Open-Content

#OpenEd14 is getting close! For a wide range of reasons, this year’s 11th annual Open Education Conference looks like it will be the best ever. One thing contributing to the awesomeness of this year’s conference is other events organized around the same time in the same area. One of these events is OpenCon 2014: The Student and Early Career Researcher Conference on Open Access, Open Education and Open Data, organized by SPARC and the Right to Research Coalition As the name implies, this event is really focused on engaging students and early career individuals and helping them become effective advocates in the openness movement. The meeting will run from November 15-17 in Washington, D.C., and the program includes three days of talks, workshops, and in-the-field advocacy experience (leveraging its location in Washington, DC). Of course, a delegation of participants from OpenCon will also attend OpenEd. ...

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to participate on a panel about OER at the Knewton Education Symposium. Earlier this week, Knewton CEO Jose Ferreira blogged about ‘OER and the Future of Publishing’ for EdSurge, briefly mentioning the panel. I was surprised by his post, which goes out of its way to reassure publishers that OER will not break the textbook industry. Much of the article is spent criticizing the low production values, lack of instructional design, and missing support that often characterize OER. The article argues that there is a potential role for publishers to play in each of these service categories, leveraging OER to lower their costs and improve their products. But it’s been over 15 years since the first openly licensed educational materials were published, and major publishers have yet to publish a single textbook based on pre-existing OER. Why? ...

Aaron Wolf is contributing to a nice thread in the comments under my description of the recently revised definition of the “open” in “open content”. I’ve revised my ShareAlike example to distribute blame evenly across Wikipedia and MIT OCW based on his comments. You can see the current version of the definition at http://opencontent.org/definition/. I want to address an accusation of Aaron’s here. He mentions other “definitions of Open that bother working to be precise and not vague,” in which category he includes the definitions from the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Free Cultural Works moderators, etc., in apparent contrast to my definition. I have a number of problems with all these definitions. I’ll address the OKF definition here just to provide a specific example. ...

Earlier this week I read the Wikipedia entry on open content. Suffice it to say I was somewhat disappointed by the way the editors of the page interpreted my writings defining the “open” in open content. I think their interpretation was plausible and legitimate, but it is certainly not the message I intended people to take away after reading the definition. So, the fault for my unhappiness is mine for not having been clearer in my writing. ...

There are several things I’ve read / heard recently that have provoked a response in me but I’ve been negligent in responding publicly. Dumping some of those thoughts out here. Personalization Audrey Watters provides the best summary of a recent conversation on personalization in education. A lot of the conversation is around what personalization means and, given any specific definition, should we even be attempting to personalize learning. Obviously, the answer to the latter question depends on how you address the former. ...

Despite thoughtful disagreement about the term “infrastructure” from people I greatly respect, I continue to find the term extraordinarily useful in my own thinking about how we improve education. As interest in competency-based education continues to grow, we have an incredible opportunity to expand and to open the core pieces of the education infrastructure. But before I go further, a few words about “infrastructure” to make sure we’re all on the same page. ...

The ideas expressed in the Reclaim Your Domain and IndieWebCamp work continue to inform my thinking about the 5th R (retain) and the notion that students should be able to “Own Your Content, Own Your Data” when it comes to online learning. A few weeks ago I ran across Known which fascinated me but looked to be too immature to use yet. Then Jim described Tim Owens’ experiments with Known. That gave me enough confidence to dig into the code myself and see if I couldn’t get it running. ...

I’ve just started working on a major competency-based education (CBE) initiative with Lumen (specifics coming soon), which has helped me see that the principles of open education are, generally speaking, nowhere to be found in the competency-based education space. To be clear - many institutions are using OER in their CBE programs, but almost every institution doing CBE seems to hoard their competencies like the family recipe for a secret sauce. You know what this made me think… ...

If you’re interested in learning how to make a sustainable difference in the world, you absolutely must study and meditate on the caps lock wisdom of FAKE GRIMLOCK, the Robot Dinosaur. No matter how often I read him, I find his writing inspiring, hysterical, and worth pondering at length. His halting style of writing practically begs you to stop and reflect on what exactly he’s roaring at you. And you should. ...

Back in December Michael Feldstein wrote a terrific post about Pearson’s new initiative around “efficacy.” There has been a great thread of comments attached to his (as always) excellent piece of writing. I’ve been wanting to add my thoughts on the topic for a while. I’m finally getting around to it. The Conversation Can’t Be About Efficacy (Only) Many of you know I am hugely inspired by Bloom’s work on the “2 sigma problem.” In many ways, Bloom’s work is the last word in instructional efficacy - for three decades now there has been no mystery whatsoever about the most effective way to teach. Bloom and his group showed conclusively that the average student who: ...