Comments on: Shichinin Reuse, or the Art of the Remake

By: localization is really instructionally sound? « OERs, OCW, Open Content and Other Jargony O Words

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 03:58:33 +0000

[...] so, what does this mean? i’m not really sure what it means. it means that i’m now looking at another piece of this whole open content world. it means that i’m now understanding why we need to understand this whole reuse issue. [...]

By: iterating toward openness » Thoughts from the Hewlett Open Ed Grantees Meeting

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:29:37 +0000

[...] es (OERs) useful to real people, one individual at a time? It occurs to me, as I’ve said before, that as a field we don’t have expertise in the localization process. And by localizat [...]

By: Preston Parker

Preston Parker — Thu, 12 May 2005 00:32:16 +0000

And, in much the same way, remaking The Magnificent Seven into A Bug’s Life made it slightly more accessible to an audience who weren’t spoken to by The Magnificent Seven….when we consider past accomplishments the “raw material” from which to work, we can continually rebuild, reuse, remake, and remix….without needing to start over each time. Hollywood’s been doing it for years, so why shouldn’t we?

By: Judy Breck

Judy Breck — Tue, 10 May 2005 18:26:02 +0000

At the Open Content meeting of the Hewlett Foundation last fall, John Seely Brown cautioned us to think in terms of minimalization – I believe he meant as distinct from modularizing. I think that in this context, a worthy goal in dealing with a learning object is to design it as a minimal node for any number of possible networks. Thus its potential is reuse as it is connected into different node patterns (of other minimal objects). The network whole gives rise to a different meaning for different patterns. This is a kind of reuse that empowers the object to contribute to a variety of whole meanings (ideas) that are more than the sum of their parts.
If there is any sense to what I am saying, the goal would be to make the original object as minimal as possible and not expect it to be changed in reuse. The instructional design focus would be not on changing the object internally but in creating different networks where as a node the object contributes to a greater meaning than it does on its own.

By: Don Parris

Don Parris — Sat, 07 May 2005 00:32:45 +0000

Sorry to “barge in”, but I found this link from opencontent.org. I am exploring various licenses of the “free culture” and was interested in learning more about the Open Content & Publishing Licenses. They are not linked to from the home page – are they still in use? That said, the OCW appears to be of great interest as well. It certainly would make a good resource for my exploratory paper. Feel free to contact me via e-mail.

By: Steve Carson

Steve Carson — Fri, 06 May 2005 15:43:43 +0000

I think Corrie’s point and David’s illustrate very much the same thing. It’s far easier (and more effective) for instructors to reuse or remake course materials than it is for them to make “reusable” materials. The logic of “reusable” learning materials is a supply-side model, with instructors and technolgist trying to predict what materials other instructors will want to use, and then investing time and effort in making the materials more re-usable. I was in this camp myself a few years back when developing distance learning courses.

If OCW had been concerned with making the materials “reusable” rather than making them available for reuse, the project would have far less material availabe than it currently does. Especially when the materials are going out to a world-wide audience, it would be nearly impossible (and a little presumptious) to predict which materials would be most useful to others, and try to make them somehow culturally, academicly, and technically more “reusable.” The demand-side model, which I think Corrie is illustrating, suggests just getting the materials out there, and allowing educators and instructional designers to take the “raw stuff” and remake/remix it for their own local needs.

By: Corrie Bergeron

Corrie Bergeron — Thu, 05 May 2005 14:47:33 +0000

David, IDs have been re-using content for a long, long, time.

Certainly the concept of clip-media is not new. Rappers do similar things with music by sampling snippets of existing songs and remixing them.

Back when I was in grad school we’d take a videodisk and write a new program to use the images on the disk. We called it “repurposing.” One of the basic steps in the development process is to look to see if there is existing content that can be repurposed before creating new content.

Many of our online instructors use “publisher cartridges” created for Blackboard. Some of them allow the faculty member to alter the content at will; others merely provide links to the publisher’s website.

I don’t understand what the problem is.

Regards,

Corrie