In response to Dave and George’s request for thoughts about the future of education, I offer the following parody. This twisted view of the future of education is completely undesirable, and yet completely possible. What will you do to prevent it from happening?
On Friday Stephen wrote a brief, interesting piece on “playing the religion card” in the realm of public policy. I think I agree with what he wrote, and want to state my view explicitly for the record as a way of . Excerpting from Stephen’s post: [N]o particular religion can or should have the means to impose its particular view on society. This is not to say that people can not or should not live and represent their moral and spiritual values. Nobody has a problem with that, not even the atheists. Rather, it means that if you advocate “policy x” because your religious views compel you to do so, your advocacy of “policy x” will have to be on the basis of its own merits, not because “Canada was founded based on the principles of religion y”…. Play the religion card with great caution. You may be religious; I don’t care. But when you try to cram religion into government, I get very very upset. ...
George’s recent post about data visualization makes me realize I need to get around to sharing some of the work we’re doing here. My main research group at BYU is spending most of its time these days on educational data mining and applying / developing visualization techniques (including “dashboards”). We’ve taken to calling the coupling of openness with real data the “peanut butter cup” model, because openness and data really are two great tastes that taste great together. More on peanut butter cups in an upcoming post. ...
Photo by AntonioViva. I had an absolutely brilliant time at TEDxNYED over the weekend, reconnecting with old friends like Larry Lessig, George Siemens, Neeru Khosla, and Dan Cohen, and making new friends like Michael Wesch, Gina Bianchini, Amy Bruckman, Chris Lehmann, and Dan Meyer. The videos of our talks will be online in a few weeks. In the mean time, I’m posting the final version of the notes I wrote before creating slides for the talk. This is the fifth or sixth version of the notes, and due to time constraints not even all of this version got in - but much of it did. My words on stage didn’t mirror these rough notes directly, but the notes capture the spirit of the talk. You can view the slides for the talk on Slideshare. ...
I can hear Stephen now… eSchoolNews reports on a speech given today by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, which they summarize with the byline, “Secretary calls federal investment in open courseware an ‘opportunity’ for education publishers.” From the article: To support technological innovation in learning, President Obama has proposed investing $500 million over ten years in an Online Skills Initiative designed to produce free and open online courses that contribute to post-secondary success, Duncan said. These courses can be used by students, schools, and self-directed learners, and they also will be freely available to commercial publishers. ...
In response to yesterday’s post, OCWC President Steve Carson left a link in the comment section to the organization’s 2010-2011 strategic plan. Reading through the plan provided a number of insights, but let me focus on two here and you can read the rest of the document for yourself. First, the OCWC budget for 2010 is $1,000,000. Second, the document includes a section called “Value Proposition to Members,” which includes the following explanation: ...
Yesterday OpenCourseWare Consortium President Steve Carson announceed that the OCWC has received commitments of $350k over the next five years from several of its university members. In a reference to concerns I (and others) have expressed about the sustainability of the OCW movement, Steve writes: “Not only are these universities sustaining their own publications, but they are making meaningful commitments to the global effort to openly publish educational materials.” So why don’t I feel happy at this news? I think it is because I just don’t understand how the OCWC adds value to the “global effort to openly publish educational materials.” ...
Just heard from my friend Bobbi Kurshan, the Executive Director of Curriki, that she will be leaving that post on March 1st. I wish her well. Curriki will be looking for a new ED shortly and will very much continue to stay active in the OER space (much like Hewlett has continued to do after Mike, Cathy, and Phoenix left). So, unless I’m missing someone, the list of OER leaders who have moved on in the last few years now includes: ...
Since my department at BYU has committed itself to open access publishing I’ve been able to get serious about putting my published writing in the university’s institutional repository called ScholarsArchive. So far I have 12 pieces in the collection, which are guaranteed to stay at these URLs for “a very long time” since the library is curating the repository. I’m happy as a clam that these pieces have permanent homes and that these pieces are freely available for the general public. ...
I’m happy to point to this comment by Vic Vuchic from the Hewlett Foundation on a previous post I wrote about what seems to be happening with OER. It’s a great perspective (that he is uniquely qualified to provide) that warmed my heart a bit. Some highlights: Hewlett made over $16 million in grants last year that were 100% OER focused… In 2009 alone, foundations such as Gates, Lumina, MacArthur and many others pumped over $10 million of investments into OER focused projects. VCs made a couple of forays into OER… And a number of governments made their first investments in OER. In all 2009 was a record year both in the amount and diversity of OER funding, which is amazing considering most other things in the world collapse financially. ...