Wide open spaces

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Why Open Matters – Week One

I remember the day I chose English Literature as my major. It is memorable not because I was suddenly free of the the pressure of being “undeclared”. It was memorable because I felt a nagging guilt. Was this a legitimate use of formal education? How will it serve me? Luckily, I was clear about what I wanted. And, what I wanted was a book club.

Book club meeting, by Anda Logn

An English Lit degree seemed too good to be true. We get to sit around and talk about books?  We get to read and reflect together, in real time?

I continued on to a Masters degree because I couldn’t resist. The quality of the conversation kept getting better. Class size shrank from 20 to 8. Discussion continued in many pubs, over many weeks.

When class ended we went our separate ways: we had 4 months to write a thesis. We still went to the pub (this is Halifax), but we were too immersed in the worlds of one particular author or literary movement to share the way we did before.

That was when I figured that a PhD was not for me. More isolation. More time alone with my thoughts. More misery grinding away on a theory that needed to be tested by someone smarter than me.

This first week of #OpenEdMOOC has landed me here.

That class time was an open networked environment. Everything was iterative. We were able to share freely without a mitigating agent. We were releasing early and releasing often. We were grateful for the talent of our peers. The learning was rapid and expansive. Success in learning was success in this network.

Open matters because it allows us to replicate this experience in a digital space.  We can reflect and expand at a rate which matches our environment. But it has to happen in the open and it has to happen in a network.

Open is the enabler – that thing that brings us together at the pub every week.

Split Crow on a Saturday, by Cinderella Sew

 

 

What about copyleft?

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Reflections on Week 2: #OpenEdMOOC


R1: I was thinking about David Wiley's metaphor on copyright. Wiley Says: "If you walked out into the woods, cut down trees, built a log cabin with your own hands-- that would belong to you because you had created it. You would own it." Now, I wonder, how would be the case for "copyleft"?





R2: Interestingly, I have just heard about the case of "MickeyMouse" and how every 20 years, new copyright permissions are granted. So, as long as the content has a considerable economic value, can we forget about copyright?



Why Open Matters

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A global network of social media and open resources, including Liberal, Radical and Conservative educational “canons.” Remix by MCW

 

A retired American scientific glassblower, I started on my career journey at a California community college after I graduated from high school. On a whim I signed up for a glass class, the teacher was a ceramicist and designer who wanted to experiment with glass. We built the equipment, made the glass and learned together about how to play with this fascinating material. I soon left college to learn more about glass. It never occurred to me to go to Alfred University like my teacher had, I sought out working glassblowers and made myself useful. Eventually I ended up in Silicon Valley making high intensity lamps and LASERs. I have worked with researchers, engineers and artists and no one ever asked if I had a college degree.

In the History of the Open University Lord Perry of Walton, OU’s first Vice Chancellor is quoted on his motivation to take the job of creating the open University in 1969:

“It wasn’t that I had any deep-seated urge to mitigate the miseries of the depressed adult; it was that I was persuaded that the standard of teaching in conventional universities was pretty deplorable. It suddenly struck me that if you could use the media and devise course materials that would work for students all by themselves, then inevitably you were bound to affect – for good – the standard of teaching in conventional universities. I believed that to be so important that it overrode almost everything else.”

Returning to a California community college during the Great Recession, I found that little had changed regarding the “standard of teaching.” Mitigating the “miseries” of workers was not even on the agenda. Protecting the institution during a time of budget cuts along with the jobs of the faculty and staff were the highest priorities. Despite the fact adult learners make up nearly two thirds of California’s two million community college students, there are no programs to support these taxpayers needing to retrain during capitalism’s down cycles. Night and distance students fare even worse with financial aid offices, libraries, advisors and technical support staff all working bankers hours.

I managed to graduate even after falling into the “Community College Trap” and am now designing my online Individualized Studies Bachelor’s degree in the College of Individualized Studies at Metro State University. As a distance student, I’m finding the same structural problems at the University as the community colleges. Open matters to me because I’ve learned to use other institutions, social media and the world wide web to gather the resources I need to learn what I choose. I intend to create an Open Heutagogy anyone with an data connection can use to gather free and open resources to create their own learning program. I think as the world economy continues to limp along and higher education divides into training for the masses and private education for the children of the elites, self directed learning will help the working class and those left behind learn what they need to build a diverse, sustainable and cooperative local economies. While the elites will still run the Universities and reproduce the managerial class to run the global economic and military empires, openness will help the rest of us survive, and perhaps learn to flourish.

 

Cell phone wallpaper. If you created it, contact me.

Why Does Open Matter? because we are human

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George Siemens and David Wiley have joined up to do a MOOC on Open Education and I feel as though, with my interest in the subject, I would be remiss if I did not at least dip my toe in…

I always find myself intrigued by those big broad questions and the guys have not let me down by asking in week one “why does open matter”. 

I’ve watched the videos, done some readings, read some of the participant blogs and tweets. Along with some personal reflection here goes my take on things.

The question is a hard one for me because I’m not sure that there are simple definitions for either “open” or “education” and I’m not happy with my own definition for either. Both of these words give me pause and raise more questions than answers for me. However, I will try to not get too “in the weeds” with definitions in this post.

If I have to answer this question simply, this question of why open matters, I would say it matters because we are human. Because it is in the nature of most humans to connect… in some way. It is what we do. (Often to each other, but not always). And openness facilitates connectedness.

It’s a big messy web. And it is bigger than technology. It is bigger than the internet – which is just the latest tool for making connections in the open.

Because it is in our nature to connect, somewhere along the way a premium was put on the ways that we connect – which was mostly through means of expression. An expression of knowledge, let’s say a book, is placed out of reach for most and only given to a few who can afford it. This proves lucrative in terms of growing capital and in terms of growing a certain kind of knowledge but alas not in terms of growing that kind of knowledge that serves the human spirit and it only feeds that human need to connect for a very few.

Simply, open matters because we are human; humans need to connect and openness facilitates connectedness.

However,

Humans grow and thrive through connections but not all connections are equal.

Even if that book is put at a premium – one may not connect with it but they will connect (to something – someone), nonetheless.

Earlier today Siemens asked an intriguing question:

I do think that we will have gone wrong somewhere if we start thinking that open equals good.

Most of the platforms used to facilitate open connections and open education these days require a person to sign off on a terms of service that most never read and few could really understand. Often these platforms harvest the data that we generate through satisfying our need for connecting to feed our preferences and leanings back to us at a premium. I don’t find this “good”, yet I have a need to connect and so here I am.

While I think that open matters because humans have a need to connect fulfilling a need is not always good. We have a need to eat but if we eat junk food all the time that would not be “good” in terms of our health and wellbeing.

Some may say that junk food is not real food and others may say that junk food may be good in the moment as it might taste good. So perhaps getting in the weeds with definitions is not so bad afterall but if I would have tackled “what is open” or “what is education” this post would have been much different.

I’m looking forward to the next few weeks of the MOOC. I’ve just started a new job in De Pere WI as an Instructional Designer at St. Norbert College and I’ll be seeing if any of my new colleagues may be interested in these questions and others that I’m sure will be coming up in #OpenEdMOOC.

 

Open can be bad

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Open is considered a force for good in many forward-thinking educational communities. I was an enthusiast at one time, but I reluctantly gave up on openness for my own college classes in the summer of 2013, as evident here. The world has not improved since then. In addition to surveillance, we now have an appalling acceptance of unacceptable behavior and uncivil conduct, which in my country has now reached the highest levels of power.

That said, I continue to learn in the open myself, and share what I learn (for those who don’t know me, I teach History at a two-year public college). For many years I conducted the Program for Online Teaching’s open online programs for professors, and I now assist my college’s professional development program’s with blogging and sharing. I use open resources for my classes, usually created by me since there really does seem to be a cost to everything.

One of the first questions in the OpenEdMOOC is what might be bad about open, so I really couldn’t resist.

opencanbedangerous

Open leaves learners vulnerable, particularly those who are ignorant of the operations of  the web. The worldwide web used to be an open place, a Wild West. Commercial entities (and those which were free but became commercial) made the web easier to use, part of the infrastructure of everyday life. Users willingly not only sign Terms of Service to be able to do tasks which have become basic, but post their children’s school habits and location, sign up for loyalty programs that track all their purchases, and have their information shared for them by places like Equifax.

Education is not only far from immune to such practices, but can actively encourage them.  So my angle is about thinking things through. My position at the moment is that there is value in closed education, if only for the purpose of separating certain kinds of learning from the distractions of daily life — the opposite of “applied” education, if you like. I think I’ve expressed this view best in my blog post from July. I’ll be looking to see how those concerns are affected by what I see in this course.

Negatives of open

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Vulnerability.

Making mistakes in public.

Asking “dumb” questions.

Asking provocative questions.

In ds106, there is nothing that I can do that some of the students can’t do better. It may not be good to admit to that, because they probably want to have confidence in me. Or maybe there is an advantage to being a low bar, in that it’s less likely to intimidate anyone creatively. I don’t know. But within the framework of the course, I try to challenge people to push themselves, and to share what they’re doing and how they’re doing it and what they’re learning from it, so that we can all learn from each other. Open has risks, but there are also rewards.

But as Martin Weller pointed out, some of us are in better positions to take risks. I can afford to embarrass myself here in OpenEdMOOC, or in ds106, because I’ll still have my day job. I’ll still be in an affluent and relatively safe society, and one that looks favorably upon people who look like me.  If I learn from my mistakes in public, I’ll probably be okay. I may even be rewarded for taking a risk and showing my growth. I don’t think we give everyone that same benefit. Does open exacerbate inequality? Perhaps. I don’t know if there is any way around that though.

Open matters cos’

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Reflections on Week 1: #OpenEdMOOC

Open matters cos'...

Why educators advocate and disseminate the idea of openness? Cos, learning is joy and love that happens in an open ecology. To sustain learning ecology, we should provide open resources that can be harnessed by learners who demand and pursuit knowledge.

To me, opennesss is beyond copyright issues. Not only OER but those who own the knowledge should be open. Besides, knowledge is a common good of the humankind; and as humans, we shouldn't confine the knowledge in a closed box, rather we should welcome who sincerely demands it.

As a final word, do not forget that to love and to be loved requires being open. Even if you don't believe in the opportunities that come with open practices, be open for the sake of the love!!!

How I get started with an open content

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When I look back, I suppose that it was over 10 years ago when I started blogging about interesting teaching and online pedagogy topics. I wanted to share my knowledge with other teachers and enrich it through community.

Over these years I have tried to increase the scope of openness by sharing my materials, using open teaching environments etc.  Few years ago I had (together with my colleague) an opportunity to design a cMOOC for teachers. It was an experience and we dis some research as well. Here you can find the list of articles 

Latest open education innovation have been totally open teacher education guidance and scaffolding blog for our student teachers. All resources and all study module processes are open, only quick messaging is in the Slack.

At the moment I m doing my PhD about dialogical collaborative knowledge construction in open digital learning environments in the context of teacher education.

So how open I am as a teacher?

  • I share my materials and presentations with CC licence
  • I use OA publications when publishing my research articles  (if it is possible)
  • I use open digital teaching environments
  • I encourage student teacher use ePortfolios through their studies (I working and II show case)
  • I use digital sources in my teaching as much its possible
  • I spread the ideology of the licencing materials 

Getting Organized #OpenEdMOOC

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Hypothes.is     |    edx OpenEdMOOC    |     Google Slides & stuff    |    Notes

  • Decide: what purpose do I want this blog to serve?
    • chronicle my progress through the OpenEdMOOC
    • create powerpoints, lesson plans, and workshop activities as I go.
    • organize and easily reference literature and other content to support the workshop materials I create.
  • Create a hypothes.is account
  • Create a “private group” on hypothes.is
    (so my references are easy for me to find and map to my workshop materials)
  • Decide what tags I want to use, such as #why #publishers #pedagogy #cost

Starting #OpenEdMOOC

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The time is here! Introduction to Open Education MOOC has begun. So, here we go. This is my first post and it’s soon time for me to post content from the first week of class. ?

Check out the class on edx or on the open access site