Media and Learning 2013

GCFLearnFree.org provides quality, innovative online learning opportunities to anyone who wants to improve their technology, literacy and math skills. Users can choose among over 1,000 free lessons including include video and interactive contents.

Wikiversity is a learning community which aims to further the discovery and distribution of knowledge by helping people to learn and to share learning resources. Users can use Wikiversity to find information, ask questions, or learn more about a subject, to explore knowledge through advanced study and research and also to share their knowledge about a subject with others by building learning materials.
Wikiversity is available in 15 different languages, with a different number of learning resources for every language, varying from a few hundreds to over 20k.
The library of learning materials is growing and contains materials of all types, including a wide variety of multimedia course materials. They are designed, not just for self-study, but also as material which can be used in your classroom.
Everyone can create and revise teaching materials. Anyone can participate in the learning activities. Everyone can take a course. Everyone can teach a course. There are no entrance requirements and no fees. All content in Wikiversity is written collaboratively, using wiki software, and everyone is welcome to take part through using, adding and discussing content.

The resources listed in this article, appeared at the beginning of 2013 on the website of OpenCulture, are found in a variety of formats: video lessons, apps, books, websites, etc.
They cover a wide range of topics, from language learning to narrative, from Mathematics and Sciences to Art and Visual Culture, from Geography and History to Music and Philosophy.
Every resource appears in the list categorised by topic and/or format and with a few-words description giving an idea of its characteristics and peculiarities.

WatchKnowLearn lists free educational videos and provide descriptions and other information about them, as well as the possibility to comment and rate them. The collection presently contains over 35,000 videos divided in over 4,000 categories covering all major educational topics from elementary to secondary schools. The videos are available without any registration or fee to teachers in the classroom, and to students and parents at home.
A search tool is also provided to help find the desired material browsing by subject and age level. Video titles, descriptions, age-level information, and ratings are all edited for usefulness. Virtual classrooms are also being created.
The site invites broad participation of teachers, instructors and educators in order to organize all high-quality educational videos currently available on the Internet in a new kind of wiki guided by teachers.

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WatchKnowLearn enumera videos educativos gratuitos y proporciona descripciones y otra información sobre ellos, así como la posibilidad de comentar y votarlos. La colección contiene actualmente más de 35.000 vídeos, divididos en más de 4.000 categorías que abarcan todos los temas principales de la educación primaria a la secundaria. Los videos están disponibles sin ningún tipo de inscripción o cuota a los maestros en el aula, y para los estudiantes y sus padres.
Se proporciona también una herramienta de búsqueda para ayudarle a encontrar el material deseado navegar por materia y nivel de edad. Vídeo títulos, descripciones, información de nivel de edad, y las votaciones están todos editados en base a su utilidad. Aulas virtuales también están siendo creadas.
El sitio invita a una amplia participación de los docentes, instructores y educadores con el fin de organizar todos los vídeos educativos de alta calidad disponibles en el Internet en un nuevo tipo de wiki guiado por los profesores.

InTech is an Open Access publisher of academic books and journals in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM). It provides free online access to high quality research and help leading academics make their work visible and accessible to diverse new audiences around the world.
Currently InTech gives free access to 1827 books and 12 journals, collaborating with more than 70,000 authors. They are researchers and scholars from the best ranked universities in the world, including globally-renowned experts.
Initially, most of the publications were in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Manufacturing, Operations Research, Environmental Engineering, Nanotechnology, Computer Science, Renewable Energy and Electrical Engineering. Since 2010 the publishing program has been expanded to General and Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Materials Sciences and in particular Medicine, Biology and Biotechnology.
InTech is based on the principle of Open Access. It is a publishing model that does not charge readers for accessing scientific publications online. As a consequence, everything published as or in an open access resource is immediately available online for free. All use is fair use so long as the original authors and sources are credited. An Open Access article is more likely to be used and cited than one behind subscription barriers. Submitted works are published by InTech under the Open Access publishing model and Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (the author retains the copyright to his/her work and that can use it in any manner.)
All published resources on the website are accessible without registration. It is needed to submit contributions to the website.

The Concord Consortium Collection consists of hundreds of interactive digital resources. They span across subjects in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and contain materials appropriate for students ranging from elementary grades through higher education. These resources are all highly interactive, involving models, simulations, or the use of probes and sensors to collect and analyse real-time data in the classroom. They have been developed with the highest care for scientific accuracy and research-based pedagogy. All are open source and distributed free of charge.
The Concord Consortium a not for profit educational research and development organization whose work has the objective to stimulate large-scale, technology-based improvements in teaching and learning. Indeed, in other sections of the same website the current projects, research and publications are presented.

Mangahigh.com is one of the first games-based-learning sites, where students learn Mathematics via purpose-built casual games that balance fun and learning. It was founded by an experienced team of mathematicians and game specialists.
The games on this platform are adaptive (they dynamically adapt in difficulty to the ability of the student) and automatic (they have a meta-objective that the players strive to achieve by repeating a simple step (game mechanic) over and over again). They are designed to develop students' ability and curiosity to observe, hypothesize, test, evaluate, conclude and refine ideas. Finally, they provide powerful contexts often bringing out the 'real-world' application of the topic at hand, so increasing the students' interest in the content.
Games are structured with objectives: a bronze medal demonstrates a basic understanding of the key teaching objectives of the challenge. This includes a competence with typical/standard applications of the topic. A Silver and Gold medal demonstrate a secure understanding of the teaching objective and a competence with non typical/extension applications of the topic.
The educational content within Mangahigh is based on the national (UK) curriculum and is delivered through its proprietary educational games.
The site is targeted towards 7-16 year olds but is open for anyone to play. All available games are free to play and enable kids to to develop mathematical knowledge and skills in the context of total involvement. The games are grouped in numbers, algebra and shape and there is a section designed for younger children. There is also a quiz dedicated to the same topics mentioned above, with structured exercises.
Mangahigh also promote school-to-school bilateral competitions. The service is called Fai-To (read more about it on the website).

The Wolfram Education Portal is a project that provides teachers and students with the opportunity to use dynamic interactive course material developed to enhance the teaching and learning experience. The portal focuses on Maths teaching.
The sign-up is free and allows access to all the resources and courses.
Each course include a dynamic textbook. The chapters and contents within each textbook are enhanced with interactive computable document format (CDF) objects and widgets (CDF is a format containing graphs, charts, plots, objects, etc. that allows real time manipulation for a deeper understanding of the concepts being presented). It is possible to navigate each course through the chapter view which displays all the concepts included in that chapter or through the library view, which allows users to search through the entire collection of lesson plans: chapters, demonstrations and widgets.
The portal also includes additional resources for teachers and students that can access them by visiting the resources page and identifying themselves as a teacher or student. Resources include videos, educational product information, links to CDF and demonstrations as well as direct links toward education communities, newsletter signups and more.

HippoCampus was designed as part of Open Education Resources (OER), a worldwide effort to improve access to quality education for everyone. HippoCampus content has been developed by some of the finest colleges and universities in the world and contributed to the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), another MITE project. NROC makes editorial and engineering investment in the content to prepare it for distribution by HippoCampus.

Lots of resources, presentations and videos, can be browsed by topic: Arithmetic, Algebra & Geometry, Calculus & Advanced Math, Statistics & Probability, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Economics, History & Government, Psychology, Religion.

BrainNook is an online platform containing over a hundred educational games based on important concepts in the critical foundational subjects of Math and English Grammar, mostly appropriate for children 6 to 11 years old but suitable for any age.
Elementary school children can play these games while exploring colorful virtual worlds, safely competing and interacting with other children, and solving puzzles. On the website there are also sections specifically for parents and teachers, who can use it as a tool to keep their students learning even outside the classroom.