OPEN SOURCE APPROACHES TO EDUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

摘要

Universities have a mission to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. In realizing that mission, we face significant cultural, legal, economic, and technical pressures. The intellectual commons can be defined as "that shared wellspring of ideas and innovation from which all may freely draw" and its intent is to counteract regimes of control and replace them with regimes of opportunity. The approach to educational technology innovation at MIT seeks to advance the intellectual commons by developing and freely sharing "open content" and "open code". This talk describes MIT's approach to educational technology innovation by examining underlying principles, specifying technical architecture, and demonstrating specific projects. We focus in particular on .LRN, an open source project and platform for supporting innovation in collaborative education and learning and research communities. Originally developed at MIT as part of the intellectual commons, .LRN is now backed by a worldwide consortium of educational institutions, non-profit organizations, industry partners and open source developers.