Is there a way of tying this to your idea of “teacher bandwidth”? Are these people bandwidth hogs?

Of, course, as pointed out by Jason, the metaphor has problems.

The angle, though, is right on. Using paper made from recycled paper was never a selling point until it became green. And education is in the same boat — using other people’s resources gets in the way of the natural egotism that people who like to give presentations have (including me in that). It’s perceived as substandard.

In terms of production, I think the mash-up metaphor starts to get more toward the point, because the whole idea is to make reuse cool — I like the idea of the educator as master DJ, seamlessly spinning track into track with appropriate overdubs, and wonder if that root metaphor provides anything with the socially responsible overtones you’re looking for…

So, if we really wanted to stretch the analogy, we might suggest that closed content, then, is more like fossil fuels. Producers (OPEC/Bb) spend money exploiting and accessing the resource, and then dole it out bit by bit to customers who need it. And just like in the case of fossil fuels, once infrastructures are set up to use closed content, it becomes very difficult for big organizations to switch, even as the benefits of “alternative edufuels” become increasingly clear.

This is one quick take, but I know there are other directions to take this idea as well. I’ll look forward to some other folks picking this idea up.