Open-Content

If you have an idea, project, paper, or any other form of activity (believe me, we’re open to nontraditional!) you’ve been considering submitting to the Open Education Conference 2008, today is the day! Head over to http://cosl.usu.edu/events/opened2008/call-for-papers and submit today! We’re looking forward to another awesome conference this year. As Brian Lamb recently gushed: The conference is a fantastic mix of academic and practical topics, where open source technology, open content, sustainable models, and net culture mix into a delicious and sneaky subversive brew. And though Logan can seem a bit remote for travelers, the drive through the canyons of Utah to get there is stunningly beautiful, and the city itself has many charms - I’ve come to think of it as one of my adopted homes. Expect the COSL folks to run a conference that is logistically flawless, yet relaxed, friendly and fun. ...

It is with mixed emotion (but certainly a huge amount of excitement!) that I write today to tell you that I have accepted a position at Brigham Young University. I’ll be making the transition over the summer and begin teaching at BYU in the fall. I remain as committed as ever to pursuing my work of increasing access to educational opportunity, and believe that there will be many wonderful opportunities at BYU in this regard. As you know, I am devoting much of my time right now to the Open High School of Utah, which I believe will be a shining example to the world of what the future of open education will be like. ...

Had a fabulous time presenting virtually for Brian Lamb today at the UBC Town Hall today. In response to one of the questions that was asked at the end of the session, I had a thought - perhaps a rare occurrence. It was a memory, actually, of a blog post I wrote almost 10 years ago as a graduate student. The thought was basically this: Educational reform is much like religious reform, and our openness movement and desires to innovate in higher education are much like the Reformation. When the Church was the prevailing power, it took Luther a significant amount of courage to stand up, nail a list of issues to the door, and say “Go ahead and excommunicate me. I’ve tried reforming from within with no success. You leave me no choice but to leave and try again on my own.” ...

As long as we’re enjoying this recent era of new word creation (c.f. “edupunk”), I’ll throw out the idea of an “EduCarbon Footprint.” Marie Duncan, a doctoral student of mine, is currently finishing a study of the structure of reuse with the Connexions repository. While reading her discussion of why more people don’t reuse existing, openly-licensed material, it made me think ‘we need a measure, like your carbon footprint, of how much you reuse existing educational materials.’ What would such a measure look like? A ratio of how much you reuse to how much you create? A ratio of the amount of open resources you use to closed resources? Would it be useful to have a measure like this? Surely you can think of a better name? And lastly, someone else has probably already proposed this - who was it?

Hear ye, hear ye! The Open Ed 2008 presentation submission system is online. (A nod to the great folks at SFU who produce the Open Conference Systems software goes here.) Check out the OpenEd 2008 Call for Papers and submit your proposal! In addition to traditional presentations, we’ll also be accepting technical demonstrations - so even if you don’t have a paper to present, come show off your edupunk DIY PLE project. Submissions are due by June 30, 2008. ...

Several readers have asked or emailed about access to the Open High School of Utah’s charter application documents. They are now online for your reviewing and reusing pleasure! http://openhighschool.org/documents/ The documents are licensed CC By 3.0. We sincerely hope that many of you will reuse the charter application documents to start your own OER charter schools!

Several of you have emailed with statements of support for the Open High School of Utah. Thank you for all the offers of help and the connections and introductions you’re making. Please keep them coming in!! I especially appreciated this note from Jun in the Philippines: You have just set a precedent that may be the answer to many of non-developed countries woes in education. You just might have transformed education as we know it. ...

With extreme joy and happiness I can now announce that this past Friday (the 9th) the Utah Board of Education formally approved our request to create a new charter school to be called the Open High School of Utah. For those unfamiliar with how US charter schools work, a charter school is a publicly funded school with a specific emphasis - like a performing arts high school. OHSU will be a completely online school (or “virtual school” as they are sometimes called) that will use open educational resources exclusively. ...

Leigh Blackall reports that later this week Otago Polytechnic will become the second higher education institution to formally sign the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. Way to go!

Fabulous talk by Clay Shirky about where people find the time to work on things like Wikipedia; highly recommended.