Thursday, February 26, 2009

Island based high-density village references please

Over the last few months I have become increasingly drawn into this CRC discussion. The one thing that has made the most sense is; to inform myself. I've read through much of the three websites of;
I also created a custom google search engine and pointed it at these three sites. This search engine can be found on this blog.

The one thing I am trying to find information is research, reference or case studies about successful high-density eco-villages on ISLAND environments. So far I have found none in any of these three websites, I could have missed something. As I expanded my search to the internet and architectural, social planning, human geography references I found very little on this subject. What I did find was references to building upon what you already have. Nothing on creating NEW villages. And when I looked at the village concept it pointed toward FIRST building density at the islands port (in our case, snug cove) and secondary or tertiary villages at major crossroads. This also seems to be the most natural and proven approach to densification of islands.

What I am looking for is the references that people are using in regards to building high-density sustainable villages on ISLANDS. I believe our being an island is a important factor in deciding the location of such eco-villages.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Cape Roger Curtis Search Engine

In my efforts to better understand this issues tied to Cape Roger Curtis I configure a custom google search engine. This custom google search points toward the following three sites;
Please suggest other relevant sites by commenting on this blog to improve this custom search engine.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

OER roadmap

I've been working on a wiki based open educational resource (OER) project for a couple of years now. I work on it because I feel very well aligned with the sites main page description;
We're turning the digital divide into digital dividends using free content and open networks.
As an active contributor to this wiki I feel I have benefited greatly from contributing. As a contributor I believe I have learned more than any individual content consumers (though I have no data to back this up, its just a feeling). I have come to believe that contributing to OER is the best way to learn from OER. It is the act of finding existing OER and reusing it or building upon it. If the OER doesn't exist for your chosen topic, then you have the opportunity to learn and build a new piece of OER.

I am currently involved in more than one discussion about how to encourage people to collaborate in the creation of OER. This is an interesting subject for I believe a number of factors impact OER collaboration. These factors are;


  1. OER saturation

  2. Licensing models

  3. Platform

  4. Localization

How these factors impact the growth of OER is best described within what I see as the OER roadmap. The roadmap has four phases;


  1. Build-up - saturation of the subject areas from both an access (bandwidth, connectivity and platform) and localization (culture, language, etc.) perspective so that re-use is all that is left

  2. Reuse - deepening the accuracy and diversifying the learning approaches and through a licensing approach (CC-BY-SA) that encourages reuse

  3. Assessment - a maturing model of open access assessment (OAA1)

  4. Accreditation - a globally recognized model of open access accreditation (OAA2)

I still see OER at the very beginning of the build-up phase. And given the solitary preparation methods many teachers already use, it is still a long way off to have saturation. I do believe the day will come. The other three are currently being worked on, but are dependent upon completion of the first to become mature.