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You should read this post by Cable Green before proceeding below. In 2001, MIT President Charles Vest’s annual report was titled Disturbing the Educational Universe: Universities in the Digital Age — Dinosaurs or Prometheans?. It is an absolutely seminal piece of writing in open education that is, sadly, underappreciated today. To most people, Prometheus is famous for stealing fire from the gods and gifting it to humanity, and this is the theme Dr. Vest follows in his address. However, when I hear the name Prometheus, my mind always turns immediately to his punishment. This is perhaps the only thing I remember from the weeks our high school English teacher spent dragging us yawning and snoring through Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. For his punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock. And every day, day after day, an eagle came to tear out and eat his liver - which then regenerated overnight. How did the ancient Greeks know that livers regenerate? I always thought that was so cool… ...

There’s been a lot of discussion about open textbooks, efficacy research, and student cost savings in the wake of this year’s #OpenEd15. The general theme of the conversation has been a concern that a focus on open textbooks confuses the means of open education with the end of open education. I’m compiling a Storify of examples of this really engaging writing - you should definitely take the time to read through it. I’m not responding directly to many of the points made in those posts here, but will in later follow-up posts. The overall criticism about ends / means confusion may or may not be true - it depends entirely on what you think the end or goal of open education should be. This is a conversation we almost never have in the field of open education. What is our long-term goal? What are we actually trying to accomplish? What kind of change are we trying to create in the world? The recently published OER strategy document, as informative as it is, reads more like a list of issues and opportunities than what Michael Feldstein describes as “rungs on a ladder of ambition.” Answering these questions leads to additional, more proximate concerns, like what specific steps do we need to take to get from here to there? In his #OpenEd15 keynote, Michael pushed our thinking with some additional questions, like “Who are we willing to let win?” As I have reflected on the post-conference conversation, and these larger questions about goals and purpose, I’ve decided to share some of my current best answers to these questions. (Disclaimer: my answers are guaranteed to evolve over time.) Your answers will almost certainly be different than mine - and that’s a good thing. I’m not sharing my answers as a way of claiming that they reflect the One True Answer. I’m sharing them in the hope that they will prompt you to think more deeply about your own answers. I find that nothing helps me clarify my thinking quite like reading others’ thinking I disagree with. As we all take the opportunity to ask and answer these important questions for ourselves, and to do that thinking publicly, out loud, who knows what might happen? ...

Watching Mike’s screencast of the rewiki prototype lead me down memory lane to a tool we built back in the day called Send2Wiki. Here’s a summary from the extensions page at Mediawiki: Provides a bookmarklet that makes it easy to send web pages to a wiki. Converts web page HTML to wiki format (using html2wiki by David J. Iberri). Strips chrome from web pages during the conversion process. Displays information about sent articles in the MediaWiki footer. Optionally translates web page to another language (using Google’s Language Tools). Preserves links by converting relative links to absolute ones. Autodetects license information such as Creative Commons and GFDL licenses. Lets the user specify a license for the the new wiki page. Sends PDFs to the wiki by first converting them to HTML (using PDFTOHTML based on xpdf 2.02 by Derek Noonburg). Creates didilies describing the conversion. Basically, you setup the extension on your Mediawiki and then installed the bookmarklet in your browser. Then you could push the content from any page you’re looking at into your Mediawiki with the click of a button and a few options: ...

My unpaid leave from BYU started January 1. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder than I have during this past month. It’s been exhilarating and exhausting and exciting and challenging and I’m loving it. For anyone who’s interested, here’s an update on what I’ve been doing: Textbook Zero I spent two days early in January visiting with our partner community college working on the first Textbook Zero Associates degree program. This involved two full days of hands-on training with faculty, providing a very hands-on and high touch workshop experience focused on redesigning courses around OER. We started with learning outcomes, moved up through assessments, and finally looked at the open educational resources that will best support teachers in facilitating the specific types of learning they want to see happen with their students. This program, which is an Associates degree in business administration, will open this fall. The Textbook Zero approach (moving the entire degree off of textbooks and onto OER) knocks 30% off the cost of completing this degree. I am super excited about this. (And I have to say that, given the abuse the term “open” has taken recently, I’m going to take steps to make sure that the phrase “Textbook Zero” retains the meaning I meant for it to have when I coined it.) ...

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? ...

Elaine and I spent some time this weekend looking at pictures taken by a friend who served an LDS mission in Japan (where Elaine and I both served) back in the early 90s. As we carefully passed the photos around, I realized that my feeling about print media has changed subtlety over the years. It had been a long time since I’d handled a photo that didn’t start life digitally. I realized as I tried not to harm this one-of-a-kind artifact that my intuition, for lack of a better word, is that print media are cheap, almost disposable approximations of digital media. My gut tells me now that a printed photo is just an ephemeral version of the real photo, which is digital. ...

Stephen calls me out for being mean-spirited and rude: “There’s no call for this sort of condescending and catty response to people who are trying their best to work through some difficult issues.” I think people who know me know that’s not the kind of person I am. In rereading my response I realize that my writing may have come off this way. That wasn’t my intent. My intent was to (1) voice my frustration that academics seem to enjoy problematizing things more than they enjoy trying to help you understand things, and to (2) provide a simple answer that covers the majority of cases, which I contend my definition does. If anyone interpreted today’s post as a personal attack, I’m sincerely sorry. ...

Working on the McKay School’s WPMU-as-OCW-/-open-teaching platform. @jimgroom, I’ll probably be calling on your many skills today! =) # @jimgroom First ?. My themes are a mess. I only want there to be one theme, and I want to enforce it site-wide. Tips or links? # @jbasdf When will I be able to get search results out of folksemantic? I’d love to do some demos during upcoming trips… # Getting ready to chat with Andrew Jensen, Executive Director Utah Student Association, about textbooks, affordability, and what we might do. # Don’t the arguments against universal socialized medicine also argue against universal socialized education (i.e. public schools)? # At the Curriki-Hearst OER Fellows meeting in West Chester, PA # @gsiemens If there’s time for questions, ask Merrill to summarize the empirical literature on learner control. =) in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens It will feel like a public flogging at first, but that will give you an opportunity to provide a compelling response! =) #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens Absolutely! #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens Key phrases to watch out for - “blind leading the blind” and “pooled ignorance.” #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens Based on the ideas that became the self-org paper, Merrill and I have been having this argument for 10 years now. #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens “Successful learner control” is highly correlated with learner expertise. #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens Merrill’s critiques of learner control will all deal with “novices.” #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens Try to make him cede this point publicly. :) #edmedia in reply to gsiemens # @gsiemens You’re an expert and have context in which to interpret your learning. #edmedia # @gsiemens The problem comes when we ask novices to learn as if they were experts. And Merrill is more interested in novices. #edmedia # After Star Trek, my 12 yr old demands to know how to calculate the radius of a black hole’s event horizon. Thank you, WolframAlpha! # Date @ Olive Garden tonight. Our server was very unresponsive. E and I decide the appropriate tip is $4.04 and die laughing. Best wife ever! # @gconole You calculate the $4.04 tip for a poor server as follows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404 in reply to gconole #

@AndyGibbons I think the kids and I are going to see Up tomorrow… in reply to AndyGibbons # RT @jonmott:New blog post: “PLNs, Portfolios, and a Loosely-Coupled Gradebook” http://bit.ly/5rJAn # Testimony to Education Interim Committee today very successful! Rule changes permitting K12 teachers to CC license their works coming soon? # Surprised to find that I’m enjoying Talmage’s “Jesus the Christ” much better on the Kindle than on paper. Integrated dictionary, perhaps? # “Giddy as a schoolgirl” over my 3rd row tickets for upcoming Take 6 concert. I’ve only waited - what - 20 years for this? # RT @courosa What are illegal downloads worth? http://tr.im/paWP # Information on Take 6 at the Scera on Mon Sep 7 is at http://www.scera.org/app/webroot/events/view/177. I paid $18 each for 3rd row seats!!! # Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com/ # Why? #

Sitting in an Open High School of Utah Board of Trustees meeting… #ohsu # Heading to Saskatoon! Should probably brush up on my Saskatoonese, eh? # Exhausted in Saskatoon. Working up new material for tomorrow’s talk… Promises to be interesting! # Set up and ready to begin speaking at U of S in Saskatoon! See you on the other side… # Talk at U of S in Saskatoon was a success! Heading back to Utah… # Happy 8th Birthday Noelle! Elaine’s homemade Pokemon birthday cake depicted all seven evolutions of Eevee! http://tinyurl.com/m4cf2r Amazing # I’m now @opencontent on both Twitter and Facebook - http://facebook.com/opencontent - get your Facebook username while you still can… # “Pray to know whonyou can help and it will rain people.” # “Pray to know who you can help and it will rain people.” # “Pray to know who you can help and it will rain people.” Julie Beck # Julie Beck: ‘Pray to know who you can help, and it will rain people.’ Amen! # “Live on the edge. Not the edge of evil, but the sharp edge of the righteousness of God.” Pres. Atkinson # “Obedience brings blessings. Exact obedience brings miracles.” Elder Cook (at Grove Creek Stake Conference this morning) #