What began as a short response to @Danny Kingsley has gradually blown out into something far larger.  So rather than leave this in the comments area of the original post I thought I might devote a new post to it. (Thanks for your thoughts on this, Danny.)
I suppose I should take a step back and add a bit of context to the perspective I’m coming from here, because the original post was a bit too broad brush in many ways.
My comments were directed largely at the notion of sharing and reuse of …

The emergence of social media tools, with user friendly interfaces and WYSIWYG editors, has drastically changed the nature of web publishing. Whereas many years ago, posting content to the web required advanced technical knowledge, new tools and services now enable the average individual to establish a presence online in which they can share or explore their thoughts, opinions, ideas, as well as share information, resources and files.
However, as with similar changes in the past, these advancements in technology have had a disruptive influence on certain aspects of society, with …

My last few posts (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three) have devoted considerable attention to outlining what I see as a viable  (or at least potential) integrated model for online learning and sharing of materials that incorporates a web of distributed, publicly-visible learning systems.
Certainly this model isn’t an original idea of mine.  It is well and truly established in the open web already, with many educators, courses, and even cohorts of students taking to the Internet to engage and participate in an open fashion.  My point in exploring this …

This post arises as a response to a comment by Lisa Lane, who asked for some elaboration on the concepts I’m discussing in terms of a distributed model of sharing.  This post seeks to flesh the idea out further.  Admittedly there are elements of it that are still half-baked and I’m still working through, but it will hopefully at least give an initial idea of where my head is at on the matter.
Re-purposing and re-organising
To me the purpose of re-organising existing content is important because once it’s released by the …

Via The Chronicle of Higher Education, I’ve just discovered that Google has just announced the launch of an initiative that permits distribution of Creative Commons licensed works via Google Books.
The announcement indicates that this option is available as an account setting to members of their Partner Program.
Creative Licensed works will be identifiable by the standard Creative Commons logo and links to the full license, and will include download links. Google continues:
“…if the rightsholder has chosen to allow people to modify their work, readers can even create a …