Category Archives: Open Education 2012

The OER FLOW and Social Media

This presentation on The OER FLOW and Social Media was animated by Alexandra Okada and Scott Leslie. The former Skyped in from the UK. The presentation was audio streamed at http://bit.ly/opened-c485.

A primary reference was Collaborative Learning 2.0. An overview of this book is available at http://www.openscout.net/news/105-collaborative-learning-20-open-educational-resources. Ironically, there is no e-book version available. It is available from Chapters for $190 or $165 at Amazon.ca. The nearest one in a library is over 100o miles away from me. See http://www.worldcat.org/title/collaborative-learning-20-open-educational-resources/oclc/773533839

 

 

 

 

 

Glitz, Glamor and Going Open

This presentation on Glitz, Glamor and Going Open: Lessons from the Open Course Librarians was animated by Elena Bianco, Shireen Deboo, Rowena McKernan, Tria Skirko, Quill West The audio stream of the presentation is available at http://bit.ly/opened-c680

Not everything available on the Internet is licensed to be freely used in the classroom. PBS materials was given as an example.

Faculty can get overwhelmed with the task of selecting OER materials. Librarians can help. Put a CC license on materials. Us librarians as a focal point for copyright clearance. Librarians would like to be a resource for the development of your OER.

Open for What? Open to What?

The Open Ed Conference Day 2 Keynote – Open for What? Open to What? Beyond Content was animated by John Willinsky. The presentation was live streamed at  http://openedconference.org/2012/program/day-2/day2-900am-c300/ While, in contrast to yesterday’s keynote,  he came across initially as a luddite, his presentation was quite engaging and relevant to OER. He wanted to take us beyond open content.

We are open for what? His classes are not open. His work is on the public library side, rather than open content side. He has been working on the public knowledge side. Stanford started a MOOC last year and immediately had 150k students. This is an institute that debated on whether to add a few 100 undergraduates. The prof teaching it left Standford to start Udacity.
Willinsky’s current initative is to create a do-it-yourself academic journal app. This is a partnership between libraries and independent scholars and students. In the late 90s he did a series of articles with the Vancouver Sun about computer in education. He was embarassed that he could not display any of the research on this topic, just the abstracts. Now 21% of all the literature is freely available. Going up every year. Mega journal — how much more does it cost to publish and extra article. It is called Plus One. 14k peer reviewed articles published immediately. Circulation of articles is not aboout gate keeping, but a minimum standard. Costs $1300 to get published. Other journals are charging up to $3000 publishing fees. Author gets to keep their intellectual property. This economy is driven by ‘intellectual property’. We are sending our students defensive into the world. They give away their software. Open Data refers to replication of research. Example — Genome project. Articles won’t be published unless the data is shared. This is one of the few fields where the data is shared. Alberta won a ruling against Access Copyright. Fair Dealing in Canada has at its core a respect for learning. Private research is exempt from copyright. A librarian can copy a research article for individual learners. Still a problem for classrooms. This summer, however, the judge ruled that the classroom also applies to ‘private study’. What the student and teacher are engaged in is ‘private study’. Publishers worried about the drop in textbook sales. Under Fair Dealing education as a domain is grounds for copying. However, the publishing industry won that textbook purchases continue. That is schools cannot just simply copy textbooks holis bolis. Students have the right to put a Creative Commons license on their work. Are there ways the students can participate with libraries to share knowledge. Remove the divide between learning at school and learning through the public library. Need to connect student learning wth 21% of knowledge freely available. Work with Google Scholar. Bring Google Scholar into the classroom. Needs to be peer reviewed. Students could provide their own critiques for one another.

Plenary Session

The plenary session was animated by Cable Green and Paul Stacey, both now of Creative Commons, the sponsor of the conference.

Creative Commons vision statement
Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

Creative Commons is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary. They are about to come out with Version 4.0 of Creative Commons License. More info about the draft version is available at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32157,

The new version will focus on Internationalization. The intent is to collaborate with other countries to make the standard license more universal so that other countries don’t have to ‘port’ the license. It will also include database rights for the first time. There will also be support of Intergovernmental Organization User needs.

For Educators there will be easier compliance for teachers and students.
Creative Commons is also partnering with the School of Open, P2PU.org, to help people learn more about Open initiatives. See schoolofopen.org

Another initiative Creative Commons is working on is the Open Professionals Education Network Services. It focuses on open ed resources with a focus on low-skilled folks. Details at open4us.org.

The last and, in my view the most important intiative is the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative. The goal is to make better search engine results for OERs. For more info on this topic, see schema.org

The entire presentation is available online at http://bit.ly/ccideas.