No More Pencils, No More Books.

The students in Whelan’s class are all using the same program, called ALEKS. But peek over their shoulders and you’ll see that each student is working on a different sort of problem. A young woman near the corner of the room is plugging her way through a basic linear equation. The young man to her left is trying to wrap his mind around a story problem involving fractions. Nearby, a more advanced student is simplifying equations that involve both variables and fractions.

At first glance, each student appears to be at a different point in the course. And that’s true, in one sense. But it’s more accurate to say that the course is literally different for each student.

Source: The Textbook Is Dying. Meet the Artificially Intelligent Software That’s Replacing It. 

Open Access Is a Human Rights Issue (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

Let’s not portray casual sharing as more heroic than it is, though. A network of friends with institutional connections is not a luxury that everyone has. Emailing papers doesn’t fix a system in which the most cutting-edge knowledge is only available to a few people. If anything, casual sharing of limited-access papers only underscores the problem: limiting access to research keeps knowledge away from people without the same connections and privileges.

Source: Open Access Is a Human Rights Issue | Electronic Frontier Foundation

How Trade Agreements Harm Open Access and Open Source (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

Open access isn’t explicitly covered in any of the secretive trade negotiations that are currently underway, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA). But that doesn’t mean that they won’t have a negative impact on those seeking to publish or use open access materials.

Source: How Trade Agreements Harm Open Access and Open Source | Electronic Frontier Foundation

FASTR Ensures that Publicly Funded Research Belongs to the Public (OPEN ACCESS WEEK, ONE WEEK LATE)

When taxpayers pay for research, everyone should have access to it. That’s the simple premise of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015 (S.779, H.R.1477), or FASTR. If enacted, FASTR would keep federally funded research where it belongs, in the hands of the public.

Source: FASTR Ensures that Publicly Funded Research Belongs to the Public | Electronic Frontier Foundation

When You Work in the Open, Everyone Can Be a Collaborator (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

From scientific research to lawmaking, open access enables participation Open access is the practice of making research available online, for free, ideally under licenses that permit widespread dissemination. This year’s theme for Open Access Week is “open for collaboration,” and that theme hits on what’s really exciting about open access. Open access—both in academia and beyond—enables a kind of collaboration that can scale very quickly.

Source: When You Work in the Open, Everyone Can Be a Collaborator | Electronic Frontier Foundation