publishing
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Everyday I write the book
I put together a proposal before the summer, for a book on digital scholarship. It's part-polemic and part academic monograph. I want to explore the changes to academic practice brought about by three key characteristics: digital, networked and open. I wanted to find an open access publisher, so I'm pleased to say that it's been accepted by Bloomsbury Academic. Their model is that they give away a free HTML version, you can buy a standard hard and paperback version, or you can buy a version that also gives you access to additional online content. I don't know how much this additional content line will work, but kudos to them for…
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The return on peer review
A while ago I took a decision to only publish in open access journals. I recently received two requests to review articles for journals. Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing. So it's something we all do, isn't…
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For local people – new models for newspapers
In case you hadn't seen it, the Guardian is running an interesting model with some local versions. Cardiff Guardian is one of the first ones (Edinburgh and Leeds being the others). It is ostensibly run by one person (Hannah Waldram), who covers local news, and then pulls in Cardiff related stories from the existing Guardian stock material. Added to this there are guest posts from local people, some crowdsourced content (eg Flickr photos) plus third party tools, such as MySociety.Org and FixMyStreet. The outcome is a very useful site and, if you live in Cardiff, very engaging too. What is interesting about it is that it offers a potential model…
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Project report as coffee table book
I've mentioned before I was part of the Sidecap project, which looked at OER use in Fiji, West Indies and Mauritius. The project has now finished and instead of producing the standard EU report (which, let's face it, no-one ever reads) Frank Rennie from UHI decided to create it as a book in Blurb. We all contributed sections and gathered photos from the duration of the project. My book turned up today: It's a small, and undoubtedly obvious point, but the glossiness of it and the approachability of the layout made me want to read it. In almost exactly opposite to the way I'd approach a normal project report.…
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Call for papers – you know you want to
I am editing a special issue of the RUSC (a journal from the University of Catalonia) with George Siemens. The Special Issue is concerned with the Impact of Social Networks on Teaching and Learning. The language of the special issue is English. George has posted the details here. The topics we want to address are: The role of the educator in social networks Adaptation of learning theories for digital environments Systemic change in education in response to affordances of social networks Social network analysis in courses and learning environments Mobile devices in social learning Personal learning environments and networks Learning design – methods and models of designing for social networks…
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My final offer is this: nothing
Recently I wanted to use a Creative Commons image in a project which was a bit blurry as to whether it constituted commercial use or not, so I contacted the owner and asked them as they had specified non-commercial. They asked for payment (which is of course their right), but I didn't have a budget so I declined and found an alternative image. Similarly I was looking for an image of a bee a while ago for a school project for my daughter and found a nice one, but they wanted $200. After I had stopped laughing I went and found a free alternative. And this is the problem…
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Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change
Last year I wrote a piece for a special edition of On the Horizon, which Michael Feldstein was editing. It has (finally) appeared in print. Michael gained permission for authors to publish their work online also (the journal isn't open – boooo!) so here is the PDF of mine, and below the article itself. I haven't revisited it since I wrote it, and may disagree with what I said now, but I am trying to ensure I put all my publications online as they come out. [Published in On the Horizon 17(3) pp. 181-189]________________________________________________ Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change. Martin Weller Abstract: Purpose: The central theme…
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Exploring the publishing process
At the beginning of the year I wrote a paper provisionally titled 'Is the revolution justified?'. My aim in the paper was to question the base assumption many of us have (myself included) that a technologically driven revolution is coming to higher education. It's an interesting journey and my conclusion was 'not really', but more importantly, framing the adoption of technology as an imperative to save us from the oncoming doom is the wrong way to view it. Rather we should look upon digital technology as an unprecedented opportunity. Anyway, I submitted the artile to JIME, because it was relevant, and is open. We batted it around a while, and…
