OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
4.3.1 Peer Learning and Labs on the Wire
Toward creating a culture of activity-based, participatory learning (including significant peer learning) we might start by considering the role of the Faulkes Telescope Project[1] in Australia or the Bugscope project[2] in the United States. The Faulkes Telescope Project provides access to a global network of robotic, online telescopes for research-based science education. The Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for K–12 classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image “bugs” at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a Web browser. Students also have access to faculty expertise to answer questions as they arise in the observations.
Given today’s cyberinfrastructure, why haven’t we blown open the ability to give students anywhere access to serious scientific instruments—instruments to explore nature’s secrets as an adventure? Imagine the MIT iLabs Project[3] done large scale and complemented by access to capabilities like the MOSIS[4] integrated circuit fabrication server. This could provide open access to both building and evaluating complex circuits. Now consider the Fab Labs[5] project at MIT. MIT’s Fab Labs project aims to give ordinary people around the world the technology to design and make their own stuff. Is this the dawn of the age of personal fabrication? It is used by humanists, architects, and engineers to learn how to build almost anything and learn how to use sophisticated equipment to assist in building.
Along the same lines, particularly if more focused toward participatory learning, is the Fab@Home[6] Project. Here is an overview from the Web:
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