Open-Content

I recently blogged about the Apple announcement and how it amounted to publishers ceding the “traditional” textbook market (whether print or digital) to OER makers. One way to interpret that concession is as a win for open education. And it is a win - temporarily. Another way to interpret the concession by publishers is to see it as electronics companies ending production of VCRs and doubling down on DVD players. In my previous post I asked, “If video-based, multimedia-rich, interactive textbooks are only worth $14.99 to the big publishers, what are relatively static, text-based books with a few photos worth to them?” Think about that for a minute. Sure, there are “traditional” OER textbooks available for free. But when you could have video, multimedia, simulations, and interactive assessments for $15, why would you take a traditional book (whether print or video) even if it is free? ...

Some have interpreted my post earlier today to mean that the RIP for OER in 2017 is inevitable. THAT’S EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I’M SAYING. The purpose of my post was to get people thinking about what is coming while there’s still time for us to do something about it. The RIP in 2017 only happens if the field does nothing to produce diagnostic, adaptive OER that support student learning at least as well as the systems produced by big publishers. ...

Press is starting to kick in on the Utah State Office of Education’s open textbook announcement. Most of the stories are running the AP’s abbreviated version of the press release, including the Huffington Post, Businessweek, and a bunch of local outlets including KSL (NBC), the Daily Herald, KTVX (ABC), the Cache Valley Daily, and Ogden Standard-Examiner. The Sacramento Bee has some additional out of market coverage. KCPW has a podcast interview with Diana Suddreth. Sounds like TIffany Hall will be on the Channel 4 News at 6:00 tonight. ...

Last week Apple made a rather significant iPad / iBooks / textbooks announcement. Several people have asked whether it is a net win or net loss for advocates of open textbooks specifically and affordability generally. From my perspective, the announcement is an outright win for advocates of affordability and open textbooks. Here’s why. It’s fairly clear from the Jobs biography and the publishers’ behavior that the original plan was: (1) Apple would hire some rockstar PhDs who would write textbooks (2) Apple would own the textbooks, and (3) Apple would give away the books for free in order to sell more iPads. ...

Something very exciting happened today. The Utah State Office of Education announced that (1) it will be supporting the development of Utah-specific open textbooks for all secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses, and (2) that the USOE recommends that all schools across the state consider these open textbooks for adoption in their secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses for this fall (2012). The math and science books will be remixes of CK-12 materials (as per our existing pilot program), while the Language Arts books will be produced locally. The Hewlett Foundation is providing partial funding. ...

Chomsky absolutely nails the explanation of why “Buy One, Get One” does not generally exist with regard to public access to publicly-funded innovation, and gives us another awesome metaphor-weapon in the battle against bad IP policy. … Friedrich List, famous German political economist in the 19th century, who was actually borrowing from Andrew Hamilton, called it “kicking away the ladder.” First you use state power and violence to develop, then you kick away those procedures so that other people can’t do it…. ...

What did you do for finals week this year? Students in our IPT 682: Project Management class put the finishing touches on their new online textbook, Project Management for Instructional Designers. This is the first large scale, multi-person REVISE / REMIX project I’ve had the pleasure of working on. From the Introduction: This book is an adaptation of Project Management from Simple to Complex written by Russell Darnall and John Preston and generously published under an open license by Flat World Knowledge. The book you are now reading is a work in progress. If you are interested in contributing to this version of the book, please contact David Wiley at Brigham Young University. ...

A brief history of the impending transformation of post-secondary education, just to clarify where we are, followed by some commentary. Dates are approximate as I’m working from memory on an airplane. Perhaps later I’ll turn this into a proper piece of writing with supporting links, etc., if folks find it interesting. 7x - The internet. Data can be routed from computer to computer. The cost of copying and distributing content begins its drop toward zero. ...

There’s a deeply insightful post on O’Reilly Radar today by Mike Loukides called “The end of social.” It’s primarily a piece about friction, and the social signaling value of acts undertaken when a friction cost is incurred (I like that term - “friction cost” - I think that’s a keeper): To many people, Facebook’s “frictionless” sharing doesn’t enhance sharing; it makes sharing meaningless. Let’s go back to music: It is meaningful if I tell you that I really like the avant-garde music by Olivier Messiaen. It’s also meaningful to confess that I sometimes relax by listening to Pink Floyd. But if this kind of communication is replaced by a constant pipeline of what’s queued up in Spotify, it all becomes meaningless. There’s no “sharing” at all. Frictionless sharing isn’t better sharing; it’s the absence of sharing. There’s something about the friction, the need to work, the one-on-one contact, that makes the sharing real, not just some cyber phenomenon. If you want to tell me what you listen to, I care. But if it’s just a feed in some social application that’s constantly updated without your volition, why do I care? It’s just another form of spam, particularly if I’m also receiving thousands of updates every day from hundreds of other friends. ...

Congrats to the UMass for their pilot OER program which is saving students over 7x the university’s investment in the very first year. Eight faculty members were awarded a total of 10 grants, $1,000 per course, to adopt a new curricular resource strategy using easily identified digital resources. Under the program, faculty developed a variety of alternatives, from creating an online open access lab manual to utilizing e-books and streaming media available through the Libraries’ numerous databases. In support of this initiative, librarians developed a comprehensive subject guide to open educational resources. ...