OER

I have been moving on with my Open Content for Education course despite the date for the course finishing having past.  It's very hard fitting everything into a school week.  I think next time I might look for MOOCs that occur in the holidays.  It's not so much the time required to participate it's the head-space.  It's quite hard to be reflective and considered in "te ao hurihuri" (the churning world) of teaching.. (Ironical that hurihuri also means reflection).

Anyway the course has been leading me to consider the use of OERs or Open Education Resources.  It's taken me too long today to get through this module because it has been so interesting.  I've been diving off to the sites called "MERLOT" and Connexions which are depositories for open texts.  I've searched wikieducator for a Level One Science text for NZ that I'm sure I've seen there and I've wondered if I should write a text myself for Y10 or 11 Science (what does the Moodle "book" resource do though?).  As if I don't have enough to do.  I also ended up at WebQuests, something I had forgotten about and Zooniverse as they both fit so well with what I am doing with Y9 Science at the moment (Space Exploration). (By the way in my meanderings I found a good site called "Waiology", a blog about the science of freshwater in Aotearoa/NZ that will help with the Wai Mackenzie topic later next term.) So you can see I've been around!

Where I should have been was considering the value of OERs in an open education system. A global system. These OERs make a lot of sense.  Economically students can buy food instead of texts, ecologically an electron is easier to recycle and educationally educators can rewrite and re-author to improve and to suit their own needs.  What the course is doing for me though is somewhat unexpected.  The ethical consideration of who education is for and what it should be. The reason I joined the course is I hoped to learn about digital education by being digitally educated.

What I am also learning though is that education is a basic human right and the digital age is giving us the tools to provide a universal free education.  It's a powerful message and a moving one.

What I need to learn next, or find really, is my place in this age as an educator.  I am very shy about what material I write.  They never seem perfect.  I hope that I will move to a position, through doing this course, that sees that fear as being unexceptional and surmountable.

Who owns our ideas?

This post is about the ideas expounded by Moglen and Lessig in this video

It is posted in partial fulfillment of my participation in a MOOC called Open Content Licensing for Educators #OCL4Ed

• Is it right for educators to apply the word "theft" to reusing ideas to further learning?
• No.  In his talk Moglen establishes eloquently and persuasively, in my opinion, that theft of ideas "was previously known as learning".  If we accept his rhetoric we would not be educators if prohibited the reuse of ideas.
• Who should own ideas? The producers of knowledge? The distributors of knowledge?
• Moglen argues that the distributors have stolen the works of the producers in the intellectual property right system.  He does so persuasively and in doing so puts a new slant on the battle for the idea of Creative Commons Licensing.  I had not previously thought of the intellectual property ideas as alienating the author from his/her creation. I had thought that the intellectual property system protected them.  I think Moglen is right though,  I am reminded of the phrase (which I have stolen from Proudhon) "All property is theft"
• What values should underpin our thinking regarding the ownership of ideas in education?
• The values that could underpin our thinking are those exemplified by the GB Shaw quote about and an apple and an idea. "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." This means that reusing, revising, remixing and redistribution (David Wiley's 4R's) of ideas should be the fate of all ideas created by educators.
• Should educators and learners be required to ask permission before building on the ideas of others?
• I am not sure as I do not know what Creative Commons requires as compared with the Copyright system.  However I would like to think that I would have to acknowledge the work of others by name.
• How best can we foster an ecology of creativity in education?
• Perhaps by using Creative Commons?  I need to learn more though.
• 
  

Freedom should be free!

Video of Stephen Downes

Video of Desmond Tutu

A reflection on learning from these videos.

As part of my OCL4Ed course I am required, and happy, to reflect on what I have learnt from these videos.

I found the Tutu video the most challenging.  I enjoyed it and, in writing this reflection, I had to go and re-view Downes video, getting much more out of it the second time through.

What was challenging about Tutu was I had thought that intellectual property rights were only fair and proper and that the creators of knowledge had a right to make money out of that.  I am not so sure now, but I'm also not ready to through the baby out with the bath water.

'Locking up the fruits' was a crucial phrase that Tutu used for me. He says that the poor can't afford the metered out knowledge and this is where Downes comes in , for me, when he talks about cost. I am reminded of the poetry of Yeats "I being poor have only my dreams/tread carefully because you tread on my dreams". Although Yeats' poem was a love poem the words help me empathise with Tutu's "our people".

Of course there's more to it than that and Downes' video was, on the second viewing, enlightening and inspiring as he lyrically talks about the talking back, the laughter, the way we WANT to learn, the "Learning out loud" as he calls it.

 Sharing is the core of learning and that sharing defines Open Content Licensing and also defines true education, Downes would have us believe

I now need to review what I think of intellectual property and find out more about how Open Learning Content Licensing deals with it.  I am inspired to share learning but I doubt that I personally have anything worth sharing. Perhaps that is a big challenge for me personally.

All in all a surprising start to a course that I wanted to do because I thought that I needed to do some e-learning to be a better e-teacher.  While that is undeniably sill true it also is true that I am surprised and empowered by what I have learnt today.

Open Content Licensing for Educators-An Introduction

Hi

This is part of my e-activity for this course.  One of the side benefits is that it may revitalise my blogging besides the main focus that of open content licensing.

I very much struggle with the time budget in my job and the more I can make these e-activities save me time the more likely I am to keep using them.  For instance I ma playing around with dong my lesson planning in my google calendar (opening the event and typing in the description box).  This is also shared with the class via my google site.  Even so it is still a struggle to make it all make time-sense.

To fulfill the requirements of this course I need to insert a photo I've taken myself. This is one of me in gym with some volleyballers.

 Also to include a link to an external website.  This one is a Google site of mine that I am trying to develop to cover all my work at school.