Monthly Archive for November, 2007

The Cape Town Declaration Comes Online!

Published
by
david
on November 29, 2007
in open content
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The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, available online at http://capetowndeclaration.org/, is an inspiring document about the core principles of open education that extends invitations to would be participants in the movement and makes recommendations important for the future of open educational resources and the open education movement generally (e.g., “taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources.”)

This document is the result of one of the best facilitated and most fun meetings I’ve ever had the privilege of attending, and is deserving of your immediate attention and eventual signature. I say “eventual” because the Declaration is available now in a draft form and we are asking the broader community to give us feedback. I hope you find time to review the document soon!

Open Ed Spottings Week 11

Published
by
david
on November 21, 2007
in open content
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I probably didn’t get everyone following the course, but thanks to the holiday here in the States I was able to read much more than usual. Oh how I love this class!

Continue reading ‘Open Ed Spottings Week 11′

Re-writing for Proseminar

Published
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david
on November 15, 2007
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It’s time to share another round of student writing! I asked students in the Proseminar course at USU (in which all faculty take three week turns introducing students to their research interests) to put together a paper about issues related to open education. The twist (there always is one) is that they were to write as little of the paper as possible. You see, wholesale plagiarism is discouraged, but weaving together a coherent piece from ten or fifteen different extant sources is tough and an excellent chance to get some first hand experience with reuse. =) Here are links and some summaries to these re-writing exercises, in which students assembled papers from pre-existing pieces:

Rob leads off with “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to sue, what is its legal standing?” In this piece Rob uses the words of others to briefly discuss some of the existing case law around open content, conceptual problems with who is getting sued in the Virgin Mobile case, and the (in)compatibility of licenses. (Rob also engages in a little self-plagiarism from his writings for my intro to open ed course - bonus points!)

Kristy follows with “Why don’t State Governments Encourage and Adopt Open-Source Textbooks for their School?” In this piece Kristy ventriloquizes a number of people to explore what is and isn’t happening with open source textbooks, including one fascinating proposal I hadn’t seen before.

Joel asks “Who Cares About Education, Anyway?” and explores the question of who is responsible for providing the necessary resources and functions related to the “right to education.” If I have a right to it, that must mean someone is responsible for providing it, right? He also briefly discusses the role of OERs in provisioning.

YuChun reflects on the role of open education in life-long learning, exploring ideas of self-directed learning, the new role of teachers, and the way the OER movement focuses on independent learners rather than on learners who are dependent on teachers. And I thought all the writing was going to have a question for a title…

Finally, Jon (who doesn’t provide a title at all!) channels Lessig and others to discuss how the overly complicated state of copyright law stifles creativity and even interferes with religious practices. He uses others’ words to describe the (perhaps hard to see?) impact of copyright on privacy, provides monopolies with an obligatory thrashing, and provides some Eldred v Ashcroft coverage.

Each of the pieces was fun to read. This kind of re-writing seems to be the academic equivalent of a mix tape… pulling together the greatest hits / greatest quotes from a certain genre or area to produce the desired effect. As I’ve said before, DJs are a metaphor for life…

10 Years of Open Content

Published
by
david
on November 12, 2007
in open content
. 2 Comments

The 10th anniversary of open content is quickly approaching! The phrase “open content” was born in the late spring of 1998, and the first open content license was unleashed on the world in July of 1998 (yes, I know this first license was pretty awful - but hey, it was my first attempt!).

In recognition and celebration of all those who caught the open content vision, including Creative Commons, MIT OCW, Wikipedia, Magnatune, and others, OpenContent.org is declaring 2008 “The Year of Open Content!” What should we do to celebrate? Have any ideas? We should start planning now to maximize both the partying and the potential media impact we can have in sharing the idea of open content! Regardless of whether you call your open content “free knowledge” or “opencourseware” or “open educational resources” or “free culture” or some other name, I hope that for one year we can come together to celebrate the incredible progress we’ve seen this last decade.

Please put your ideas for celebrations, events, and other things in the comments below. We’ll bundle them up and work together as a community to make great things happen!!

Making the COSL Microlibrary Easier to Use

Published
by
david
on November 6, 2007
in open content
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Some of you will know COSL’s Microlibrary project. For those of you who don’t, the Microlibrary is a public service project inspired by the Internet Archive’s Bookmobile which makes weekly trips to public schools in Utah, teaching kids about the history of writing and printing, getting kids involved in making books, and giving every kid in the class a book of their own choosing to keep. The Microlibrary project began last year, and so far in the 2007-2008 school year over 700 kids have participated in the presentation and received a free book.

We’ve recently bundled up some of the technology we use to produce the printable versions of the books (some existing open source software, some of our own software) and released it through the COSL website. The service works as a mediator and the idea was originally inspired by the excellent Shodouka mediator, which was the only way you could read Japanese websites back in the day…

The service actually inserts printable book links into the download table at the bottom of each book page on the Gutenberg site. For example, check out the Gutenberg page for Pride and Prejudice run through the mediator.

We think this makes the Microlibrary significantly easier for folks to use. What do you think? We’d love to hear your feedback!