We know it’s not Summer everywhere but it is in Europe and we’d like to share the vibe! I’m off on holiday quite a bit over the next couple of weeks and so are a lot of my colleagues so expect a quieter than usual Open Education Working Group. I thought I’d leave you with a top 10 reading list (in no particular order!) for the beach – or wherever you choose!!

Image from Opensource.com summer reading list, available on Flickr

1. Pearson Learning has released a short report on Open Badges, focusing on how such badges are challenging the status quo of formal qualifications and how higher education institutions are responding.
2. I love this post on Seven reasons to be optimistic about Africa. ‘Better data for better education’ is one of the signs of hope!
3. The OKCast is a weekly open source blog and podcast with the goal to explore, connect, use and inspire open knowledge projects around the world. It’s great and has lots of fab interviews from OKFestival – like one with Kristina Alexanderson of Creative Commons talking about our Open Education Smörgåsbord session.
4. It’s not out yet but I’m sure Martin Weller’s Battle for Open book will be essential reading. In the meantime you can read this taster The Battle for Open – a perspective
5. Highlighted as a classic novel for open education enthusiasts – the Pedagogy of the oppressed is perfect for a Summer read!
6. There are so many great blog posts on the recent OKFestival – take your pick and get reading, you can search the #OKFest14 hashtag or start with the OKFestival’s storifys.
7. Athabasca University recently published an open access book on Online Distance Education:
Towards a Research Agenda, it is available free as an ebook.
8. If you haven’t spotted it already Stanford are offering a course on OpenKnowledge: Changing the global course of learning. Have an explore and maybe sign up?
9. Why not use the summer to catch up on all our Open Education around the World series – so much good stuff!
10. We’re about to get started on editing the Open Education Handbook ready to deliver a version for the LinkedUp Project. What’s missing? How can we shape what’s in there? Take a look!

And finally if you do have any spare time don’t forget that the LinkedUp Vici Challenge is running until 5th September. They’d like you to build advanced prototypes and tools that exploit linked and/or open data for addressing real educational needs.

Happy reading!!