Open-Content

I frequently hear people attempt to equate the open education movement with socialism. After all, the logic goes, what could possibly be more socialist than freely sharing things with everyone? The attempt to characterize the entire movement in a single assertion assumes a uniformity within the movement that anyone working in OER knows does not exist. I will neither agree or disagree with broad, general assertion in this post. Instead, I want to disagree with the statement in a very specific context, and carve out a specific and concrete space in the discourse about the motivations that underlie OER. ...

I’m simply ecstatic to say that this deal is finally done! Rather than write up my own announcement, I’ll reuse Timothy Vollmer’s. Today Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the solicitation for grant applications under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT). Over the course of 4 years, the program will invest $2 billion “to provide community colleges and other eligible institutions of higher education with funds to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs.” The program supports President Obama’s goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 by helping to increase the number of workers who attain degrees, certificates and other industry recognized credentials. The first round of funding will be $500 million over the next year. Applications to the solicitation are now open, and will be due April 21, 2011. ...

Perhaps someone has made this analogy before, but it occurred to me last night that computers are like treadmills. Each year, schools across the country buy tens of thousands of computers. LIkewise, each year individuals across the country buy tens of thousands of treadmills. My guess is that these two pieces of hardware are used effectively in roughly equal proportion. While tens of thousands of treadmills sit in people’s basements going unused (or used for purposes completely unrelated to improving one’s physical health), tens of thousands of computers sit in our schools going unused (or used for purposes completely unrelated to improving one’s learning).

Mike from Creative Commons repeats a question I asked in a recent post: I wonder what the delta is between clearing copyrestrictions adequately such that materials can be published on the web under an open license and just adequate clearance such that materials can be published on the web by an institution? Steve gives us an answer from MIT OCW’s perspective: The costs… of openly licensing are actually the costs of licensing under any terms, including full copyright, and it wouldn’t cost any less to do [MIT OCW under] full (C). ...

I recently realized… as long as I’m spending some of my time evangelizing on behalf of openness, maybe it would be a good idea for me to develop a deep understanding of the benefits of openness. I’ve always been an “argue by describing the benefits” kind of guy as opposed to an “argue on grounds of moral superiority” kind of guy (which is why I end up in the open camp more often than the free camp). I’ve been blogging my reflections and out-loud-thinking about the concrete benefits of openness, and MIT OCW’s Steve Carson has been one of the people helping push my thinking along. Steve recently made another incredible contribution to our ongoing dialogue about the benefits of openness in general and of OCW in particular. Loads of new data available in his post that we’ve never seen anywhere before. So first, a big thanks to Steve for taking the time to contribute in that way. ...

Stephen Downes posits that, “ultimately, the effect of Creative Commons licenses is to *preserve* copyright.” This argument is just silly, and is equivalent to saying that “ultimately, the effect of band-aids is that people will keep having boo-boos.” Creative Commons licenses are band-aids placed on a severely over-reaching and broken copyright system. Of course we would prefer copyright reform, so that we no longer needed CC licenses. But to suggest that CC licenses preserve copyright is to suggest that the first step in reforming copyright and enabling global sharing is to stop using CC licenses. That’s just plain wrong, but seems to be what Stephen is suggesting. ...

VSS 2010 - OER 101: Theory and Practice View more presentations from David Wiley. This presentation includes a significant amount of new thinking, so I share it here. First, this presentation presents a strengthened and clarified definition of OER that includes (1) free, (2) 4Rs permissions, and (3) technology and media choices that do not interfere with users exercising 4R permissions. This is the “theory” in the title. ...

During his recent keynote address to the State Educational Technology Directors Association, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent an unexpected shout out to the Open High School of Utah, spending about 30 seconds of his 30 minute talk praising the effectiveness and flexibility of our teaching model, and particularly emphasizing the individualized attention and personalized instruction our students receive. You can hear the Secretary talk about OHSU from approximately 14:45 - 15:20 in the video above. ...

Great responses from Carson and Downes to my post yesterday on adoption as linking. It’s great to participate in a conversation at this level of depth again - it’s been too long for me (and entirely my own fault). I’ll make my next contribution in the coming days, but wanted to make sure everyone saw their responses.

I recently suggested that we need to begin looking beyond simply sharing OER and get around to adopting them. The post generated several comments, and I want to respond specifically to comments from Stephen and Stephen. Both Stephens agree that my idea of adoption, which involves revising and remixing, is wrong-headed. Downes writes “Here at OLDaily, I have been ‘adopting’ open educational resources for ten years, linking to a half dozen or so of them every week day… Who needs the grief [of adapting OER]? We link to them and let learners use them directly.” And Carson agrees, “blog-like linking makes sense for OER for a number of reasons.” ...