Social Learning Systems

Open Culture

What is Open Culture’s Mission?

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all here. Open Culture was founded in 2006.

via www.openculture.com

Yes, The Khan Academy IS the Future of Education (video) | Singularity Hub

I’m just going to come out and say it: the Khan Academy is the best thing that has happened to education since Socrates. The brainchild of Salman Khan, the Khan Academy became famous by teaching simple math lessons for free through over 2000 YouTube videos. Now, after millions in donations and an expansion of the company, the academy is so much more. The website for the Khan Academy already had exercises you could use to test your understanding of the videos you just watched, but in the past few weeks the website has exploded with wonderful new features. You can create a profile for the site simply by logging in through Google or Facebook. You can track your progress with some wonderful metrics. Teachers (or ‘coaches’) can monitor student progress in groups. Students can earn badges to keep them interested. The list goes on and on and it’s all free. Free, I tell you!

Read the entire article here.

via singularityhub.com

The Differentiator

 
A great tool -

Pick the Thinking Skill.

Pick a way to Differentiate Content.

Pick a Resource.

Pick a Product for Students to Create.

Pick a Group Size for Student Group Work. 

Fabulous!

Here is a direct link to the tool.

 

via www.byrdseed.com

Best Resources for Creative Commons Content

Here is a link to a really useful blog showing more than 30 sites where you can find free media to use.

"SitePoint has gathered up over 30 of the best resources online for audio, video, images and more for finding just the perfect Creative Commons licensed item for use in your next project. So, have a look around and get inspired!

These are files you can use in the creation of web sites and other media, free of charge. However, do be mindful that there are different degrees of the license, and some of them are for private use only, or they may require that you include an attribution to the original creator. Make sure to read and understand the various licenses, and which one each file you discover uses."

Check the Creative Commons Licenses here.

Sitepoint.com.