Category Archives: sustainability

Agreeing with Stephen: Perspective Matters

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Stop the presses. I’m going to agree with Stephen here.

In a recent email to the (closed) oer-community mailing list, Stephen argued that perspective plays a significant role in this debate. He couldn’t be more correct. Just as there is not One True License, there is not One True Perspective on the free, nonfree, open, libre, etc., debate. A few examples:

- Some people look at OER issues from the perspective of the content, and some see them from the perspective of the people who use the content. Content-p drives people to favor SA licenses, to insure that derivatives of the content always remain free. People-p drives people to reject SA, so that derivers always remain free to license their derivatives as they choose. Which is the One True Perspective?

- In this thread we have already seen people who view NC from the perspective of the licensor and others who see NC from the perspective of the licensee. Licensor-p sees NC as enabling and facilitating commercialization. Licensee-p sees NC as forbidding commercialization. Which is the One True Perspective?

- As we’re also seeing on this thread, we can look at OER from the perspective of Access to content (without which permissions granted by licenses are meaningless) and from the perspective of the permissions granted by Licenses. I recently discussed these two perspectives in more detail. Which of these perspectives is most important? Which is the One True Perspective?

- As a final example, some people look at “open” from the perspective of a Bright Line test, while others take a more Accepting perspective. Bright Line-p enables people to make clear distinctions between what is and what is not open. Accepting-p enables people to recognize and value movements toward becoming more open, without passing judgments on people who “aren’t there yet.” Which of these is the One True Perspective?

In my 2008 OpenCourseWars story, I used a jihadi metaphor to describe licensing conversations. The jihadi metaphor is appropriate because LICENSING ARGUMENTS ARE ARGUMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE. When we argue that one particular way of licensing is better than others, we’re really arguing that one perspective is better or truer than others. In other words, whenever we make an argument that says “everyone should use a [free | NC | etc.] license,” we are making a _religious_ argument – an argument which dictates the perspective by which we think everyone else should be judged.

When we move licensing outside the realm of religion, we can recognize the truth of Stephen’s claim about the importance of perspective. We can also realize that, depending on the peculiarities of a specific context and the personal or organizational perspectives of a specific licensor, different licenses will be optimal under different circumstances.

It would be great if the world were simple enough that One License to Rule Them All could exist, but it doesn’t. I wish to Heaven we would stop arguing about it, and just respect individuals and organizations to understand their own contexts, goals, and perspectives sufficiently well to pick the license that best meets their needs.

Degreed Beta

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For several months now I’ve been working with a great group of people on Degreed. Today we launched the public beta at the HASTAC/MacArthur grantees meeting (the Mozilla open badges functionality in Degreed is supported by a DML grant).

So what does it do?

Degreed eliminates the distinction between formal and informal learning by jailbreaking your college transcript and interweaving Mozilla open badges and other informal credentials together with your college courses. We help you categorize these formal and informal credentials in order to create a credential remix that allows you to showcase everything you know – not just what you learned in school. Unlike your college transcript, your Degreed profile continues to grow as you continue to learn throughout life.

In a nutshell: You login with Facebook. Degreed pulls your Education information from Facebook and prompts you to add more detail and confirm it. Degreed then makes a best guess about the classes you would have taken and builds out a generic transcript for you. (In a future version you’ll be able to both (1) refine the generic transcript by hand or (2) upload a transcript so that trained squirrels can refine your profile for you and mark it “verified”.) You can then add other informal courses (e.g., from Udacity), Mozilla open badges, etc. to fill out your profile. Categorizing each formal or informal experience allows us to count these experiences toward points that help you level up (we use degree equivalents for levels) in a wide range of areas.

Did I mention it’s BETA? In the spirit of #EdStartup, this is very much a Minimum Viable Product – not the final, feature-complete version, but definitely ready to play with. So go mess around with the beta and see if you can break it. Use the Feedback tab on the left of every page to let us what you broke and how. Let us know what you think.

Highlights from Aspen Institute Education Congressional Senior Staffers Meeting

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Here are the things that stood out to me most during the three day meeting. Sorry for the brain dump format.

Moorseville, NC moved graduation rates 68% to 90% since the move to devices and all digital content
Two professional development release days PER MONTH for faculty to skill up on digital and using data
Small group differentiated instruction, almost no whole-class instruction
Superintendent visits every classroom in the district multiple times each year, primarily to say thank you to the teachers.
Funding model – $1 / day / student ($200/year) pays for devices and content. Average cost for online content was $35/student across all subjects.

We have to avoid the “Kabuki” version of education reform, a kind of innovation theater in which everything changes except adult behavior.

429M in 2011 in pure VC is triple the amount spent in 2002. About 128 education companies received about $1B of VC money in the last 5 years.

When devices have battery life lasting 4 hours, but school lasts 6 hours, power infrastructure in “first world” schools is suddenly insufficient.

Pearson can scale its content and services, but has no accountability for student learning outcomes. A charter has accountability for outcomes but can’t scale. We need organizations that can scale and share accountability for outcomes.

We have learning scientists, but where are the learning engineers? The people who leverage and apply what we know from the science of learning to help learning happen? Political skills are equally important for these folks. (Why isn’t this instructional designers?)

Scaling in education involves adapting, not adopting.

Genetically modeified food as a model for revise/remix. How can we produce “hybrids” that can succeed under local conditions? Super high yield corn may grow well in Iowa, but die completely in Africa. A lower yield hybrid that can at least live and produce in Africa is required.

“Research should be defined as doing something where half of the people think that’s impossible. And half of them think …eehhhh, maybe that will work. Whenever there’s a breakthrough, a true breakthrough, you can go back and find a time period when the consensus was, well that’s nonsense. So what that means is that a true creative researcher must have confidence in nonsense.” – Burt Rutan