A passion for content

Some of you may have noticed that through this summer, I've been writing a little less on this blog. The reason is that over the past year, I have gotten very involved in the area of Open Education (similar to open source software, but focused on content) and thinking and writing a lot about that.

This interest has grown out of my work in developing content for mobile devices. I have come to the conclusion that mainstream textbook publishers are not likely to come out with meaningful content for mobile devices, and so we are forging on without them. :) After developing a large library of content on a contract basis for schools, we are now looking at open-licensed work as a more far-reaching strategy.

If you are interested in Open Ed and my thoughts on it, you might also want to read my Open Ed blog and check out our new open dictionary project.

In the meantime, I'll still be here on Mobile Musings as well. :)

The first kids open dictionary

For months, I have been writing about our project to create the first kids open dictionary.

I am very excited to unveil the first piece of this: a collaborative, wiki-based dictionary builder. If you have a second, check out the site and add a quick definition (or click on recent changes to edit one someone else has done). Whatever you do doesn't have to be perfect. Others can add to it and edit it later.

This project grew out of the need we have seen in classrooms and other informal learning environments for a dictionary that is kid-appropriate (both in terms of language level and content) and open for everyone to use in any context.

Down the road, we'll be publishing this as a completely open, public domain dictionary that can be used on the web or offline on desktops, laptops, handhelds, ipods, phones, etc. Teachers will also be able to export custom glossary lists to incorporate into their own lessons, ebooks, web sites, etc.

We are excited about this project and hope many of you will join in and contribute. It only takes a couple minutes and is a great way to share and become a part of the Open Educational Resources movement.

Free Kids Dictionary Project

For a long while, many of us have seen the need for a free kids dictionary that could be used on mobile devices. Since none seem to exist that are at a kids' level and are "kid appropriate," I've always had an idea to make my own, but haven't done much about it.

Now that's about to change! With my recent growing interest in the Open Education movement and mass collaboration, I'm going to start a collaborative project to create such a dictionary. Most likely, this will be on a wiki platform, like Wikibooks.

The focus will be on having simple kid-appropriate definitions targeted at a grade 5-8 level. Everyone will be able to contribute, and we'll be looking for lots of help!

Then after we have a critical mass of words, we'll download the content and convert it to a variety of platforms, including Mobipocket for handheld use and probably some kind of offline desktop format. We might even do a skinny version for mobile phones.

If you are interested in working on this project, stay tuned for more details. We'll be getting a prototype and perhaps a mailing list together for this soon. And whatever we come up with will freely usable by anyone.