Heather Johnson is guest blogging at WhatIs.com this week. Heather is a freelance writer, as well as a monthly contributor for OEDb, a site that helps students select among accredited online schools. She invites comments and freelancing job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

There has been a lot of talk about open source hardware lately and its potential effects on research and education. ETech 2008 showcased many examples of open hardware and offered an insightful presentation [PDF] to those who are new to the emerging technology. Likewise, popular sites like Slashdot and bloggers like Scobleizer have been discussing the growing movement.

The increasing popularity of open source software has already had a tremendous influence on education and the world as a whole. Not only are many schools now making the switch to open source programs, leading universities like UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon are involved with developing large open source software projects.

However, we have yet to see open hardware really take off. Ryan Singel of Wired feels that 2008 could be the year and I second that opinion. Leading the pack seems to be open source robotics, which has been embraced by several major universities.

Just last month, Willow Garage’s Steve Cousins gave a keynote speech at ETech 2008 about open source personal robots, which has brought more attention to the subject. Willow Garage is a privately funded lab that experiments with various robotics platforms.

This open source robotics movement can be felt on many college campuses as well. Carnegie Mellon, which I previously stated is involved with open source software, is also building OS personal robots. The university has recently formed a joint project called the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE).

The IPRE is a joint project between Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College, with sponsorship provided by Microsoft Research. Its purpose is to help advance robotics research and computer science education. The IPRE is currently selling open source robot kits, which are geared toward educators and can be integrated with computer education curricula.

Instructions can be found RobotEducation.org if you are interested in building your own educational robot.

[Image credit: RobotEducation.org]

This Google Tech Talk addresses each of the new features in the upcoming standard for C++. You can read more about them in depth at the Wikipedia entry for the new standard, C++0x.

As reported by the AFP, the University of California at Berkeley has created a dedicated channel on YouTube for more than 300 hours of classes and events. Videos include peace and conflicts studies, bioengineering and “Physics for Future Presidents,” though I wonder how much that last is a dig at former or current POTUSes. Given that Berkeley s a famously liberal institution, you can draw your own conclusions. You can find the courses at http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley.

Tech fans may find gems like “SIMS 141 - Search, Google, and Life,” with Google’s Sergey Brin, to be of particular interest:

If that doesn’t meet your bar for online video goodness, you might try BoingBoing TV, a new IPTV feature hosted by cybergoddess Xeni Jardin and BoingBoing’s co-creator, Mark Frauenfelder.
The 3-5 minute segments will also feature cyberpunk author and digital copyright maven Cory Doctorow and gadgets editor Joel Johnson. The debut episodes featurethe usual mix of pop ephemera and geeky art, including a piece on Listography.com, an remix of an industrial movie from the 1960s and a robot covering Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.”

All Things Weird and Wonderful, here I come.

Ok, I admit it: calculus is now officially a decade in my past. Math, or “maths,” as the Brits put it, however, is very much in my present, considering the importance of algorithms to modern life. (For more on that, just review this thread on the growing public awareness of algorithms over on Slashdot.)

One mathematical concept that’s worth mastering is the monad. Monads, in the context of functional programming (as opposed to pure mathematics), are a useful way of expressing input/output (I/O) operations and changes in state without using language features that introduce side effects. Monads are useful in any situation where a programmer wants to carry out a purely functional computation while a related computation is performed externally. Monad also, by the way, was the codename for Window’s Powershell before it was launched, a nod to the use of monads in that highly functional scripting language.

Make sense?

If that explanation still doesn’t suffice to explain what a monad is, never fear: The Catsters have posted a series of videos on YouTube to help you master the concept!

Monads 1: An introduction to monads, including the definition and a look at the monoid monad.

Monads 2: Continuation of the monoid monad example and introduction of the category monad.

Monads 3: The definition of algebras for monads. The example of monoids as algebras for the monoid monad.

Monads 4: An appendix to Monads 3: more on monoids as algebras for the monoid monad.

Monads 5: Morphisms between algebras and the category of algebras. A first look at the question of monadicity.

If, after viewing, you’re still a bit curious about monads and programming, try Noel Winstanley’s “What the hell are Monads?” MenTaLguY also explains monads in the context of Ruby, escaping the need to work with Haskell.

Hat tip goes to the n-Category Cafe for the discovery!

Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to meet one of our readers in person, outside of comment sections, forums, email, IM or other virtual interactions.

It’s always a pleasure to get such direct feedback. When I asked what she liked (and didn’t like) about this blog, she mentioned that she appreciated past posts about free online education resources. (Just click on our learning tag to see them all to date.)

A simple search for other similar resources turns up many other hits, of course, notably for OER. OER stands for “Open Education Resources,” an effort to create a free, globally accessible commons for educational materials. In a spirit much like that of Professor Lessig’s Creative Commons, UNESCO’s 2002 initiative encourages educators to publish learning content and the tools to create that content online, free of intellectual property considerations. You can learn more at the Open Education Conference’s Web site, if you’re interested in the movement.

As Wendy Boswell details in Technophilia, her typically brilliant column on Lifehacker, such free resources easily available online — if you know where to look. Wendy ends with where I’d begin, however, by suggesting using Google to uncover different kinds of learning content.

As Wendy points out, simply by using the right keywords, you can unearth course syllabi (insert your own subject), lectures, tutorials, notes, podcasts and online books , all through the magic of the Google search field.

When you’re done Googling, the Feds may be able to provide some help: Check out free.ed.gov for an index of different subject areas. The National Education Association also has a page full of free course materials for teachers and students.

Still want more?

FreebiesList.com has a long list of free educational resources.

Finally, in the spirit of the OER, the OpenCourseWare Consortium provides, according to their Web site, “free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.”

Did we miss any of your favorite resources? Let us know in the comments!

What new thing did you learn today?

[Image credit: MasterNewMedia.org]

Jimmy Ruska has created an outstanding index of free online educational resources, which he’s called the Massive Resource List for All Autodidacts.

An autodidact, in case you’re wondering, is a self-directed learner. Wikipedia has an index of different different autodidacts in different countries.

Jimmy’s selections, which include courses, educational podcasts and much more, make it easier for all of the autodidacts out there to excel in self-directed learning.

Jimmy also has created a “Best of the Internet Today page, similar to popurls.com, and a blog that focuses on rating online video..

Yale University has announced that it is offering publicly-accessible digital videos of several courses on the Internet for free. While the courses can’t be counted towards a Yale degree, Yale did gain the distinction of being the first member of the Ivy League to focus on video lectures. Princeton and Harvard Law School have already made course materials available for free online, even offering virtual courses in Second Life. MIT, while not an Ivy, has taken the step of making all of its courses freely available to netizens.

Yale’s pilot project features seven courses, all beginning in the 2007 academic year. Examples are “Introduction to the Old Testament,” “Fundamentals of Physics” and “Introduction to Political Philosophy.” Transcripts, rendered in several languages, are available for download. This PDF describes the program in more detail.