Connexions news

Connexions Consortium Annual General Membership Meeting - 2011-01-05

The Connexions Consortium will be holding its 2011 General Membership meeting on Feburary 8, 2011, in Houston, Texas, at Rice University, in conjuction with the Connexions Conference 2011

Author Kenny Felder participates in CA Free Digital Textbook Initiative - 2009-08-11

Congratulations to Connexions author Kenny Felder! His book, Advanced Algebra II, was submitted as part of California Gov. Schwarzenegger's Free Digital Textbook Initiative. The California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) has just announced that this text was successfully reviewed and will be included in a list of free textbooks available to California schools this fall. This is great news for the open education movement, and an excellent example of how individual contributions can make a huge difference for learners and educators worldwide.

See the full press release here.

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

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.

Connexions' founder wins the World Technology Award for Education - 2009-07-29

Congratulations to Dr. Rich Baraniuk, founder of Connexions, on being 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.

Connexions blog launched, Twitter and Facebook pages online - 2009-07-01

In order to help meet the needs of our vibrant and rapidly growing community of authors, educators, and stakeholders, the Connexions team has been hard at work creating a number of new community-oriented features. We are pleased and excited to announce the official launch of the Connexions blog (blog.cnx.org), a semi-official source of project news, updates, authoring tips, and other valuable insights into the world of Connexions.

Those of you wishing to follow along via RSS can subscribe to our blog feed. You can also follow us on Twitter for updates on the go, or become a fan of Connexions on Facebook to show your support and interact with other community members.

For more information on the latest community development efforts and features, please see our community page at http://cnx.org/aboutus/community.

Connexions unveils MathML Editor, redesigned authoring interface - 2009-06-30

Connexions has released a number of updates, changes, and new features that make authoring modules and collections easier than ever! Most of these changes can be found in the MyCNX area of the site.

  • The Connexions MathML Editor - Users can now create and edit math expressions in a simple-yet-powerful equation editor. The editor produces Content MathML which can then be pasted into modules. For more information about the MathML Editor, check out the MathML Editor Introduction.
  • Show/Hide Sidebars Icon - Editing modules and collections can be a bit cumbersome in small browser windows. To address this problem, Connexions has added a "Show/Hide Sidebars" icon that expands the editing area when activated. You can read more about this new feature in the Editing Modules guide.
  • New MyCNX Home Page - The MyCNX Home Page has been redesigned to make the authoring area easier to use. It now includes links to instantly create modules and collections, a list of your most recently modified items, and more. The MyCNX and the Work Areas module highlights all of these new features.

If you have any questions about Connexions and the latest site features, be sure to check out the updated Connexions Documentation Lens, or e-mail cnx@cnx.org.

Connexions updates Lenses feature, introduces module rating system - 2009-05-21

Connexions users can now take advantage of the new Lenses tab to view a list of all public lenses. Lenses offer members and organizations a way to publicly identify, affiliate themselves with, or endorse content by directing viewers to a hand-picked list of top-quality modules and collections. Click here to learn more about lenses.

Members can also provide feedback on a module's quality to other viewers using the new Module Ratings system. By rating a module on a scale of 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent), members can share their opinions with others to help identify the best content Connexions has to offer.

For questions about these and other Connexions features, please see the Help section or contact cnx@cnx.org.

Connexions Consortium Launched - 2009-04-27

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:

  1. 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;
  2. 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;
  3. 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;
  4. To promote economic efficiencies for IT in education and research settings through cooperation, leverage of shared investments and innovation;
  5. 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/.

Connexions author Ed Doering praised for innovative teaching - 2009-04-01

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 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

Connexions Introduces CNXML 0.6 - 2009-02-02

HOUSTON -- (February 2, 2009) -- After several years of consideration, design, and development, open-education website Connexions has introduced the latest version of its Connexions Markup Language (CNXML). The new language was officially released on January 29, 2009.

CNXML 0.6 offers a variety of new features that make publishing rich, interactive modules easier than ever. These features include the introduction of new media elements, the ability to add commentary to exercises, and easy citation formatting, just to name a few. Connexions has documented all of these changes in What's New in CNXML 0.6.

For more information on CNXML 0.6, please visit the language section of the site.

Rice-African Partnership is Open-Education Blockbuster - 2008-11-25

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 10, 2008) -- Houston-based Rice University and Cape Town, South Africa-based Shuttleworth Foundation today announced plans to jointly develop one of the world's largest, most comprehensive sets of free online teaching materials for primary and secondary school children. Using their open-education projects -- Rice's Connexions and the Shuttleworth's Siyavula -- the organizations will work to transform South African primary and secondary education with a bold initiative based on open-source software, online educator communities and open copyright licenses.

Ultimately, the group hopes to offer a complete suite of the highest caliber K12 materials online for free. This comprehensive repository of educational resources includes everything from online textbooks to classroom activities, experiments and training materials. Connexions and Siyavula will work together to create the repository, and Siyavula will create an online community of educators in South Africa that will expand, update and use the lessons. The newly created content will reside in the Connexions repository, one of the largest open-education resources (OER) repositories.

An OER pioneer, Connexions is both a platform and repository that lets people create, share, modify and review open educational materials. All Connexions modules are freely accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Because it is licensed under the Creative Commons attribution license, all material in Connexions is available to the world to use and reuse for free. The Connexions platform will be used to distribute the project's content.

"The Siyavula/Connexions project is one of the most powerful open-education partnerships in history," said Connexions Executive Director Joel Thierstein. "We are humbled by the resources the Shuttleworth Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation have brought to bear on the issues of global education. The realization of an enlightened, educated world is an amazing thing to be a part of.

"The Connexions platform allows materials to be translated and remixed to make them culturally relevant and thus usable throughout the world," Thierstein added. "Connexions allows instructors to rearrange lessons, reorder chapters and add their own materials, in effect giving each teacher the ability to create his or her own customized textbook. Finally, the Connexions platform makes it easy to print materials, as well."

Siyavula Project Manager Mark Horner said the Rice-Shuttleworth team will create the software that South African educators need to develop and maintain a comprehensive set of educational resources that cover the entire South African school curriculum.

"Siyavula decided not to build its own platform as an excellent solution already existed in the form of Connexions," Horner said. "It is important to collaborate with existing initiatives and not reinvent the wheel. This approach allows the pool of open educational resources to grow at an accelerated rate. Building on a solid, existing foundation is more cost-effective and adds to any initiative's possibility of sustainability."

The number of people using Connexions has grown by 40 percent over the past year, and with peak traffic of more than 1 million visits per month, Connexions is one of the world's most popular OER sites.

"Connexions represents openness in every way," Horner said. "The content housed on Connexions is openly licensed using Creative Commons licenses, the software is open source, and the team is open to collaboration and partnerships with like-minded initiatives. These match the values of the Shuttleworth Foundation in its open-source approach to social development."

Siyavula means "we are opening" in the Nguni family of languages. The Siyavula project is sponsored by the Shuttleworth Foundation, a South African organization that invests in social, technical and policy innovation in the fields of education and technology. The foundation works through active partnerships with local and international organizations.

http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID;=11765&SnID;=867303618


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