Open education and open source

Open educational resources, open licensing, open-source software and the communities that sustain them.

2025 1

Session at OER25

Talks OER25 · 23 June 2025 · Talk

2015 1

Have the licensing talk early to maximise impact

Talks OER 2015 · April 2015 · Talk

2014 1

Three abstracts for OER15: Licensing talking points, Models of OER production, and OERs and Accessibility

Writing Researchity · 1 December 2014 · Blog post

This note presents three conference abstracts on open licensing and accessibility, early licensing decisions in projects, and sustainable models for producing open educational resources.

2012 7

The "Profit Motive" delusion and open education #edstartup #opencontent #edchat

Writing Researchity · 14 October 2012 · Blog post

This piece rejects profit as a guarantee of educational quality and proposes open content, portable data, open platforms, and relationship-based services as sustainable alternatives.

Turning Wikipedia into textbooks: Tools, Ideals and Accessibility

Writing techczech.net · 22 September 2012 · Blog post

The piece explains how to assemble Wikipedia articles into textbooks and compares the workflow, accessibility, and alternatives for collaborative book creation.

Introducing myself to #EdStartUp - How can we find sustainable business/funding models for open education? [update]

Writing Researchity · 27 August 2012 · Blog post

This video introduction asks how open courses can fund participation, assessment, and recognition without depending on large institutions or proprietary scarcity.

Zero pedagogy: A hyperbolic case for curation and creation over education in the age of the MOOC (#moocmooc)

Writing Researchity · 15 August 2012 · Blog post

This piece argues that open access, community support, curation, and creation matter more than imposing a unified pedagogy on motivated learners.

The Drupal/Wordpress choice: A guide for individuals, small organizations and the Internet

Writing techczech.net · 28 July 2012 · Blog post

The piece compares Drupal and WordPress and recommends each platform for different organisational needs, technical capacities, and maintenance budgets.

Is BETT good for UK education? Towards a more open alternative! #BETT2012 #C84C

Writing techczech.net · 15 January 2012 · Blog post

The piece argues that education technology events and public funding should give open-source software, Creative Commons resources, and teacher-led innovation a central role.

2011 6

CiviEvent Wishlist (#CiviCRM)

Writing techczech.net · 1 September 2011 · Blog post

The piece proposes improvements to CiviCRM event administration, registration, payments, admissions, and profile handling.

CiviCRM: The Community Advantage

Talks CiviCRM Conference · September 2011 · Talk

Civi Email Wishlist (#CiviCRM)

Writing techczech.net · 31 August 2011 · Blog post

The piece proposes improvements to CiviCRM email composition, mass mailing, templates, tracking, and interface workflows.

Open Source Curriculum and a Community-Based Accreditation Scheme for Drupal

Talks DrupalCon · August 2011 · Talk

links for 2011-02-23

Writing techczech.net · 24 February 2011 · Blog post

The digest links to an open-source question-and-answer community platform.

Sharing without community is just piling stuff up

Writing Researchity · 21 February 2011 · Blog post

This piece argues that educational repositories need trusted communities, social curation, and regular discovery channels to make shared resources useful.

2010 9

links for 2010-12-09

Writing techczech.net · 10 December 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to an online collection of reusable icons.

How do you find reusable content for teaching

Writing techczech.net · 1 December 2010 · Blog post

The piece explains copyright, fair dealing, Creative Commons licences, and ways to find reusable teaching media.

links for 2010-09-04

Writing techczech.net · 5 September 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to the Public Library of Science as an open-access academic publishing resource.

links for 2010-08-28

Writing techczech.net · 29 August 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to a source of royalty-free music for multimedia and podcast production.

links for 2010-08-24

Writing techczech.net · 25 August 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to an open platform for creating and sharing digital textbooks.

links for 2010-08-23

Writing techczech.net · 24 August 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to an open educational resource repository and an interactive digital textbook platform.

Anthologize: 5 lessons for microfunding of research and development projects

Writing Researchity · 4 August 2010 · Blog post

This piece uses the Anthologize project to argue that short, inexpensive, public projects can produce useful tools and research through iterative work.

links for 2010-07-18

Writing techczech.net · 19 July 2010 · Blog post

The digest links to a collection of free courses, lectures, videos, and audio materials.

Report on Mahara Con UK 2010 (#maharauk10) in 36 Tweets

Writing techczech.net · 19 July 2010 · Blog post

The piece reports on Mahara UK 2010 through contemporaneous tweets about e-portfolio practice, implementation barriers, and forthcoming platform features.