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MIT OpenCourseWare Update: March 2006

A Monthly E-mail Newsletter for Users

and Friends of MIT OpenCourseWare

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The March 2006 MIT OpenCourseWare Update Contains:

1. New Courses Now Available

2. Your Gift Sustains OpenCourseWare Long-Term

3. "Visualizing Cultures" Course Launches "Ground Zero 1945"

4. ParisTech OCW

5. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW

6. Tufts University OCW

7. Utah State University OCW

8. China Quality OCW

9. Japan OCW Alliance

10. FETP OCW in Vietnam

1. New Courses Now Available

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MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is pleased to announce the publication of eight new courses as part of our Spring 2006 course publication cycle. We now offer open access to the educational materials from 1280 courses total, including the following new courses:

When looking at the complete MIT OCW Course List, look for the red NEW to indicate newly published materials. MIT OCW will publish 150 new, and 75 more updated courses, by the end of April 2006.

2. Your Gift Sustains OpenCourseWare Long-Term

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In offering free and open access to MIT courses, the MIT faculty are giving their educational materials to the world. But maintaining these courses, and evolving MIT OCW to meet the needs of our diverse user audience, has its costs. Thus, we depend on the generosity of users to sustain the MIT OCW project long term. We now offer a quick link to the "Donating to MIT OCW" section on every page on the MIT OCW Web site. Look for the following button at the top of every page: Giving to MIT Web site is a safe and secure way to financially support MIT OCW:

You can also mail your gift in the form of a personal check to MIT OCW. Make your check payable to "MIT" and enclose a note indicating that your contribution is for the MIT OpenCourseWare Fund #4021100. Send your donation to: Recording Secretary, MIT Office of the Treasurer, 238 Main Street, Suite 200, Cambridge, MA 02142.

MIT OCW will always be a free and open digital publication, however, your $50, $100, or $500 donation will enable us to continue to offer a high-quality publication of MIT's course materials.

3. "Visualizing Cultures" Course Launches "Ground Zero 1945"

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A quarter century after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the survivors of the bomb began to draw scenes from 1945 that still haunted them, and there is nothing like these drawings -- the "hibakusha" drawings -- to convey what happened on the ground that day.

In collaboration with the Hiroshima Peace Memoriam Museum, which provided the images, MIT's Visualizing Cultures Project -- which has a companion Web site on the MIT OCW Web site, Course 21F.027J -- Visualizing Cultures, Spring 2003 -- will officially launch "Ground Zero 1945," on March 29, 2006. This site will contain a core exhibit by MIT's Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, John W. Dower, containing more than 30 of the hibakusha drawings of the survivors, and an extensive, bilingual database, searchable through an application developed especially for Visualizing Cultures.

Using new technologies, Visualizing Cultures weds images and commentary to illuminate social and cultural history in innovative ways. The current units address topics relating to Japan in the modern world; future units will deal with other countries and different cultures.

4. ParisTech OCW

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ParisTech is a collective entity that includes 11 of the most prestigious engineering schools in France. Each of its member institutions is known as the best in France in its particular field. The research and teaching at the 11 institutions is complementary and cover virtually all sectors of the various engineering sciences. We encouraged users to visit the ParisTech OpenCourseWare project at http://paristech.polytechnique.fr/catalogue/?langue=EN

5. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW

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The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) in Baltimore, MD, is world-renowned as a leading international authority on public health. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's OpenCourseWare project provides access to 20 of the school's most popular courses.

6. Tufts University OCW

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Tufts University, with campuses in Boston, Medford, Somerville and Grafton, MA, has a global reputation for academic and research excellence, and innovation. The Tufts OpenCourseWare project demonstrate Tufts' strength in the life sciences, as well a multi-disciplinary approach, an international perspective, and an underlying ethic of service to the university's local, national, and international communities.

7. Utah State University OCW

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Utah State University (USU) is one of the nation's premier land grant and space-grant universities. USU OpenCourseWare supports USU's institutional mission to serve the public through learning, discovery, and engagement, and is available at http://ocw.usu.edu.

In addition, for those institutions interested in implementing their own "OpenCourseWare" project, Utah State University's Center for Open Sustainable Learning has developed eduCommons, an OpenCourseWare Management System designed specifically to support OpenCourseWare projects such as MIT OCW and USU OCW. For more information on eduCommons, go to http://cosl.usu.edu/projects/educommons/

8. China Quality OCW (CNQOCW)

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China Open Resources for Education (CORE), MIT OCW's Chinese language translation partner, now offers links to more than 450 China Quality OpenCourseWare (CNQOCW) courses for use and sharing in China and globally. In addition, CORE has translated 110 MIT OCW courses into Simplified Chinese, which are available at http://www.core.org.cn/OCW_CN/Global/all-courses.htm

9. Japan OCW Alliance

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The leading nine universities in Japan -- Hokkaido University, Keio University, Kyoto University, Kyushu University, Nagoya University, Osaka University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo, and Waseda University -- have formed the Japan OCW Alliance. These six universities now offer open access to more than 100 courses, in both English and Japanese.

10. FETP OCW in Vietnam

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Inspired by the MIT OCW initiative, the Fulbright School Economics Teaching Program (FETP) in Vietnam launched FETP OpenCourseWare in 2003, the first "opencourseware" project to launch after MIT OCW opened in September 2002. The Fulbright School participates with other academic institutions in Vietnam to promote the use of innovative long-distance learning activities.