Book: The Tower and The Cloud. Higher Education in the Era of Cloud Computer. Richard Katz, editor. Educause, 2008

This is one of the latest books on open education trends, which includes an essay by Yochai Benkler.

Here’s the summary from the publisher, followed by a selection of significant articles.

For access to the individual articles and the eBook version, go here.

1. Summary:

“The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual — or consumerization — is reducing the individual’s reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing — a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Comsumerization and industrialization beg the question “Is this the end of the middle?”; that is, what will be the role of “enterprise” IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education.”

2. Important articles on open education trends:

Essays of particular interest include:

1. The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities. by Yochai Benkler
2. E-Research Is a Fad: Scholarship 2.0, Cyberinfrastructure, and IT Governance. by Brad Wheeler
3. Cultural and Organizational Drivers of Open Educational Content. by Malcolm Read
4. Challenges and Opportunities of Open Source in Higher Education. by Ira H. Fuchs
5. Who Puts the Education into Open Educational Content? by Andy Lane
6. Social Networking in Higher Education. by Bryan Alexander
7. Scholarship: The Wave of the Future in the Digital Age. by Paul N. Courant
8. Where Is the New Learning? by Kristina Woolsey
9. Teaching and Learning Unleashed with Web 2.0 and Open Educational Resources by Christine Geith
10. University 2.0 by John Unsworth