This week we are looking at resources for open and distance education opportunities.
Open education usually involves free resources, accessible to anyone, and can include online as well as opportunities by mail. When I think of these resources online, I think of a sort of virtual library. The advantage is that it is now including situations where students can converse with each others, teachers, or other professionals and gain experience in a group like setting. The introduction of technology into this realm has opened up so many opportunities for students to enhance their accessibility to information. I would consider this more of an opportunity to enhance your knowledge and skills, versus pursuing a traditional degree. The positive side of this is that it does nto require anyone to have met certain educational standards, the information is available to anyone who wants to learn. I found a site online called “10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About But Should”. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/05/10-open-education-resources-you-may-not-know-about-but-should/. Two particular open education opportunities listed sounded really intriguing to me and were not areas that I had really thought about when looking at open education previously.
The first is CK-12. . http://www.ck12.org/student/. This site is a sort of virtual textbook platform (Flexbook) that offers free textbooks for K-12 students. The content is based on educational standards and is openly licensed. I think that this could be an amazing resource for schools. Rather than needing to purchase new textbooks every few years, they could access textbooks through sites like this that could benefit their students. Additionally, students and parents could access this in order to provide the students additional learning opportunities beyond what is offered in their classrooms.
The second site I found on the 10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know About but Should was Flat World Knowledge. http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/. This site is similar to CK-12 in that it is virtual textbooks available for college textbooks. The books are published under an open license and gives professors a chance to customize books or use them exactly how they come. It basically gives professors a chance to combine their lecture material with information found in the books. Students have free access to the books online or can pay to print them or get them via audiobooks. This is a great resource, if professors choose to use it, to allow students to avoid the high costs of textbooks in college and allow students to have up to date and customized books that fit the model of that particular professor or class. I would have loved to have a resource like this when I was in undergraduate and graduate programs.
I wanted to include a resource for distance learning as well. I chose the Fielding Graduate Institute http://www.fielding.edu/. I chose this program because it is the only online APA (American Psychological Association) accredited program to obtain a Doctorate in Psychology. At one point in my career, I considered pursuing this degree but decided to take a different route instead. However, I think this is an exceptional program and is a leader in providing online accredited programs in Psychology that will prepare future Psychologists for licensure in their state. Many programs are accredited, but if not accredited by the APA specifically, it can cause someone to get a degree that would be essentially useless if they live in a state that requires APA accredidation. In the past, the only way to get a Doctorate degree in Psychology would be to travel to an accredited college. This allows more students with an interest in this field to pursue a doctorate in Psychology and help strengthen this field. There are many locations where there are is a shortage of professionals with this level of expertise.
vrichards1980 
Valerie-Flat World Knowledge is a great site! I wish there had been something like it during my undergrad days when I was paying $300-400 a semester for Lit and history books. This will be a great resource for me to use when I start teaching both for me and my students. The prices are great for the students and the ability to adjust the content to suit my classes is what every teacher hopes for. Thanks for sharing it.
Those $600 books per semester bite, so any savings in great! People will bitch all the time instead of exploring or researching options. You will have people bitch, yet Ted Kennedy opened so many doors for so many people to get an education. How many people would have degrees without the opportunity for student loans? Where would this world be with the people with degrees? Anyone in the U.S. can go to school, if they choose to. But there are educated idiots,also, and those are the people that will pursue their own goals at the cost of others, they will not care what damage they to others, the more people that fall, the taller they are, but hopefully will just end up in the middle looking like the clown they are.
Hi Valerie,
Thanks for all the resources for open education and distance learning. I will look into all of them. There really is so much available on the Web for distance learning and open education that it really makes learning attainable for adults.
Hi Valerie:
Your site is of tremendous value. Your examples clearly exemplify open/distance learning. Textbooks are at premium prices today and these sites will assist many of them in need. Open learning signifies to me there are not any restrictions. Everything you need is provided including materials. I will share this with my adult learners this week.
Thank you so much. Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Open education is such a wonderful gift to have. Education comes from various places the internet, the TV, wonderful tapes made for people to learn, but there must be a maturity level reached. Way back when when I was married and my kids were little, I did watch what programs they watched and books lay scattered on the floor, because an older woman told me not to pick up the books and put them in the bookcase, let them lie on the floor open, because the kids would absorb what they saw and that is what I did. In the am I would put books on the floor face up open, it worked well. It did not matter if they stepped on them or not, because their attention span was short but they would learn bits at a time. Things like the DIY network have given rise to entrepreneurs and given confidence to so many and brought fun and laughter to people. The history channel has sparked the interests of so many who just did not feel like opening a history book. I did not remember where my grandfather worked and because I just happened to go to a website of a guy buy the name of Mike Stout, and he must be a historian who sings about Pittsburgh, I remembered where he worked and passed that info on to my kids. Maturity is different in people, you might meet a 24 year old that only has the maturity level of an 18 year old and as educators we must be aware of that. I worked with a gal who was studying to be a doctor in Germany, married someone during the war and relocated to the US, she used to work with Dr. Salk when he was working on his polio vaccine, I listened to her every word and she listened to Dr. Salk and was able to realize that her own son was so gifted that he started at Berkley when he was only 16 year old, but he had the maturity level needed to go there. He was the product of public schools. As educators if we find ourselves upsetting someone, maybe we are not the person that should be interacting with that person.
Valerie, I too thought about the Psychology degree to with in the educational field. This information is helpful as I have a few young adults whom I know are interested in Psychology so I will inform them they maybe interested in the online programs.
Valerie,
I would chose both of the websites that you picked for open-learning, especially flatworldknowledge.com because textbooks for college students can be very expensive. I know for me as a college student and paying for graduate school myself, college textbooks can be very expensive and weighs on a students budget if they are paying for books out of pocket. You gave me some insightful information about Distance learning for Psychology because Pyschology was my minor in undergrad and I have been thinking about pursing pyschology in the near future so your information was really helpful.
Flat world knowledge is a resource that I think colleges should give this information to their students. For a variety of reasons first you could reduce the cost of tutition and this resource could expand the research that we do beyond the online library provided by the school.
I love the ck-12 site. Here in Indiana there is an annual book fee that al students have to pay. I absolutely hate this and while they send home suggested sites to help them with math and reading skills, they are not as in depth as the ones I have found while doing research for this class. I think having access to other books helps because some books explain and diagram sections better than others. Great post!
Thank you for sharing the information on getting a Doctorate degree online in Psychology and also approved by the APA!
Do you think that obtaining that degree online will encourage people to sign up for sessions with psycholists online. They have different programs where people can call and talk when they specific problems, can you see yourself as a counselor, while they are from their home and traveling to a center
I actually have students who will struggle and juggle all throughout a semester borrowing books. These students do not have the money to spend $1000.00 on textbooks every semester. Many of them are barely affording the classes. I try to pick textbooks that can be purchased at a lower price. I think I am porbably disliked by our bookstore because I bypass them. I always have my students buy their books from amazon. Most older editions of textbooks have not changed greatly. I take advantage of the older editions just to make it possible for all my students to have a book. I have found students with their own textbook actually perfrom better. Some of the time, I teach from jounal articles. In that case, no textbook is needed. My students struggle with reading and comprehending journal articles/research. By using them as the class “textbook,” I am saving the students money and adding to their skills.
There has been a couple of occassions when I knew people could not afford things. I am not in the position to teach, but I have gone out of my way to find books, take pictures of the pages they needed and then emailed to them. That saves them some time.
[…] Knowledge (http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/) as mentioned by Valerie Richards on February 16th (https://vrichards1980.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/educ-6177-educational-technologies-blog-open-and-dista…). Flat World Knowledge is an open license virtual textbook site that allows students to purchase […]