the video element! The media element contains both a video element and an image element.

When it comes time to generate a module's PDF, Connexions always looks for a second child of a media element to use as a print-alternative. If it doesn't find one, it either displays the media as-is or creates a reference to the URL of the media file, depending on the type of media element used.

So why would you want to include a print alternative for your online media? Consider these cases:

You're writing an instructional module about playing the clarinet. You've embedded a tutorial video from YouTube but, unfortunately, it's hard to print videos into textbooks. So instead, you create an image of the fingerings demonstrated and use it as a print alternative.
In that same clarinet module, you've embedded a beautiful sample of jazz clarinet music. For print, you specify an image of the sheet music for the piece performed.
You use small PNG diagrams to illustrate some neuron interactions in your module about brain chemistry. Those diagrams look great online (and control the size and load time of your module) but look ridiculously tiny in print. Changing the print-width attribute for the image simply distorts the image and reduces its overall quality. So you create EPS vector images from your original diagrams and specify them as the print alternative. Connexions' PDF/print system then reads the EPS images and creates higher-quality diagrams for print that can be scaled to any size.

If you have any more bright ideas about how to use print-alternative images in Connexions, or have any questions about using print-alternative images, please feel free to contact us.