1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,976 2 00:00:01,976 --> 00:00:04,650 STEPHEN DOWNES: Hi, George and Dave. 3 00:00:04,650 --> 00:00:06,600 It's week four of your course. 4 00:00:06,600 --> 00:00:07,710 I'm still here. 5 00:00:07,710 --> 00:00:10,800 How about that? 6 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:14,430 I'm looking forward to more discussions with you. 7 00:00:14,430 --> 00:00:20,850 This time, we're talking about creating, finding, and using OERs. 8 00:00:20,850 --> 00:00:25,380 OER, of course, stands for open educational resources. 9 00:00:25,380 --> 00:00:29,010 It's interesting there's a bit of a shift in the topic, 10 00:00:29,010 --> 00:00:34,260 right, between this week and the previous weeks, at least in the titles. 11 00:00:34,260 --> 00:00:39,040 We were talking about open content and the public domain 12 00:00:39,040 --> 00:00:40,770 and the commons and things like that. 13 00:00:40,770 --> 00:00:44,220 Now we're talking about open educational resources, 14 00:00:44,220 --> 00:00:46,530 which is a different thing entirely. 15 00:00:46,530 --> 00:00:50,430 The difference, of course, is in the word educational. 16 00:00:50,430 --> 00:00:55,380 And in the use of the word educational, and use of the term OER 17 00:00:55,380 --> 00:01:00,060 specifically, it strikes me that you're thinking 18 00:01:00,060 --> 00:01:08,700 of the audience of this as educators, teachers, people who create 19 00:01:08,700 --> 00:01:11,140 education and offer it to other people. 20 00:01:11,140 --> 00:01:15,705 So you're talking about teachers creating OERs, teachers finding 21 00:01:15,705 --> 00:01:21,530 OERs, teachers using OERs, or at very least this context 22 00:01:21,530 --> 00:01:24,160 of use in the classroom. 23 00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:27,360 Now, you might have noticed the backgrounds of my videos. 24 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:30,390 I'm using some public domain stuff from NASA. 25 00:01:30,390 --> 00:01:31,282 Thank you, NASA. 26 00:01:31,282 --> 00:01:34,590 27 00:01:34,590 --> 00:01:37,170 And I'm not teaching or anything like that. 28 00:01:37,170 --> 00:01:42,480 I'm just a guy recording some videos with some cool NASA backgrounds. 29 00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:49,330 And the reason why I'm doing that is because I can. 30 00:01:49,330 --> 00:01:53,190 And it's not that I'm making an educational resource 31 00:01:53,190 --> 00:01:56,740 or anything like that. 32 00:01:56,740 --> 00:02:00,150 I'm just creating a resource. 33 00:02:00,150 --> 00:02:03,840 And the needs of my resource that I'm creating 34 00:02:03,840 --> 00:02:08,370 are created by the context, the purpose in the moment of what I'm trying to do. 35 00:02:08,370 --> 00:02:10,250 What I'm trying to do right now is engage 36 00:02:10,250 --> 00:02:13,050 you guys in our discussion on open resources 37 00:02:13,050 --> 00:02:14,760 in the context of your course. 38 00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:18,390 So yeah, there's is a bit of an educational flavor there. 39 00:02:18,390 --> 00:02:22,700 But I could be doing the very same thing tomorrow 40 00:02:22,700 --> 00:02:29,980 with Jim Groom on alternative punk culture in the 1990s. 41 00:02:29,980 --> 00:02:32,250 It could happen. 42 00:02:32,250 --> 00:02:37,440 Or maybe about how to contribute to grunge bands 43 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:41,610 with build-it-yourself drum machines. 44 00:02:41,610 --> 00:02:42,630 Could happen. 45 00:02:42,630 --> 00:02:46,470 In other words, nothing to do with education. 46 00:02:46,470 --> 00:02:49,560 And I think it's these uses that have nothing 47 00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:54,090 to do with education that are the most powerfully educational uses 48 00:02:54,090 --> 00:02:59,670 of open resources and OERs generally. 49 00:02:59,670 --> 00:03:02,230 When we talked about connectivism-- 50 00:03:02,230 --> 00:03:04,740 George, you'll remember this-- 51 00:03:04,740 --> 00:03:07,010 we talked about the model-- 52 00:03:07,010 --> 00:03:09,390 or at least I did, to a certain degree-- 53 00:03:09,390 --> 00:03:15,270 of aggregation, remix, repurpose, and feed forward. 54 00:03:15,270 --> 00:03:20,920 And it wasn't a model of creating, using, and discovering OERs. 55 00:03:20,920 --> 00:03:24,550 It was a model of learning itself. 56 00:03:24,550 --> 00:03:30,660 And what we wanted, or certainly what I wanted, was for the participants 57 00:03:30,660 --> 00:03:38,040 in the course to be aggregating, finding stuff, to be remixing and repurposing, 58 00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:43,560 putting things together and then adapting them to their own context, 59 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:46,840 localizing them, putting them in their own language. 60 00:03:46,840 --> 00:03:50,400 And then, of course, importantly, sharing them, putting out there 61 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:52,230 into the community. 62 00:03:52,230 --> 00:03:54,810 In the earlier one of these videos, I talked 63 00:03:54,810 --> 00:03:58,800 about the importance of open content and openness 64 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:01,890 generally as being based in communication. 65 00:04:01,890 --> 00:04:06,690 That should still be the underlying purpose, the underlying value 66 00:04:06,690 --> 00:04:11,760 and importance of what we're today calling open educational resources. 67 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:15,840 Don't think of these things as educational content 68 00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:20,279 with objectives, some theory, some practice, and a little quiz 69 00:04:20,279 --> 00:04:23,280 with an overtly educational mission. 70 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:27,210 Think of these as words in a conversation 71 00:04:27,210 --> 00:04:30,690 you are having with students, or even more importantly, 72 00:04:30,690 --> 00:04:35,430 students are having with each other and with practitioners in the domain 73 00:04:35,430 --> 00:04:38,040 that they're trying to learn. 74 00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:40,050 These contexts can be anything. 75 00:04:40,050 --> 00:04:44,980 These contexts don't have to have a quote unquote educational purpose. 76 00:04:44,980 --> 00:04:49,470 They don't have to conform to particular educational standards. 77 00:04:49,470 --> 00:04:52,470 They just need to be open, and they just need 78 00:04:52,470 --> 00:04:55,830 to allow people to be able to communicate with each other. 79 00:04:55,830 --> 00:04:59,420 And that's what I see as OERs in this context. 80 00:04:59,420 --> 00:05:00,530 That's my five. 81 00:05:00,530 --> 00:05:02,950 Talk to you next week, guys.