[WikiEducator] Re: International accredited OER based university
Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :) Maybe I should clarify what I say about learning being free, education still costs I mean the same as you mean - learning is what people are always free to do, and with todays enhanced capacity to access information and communication, learning might be vastly improved. But what is education in all that? Well, to me education is the formality that we agree is the extra, inflated, and fee driven bit. Education is the bit of paper that says you have been learning... So I think we actually agree, but it may be that I'm being a bit too cynical in my use of the work education. Here's a longer post I wrotehttp://learnonline.wordpress.com/2006/01/07/learning-should-be-free-its-an-education-that-can-cost/on it if you're still troubled by my slogan. On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM, simonfj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others... Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in... Cormac, There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day (soon), see these two references;http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~luca/papers/07/wikiwww2007.pdf Ooo! I can't see it. But that's only because i never have. Evaluation to me, and I've had to employ graduates to do media jobs, always comes down to seeing of they, or their teachers, can do it. i.e. have institutions prepared the inexperienced for it?. Old industries, no problem. New industries, like the interactive media ones; rarely a clue. Let me give you an illustration of a change going back 30 years. Unis were trying to teach AV production stuff. Many didn't have a recording desk. Even fewer had relationships with bands or actors interested in recording. Even if some students did, they wouldn't be encouraged to bring those noisy long haired gits into a lovely clean studio. So one dirty engineer in Sydney started offering courses in his studio, which now, though some unis in 49 countries, offers accredited courses. http://www.sae.edu/. But it wasn't until the unis were included in the Learning mix of enough working engineers that the accreditations were given. Until then, we usually just gave students a piece of paper, and for the more determined, helped them find them a job. Now a three month course has inflated to three years. The thing i find fascinating - when watching new interactive global media institutions, like Wikipedia, et al, get their Project Groups' Learning ground(s) together and professionalize good habits, while at the same time watching national Teaching institutions struggling to think outside their squares - is that nothing seems to have changed. In the professionals' web space, you see the beginnings of global interactive environments, which are obviously self sustaining and appear to help people meet peers, get their heads around the things a good web designer needs to know and maybe get some (paid) experience. http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/ And then you look at unis' web sites/ brochureware, ho! ho! One obviously puts an emphasis on their members' communications, the other on the institution's information. i.e. communicating global GROUPS vs, National (.edu) NETWORKS. As Cormac says, you don't get a PhD, but you might be a damn sight more eligible to get a job with a certain employer institution that is open-minded enough to recognise this particular work done. I don't think it's even a matter of them being open minded. It's more a matter that in the commercial world, one gets paid for results, and if you can point to something, like Liam can, who do you think will get the job?.This is very new ground. I also think Leigh is quite right. Through an international network of teachers and assessors, we might see the cost of such processes and services greatly reduced! But you have to have the international network first, and all we do have at the moment is a bunch of National .edu ones. Thankfully Web 2.0 Inc. are able to help fill the obvious gaps. But you got this wrong. Learning is still free, education still costs. Nah, accreditation still costs. You know, priests used to sell indulgences. That's why the Reformation (supposedly) started. Perhaps, rather than talking about accreditation, we should be talking about where the new jobs are, what skills are required and who's doing the employing. -- -- Leigh Blackall +64(0)21736539 skype - leigh_blackall SL - Leroy Goalpost http://learnonline.wordpress.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups WikiEducator group. To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from
[WikiEducator] Re: International accredited OER based university
Dear David, Wow, this is really impressive!! and will serve as worldwide and leading example. Great work Warm regards, Patricia -Original Message- From: wikieducator@googlegroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Wiley Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 8:41 AM To: wikieducator@googlegroups.com Subject: [WikiEducator] Re: International accredited OER based university Simon and Leigh, We haven't been talking about it much, because we're still one step in the approval process away, but for a year now we've been working on establishing the Open High School of Utah - a publicly funded (and therefore free as in beer to students in the state of Utah) completely online high school that uses OERs exclusively throughout the entire curriculum. The final approval should be given this May for a Fall 2009 opening in which we'll admit a class of 9th graders, meaning that we'll have 15 months or so to put together the entire 9th grade curriculum's worth of OERs built out to stand-alone quality (i.e., not OERs to supplement textbooks, OERs as the primary content for the high school). Then in 2010 we'll do 9th and 10th grade, etc., until in 2012 we're running all four years of high school. All the materials will be freely available, as will our charter document, as will all the technology we will use to run the school. We hope to be a model of how OERs can revolutionize the practice and the funding of both learning AND education... D On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Leigh Blackall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :) Maybe I should clarify what I say about learning being free, education still costs I mean the same as you mean - learning is what people are always free to do, and with todays enhanced capacity to access information and communication, learning might be vastly improved. But what is education in all that? Well, to me education is the formality that we agree is the extra, inflated, and fee driven bit. Education is the bit of paper that says you have been learning... So I think we actually agree, but it may be that I'm being a bit too cynical in my use of the work education. Here's a longer post I wrote on it if you're still troubled by my slogan. On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM, simonfj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others... Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in... Cormac, There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day (soon), see these two references;http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/http ://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~luca/papers/07/wikiwww2007.pdf Ooo! I can't see it. But that's only because i never have. Evaluation to me, and I've had to employ graduates to do media jobs, always comes down to seeing of they, or their teachers, can do it. i.e. have institutions prepared the inexperienced for it?. Old industries, no problem. New industries, like the interactive media ones; rarely a clue. Let me give you an illustration of a change going back 30 years. Unis were trying to teach AV production stuff. Many didn't have a recording desk. Even fewer had relationships with bands or actors interested in recording. Even if some students did, they wouldn't be encouraged to bring those noisy long haired gits into a lovely clean studio. So one dirty engineer in Sydney started offering courses in his studio, which now, though some unis in 49 countries, offers accredited courses. http://www.sae.edu/. But it wasn't until the unis were included in the Learning mix of enough working engineers that the accreditations were given. Until then, we usually just gave students a piece of paper, and for the more determined, helped them find them a job. Now a three month course has inflated to three years. The thing i find fascinating - when watching new interactive global media institutions, like Wikipedia, et al, get their Project Groups' Learning ground(s) together and professionalize good habits, while at the same time watching national Teaching institutions struggling to think outside their squares - is that nothing seems to have changed. In the professionals' web space, you see the beginnings of global interactive environments, which are obviously self sustaining and appear to help people meet peers, get their heads around the things a good web designer needs to know and maybe get some (paid) experience. http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/ And then you look at unis' web sites/ brochureware, ho! ho! One obviously puts an emphasis on their members' communications, the other on the institution's information. i.e. communicating global GROUPS vs, National (.edu) NETWORKS. As Cormac
[WikiEducator] Re: International accredited OER based university
Peter, The content will be open to everyone, but enrollment in the school will be restricted to those in the state of Utah (since the state govt pays the bills). D On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, This is great to read. What an amazing step to put all this forward as an OER Highschool. You say it will be free to students in Utah, will students outside of Utah still have access? Or will all this just be open within the state of Utah? And therefore be used to prove out the model... There is one thing that jumps out at me from within this discussion thread. Are we mis-using the word Education within OER. As we seem to have agreement that Education is the whole, where learning is what you do with the resources. Education includes the assessment, accreditation, etc. that the educational institutions provide. Shouldn't we really be calling these materials Open Learning Resources (OLR). My point being (in the context of this Bissell article; http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bissellboyleedtecarticle.pdf); Don't we require Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accrediation before we can achieve OER? Because this then makes free the whole of Education. Wikipedia and Open Source have nothing restraining their domain toward openness. OER has a huge restraint in that Assessment and Accreditation are still closed. As we stumble toward OER don't we need to wrestle it (assessment, accreditaion) away from the institutions (like MIT, UNESCO, OU, etc) and also make it open and free? And not until we have wrestled it away, OERs success will be restrained. I wonder what Paulo Friere would have to say about the institutions still controlling the Assessment and Accreditation? I look forward to your reply(ies)... P On Mar 26, 8:40 am, David Wiley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Simon and Leigh, We haven't been talking about it much, because we're still one step in the approval process away, but for a year now we've been working on establishing the Open High School of Utah - a publicly funded (and therefore free as in beer to students in the state of Utah) completely online high school that uses OERs exclusively throughout the entire curriculum. The final approval should be given this May for a Fall 2009 opening in which we'll admit a class of 9th graders, meaning that we'll have 15 months or so to put together the entire 9th grade curriculum's worth of OERs built out to stand-alone quality (i.e., not OERs to supplement textbooks, OERs as the primary content for the high school). Then in 2010 we'll do 9th and 10th grade, etc., until in 2012 we're running all four years of high school. All the materials will be freely available, as will our charter document, as will all the technology we will use to run the school. We hope to be a model of how OERs can revolutionize the practice and the funding of both learning AND education... D On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Leigh Blackall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :) Maybe I should clarify what I say about learning being free, education still costs I mean the same as you mean - learning is what people are always free to do, and with todays enhanced capacity to access information and communication, learning might be vastly improved. But what is education in all that? Well, to me education is the formality that we agree is the extra, inflated, and fee driven bit. Education is the bit of paper that says you have been learning... So I think we actually agree, but it may be that I'm being a bit too cynical in my use of the work education. Here's a longer post I wrote on it if you're still troubled by my slogan. On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM, simonfj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others... Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in... Cormac, There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day (soon), see these two references;http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/http://www.s... Ooo! I can't see it. But that's only because i never have. Evaluation to me, and I've had to employ graduates to do media jobs, always comes down to seeing of they, or their teachers, can do it. i.e. have institutions prepared the inexperienced for it?. Old industries, no problem. New industries, like the interactive media ones; rarely a clue. Let me give you an illustration of a change going back 30 years. Unis were trying to teach AV
[WikiEducator] Re: International accredited OER based university
This is awesome David, it will be right up there with the South African Curriculum on Wikibooks, but taking it one step further by the sound of it. Peter, I agree.. many are perhaps misusing the word 'education', but rest assured, Otago Polytechnic is working towards Open Education as well as Open Learning... I think this is an important distinction you make in the OER effort and should be carried further. It will help up the ante I reckon, into what you initially call for in this thread... Open Access, Open Learning AND Open Education.. and if that can be free (as in beer) then great! Or at least, vastly reduced in cost... On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, David Wiley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Peter, The content will be open to everyone, but enrollment in the school will be restricted to those in the state of Utah (since the state govt pays the bills). D On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David, This is great to read. What an amazing step to put all this forward as an OER Highschool. You say it will be free to students in Utah, will students outside of Utah still have access? Or will all this just be open within the state of Utah? And therefore be used to prove out the model... There is one thing that jumps out at me from within this discussion thread. Are we mis-using the word Education within OER. As we seem to have agreement that Education is the whole, where learning is what you do with the resources. Education includes the assessment, accreditation, etc. that the educational institutions provide. Shouldn't we really be calling these materials Open Learning Resources (OLR). My point being (in the context of this Bissell article; http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bissellboyleedtecarticle.pdf ); Don't we require Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accrediation before we can achieve OER? Because this then makes free the whole of Education. Wikipedia and Open Source have nothing restraining their domain toward openness. OER has a huge restraint in that Assessment and Accreditation are still closed. As we stumble toward OER don't we need to wrestle it (assessment, accreditaion) away from the institutions (like MIT, UNESCO, OU, etc) and also make it open and free? And not until we have wrestled it away, OERs success will be restrained. I wonder what Paulo Friere would have to say about the institutions still controlling the Assessment and Accreditation? I look forward to your reply(ies)... P On Mar 26, 8:40 am, David Wiley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Simon and Leigh, We haven't been talking about it much, because we're still one step in the approval process away, but for a year now we've been working on establishing the Open High School of Utah - a publicly funded (and therefore free as in beer to students in the state of Utah) completely online high school that uses OERs exclusively throughout the entire curriculum. The final approval should be given this May for a Fall 2009 opening in which we'll admit a class of 9th graders, meaning that we'll have 15 months or so to put together the entire 9th grade curriculum's worth of OERs built out to stand-alone quality (i.e., not OERs to supplement textbooks, OERs as the primary content for the high school). Then in 2010 we'll do 9th and 10th grade, etc., until in 2012 we're running all four years of high school. All the materials will be freely available, as will our charter document, as will all the technology we will use to run the school. We hope to be a model of how OERs can revolutionize the practice and the funding of both learning AND education... D On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Leigh Blackall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :) Maybe I should clarify what I say about learning being free, education still costs I mean the same as you mean - learning is what people are always free to do, and with todays enhanced capacity to access information and communication, learning might be vastly improved. But what is education in all that? Well, to me education is the formality that we agree is the extra, inflated, and fee driven bit. Education is the bit of paper that says you have been learning... So I think we actually agree, but it may be that I'm being a bit too cynical in my use of the work education. Here's a longer post I wrote on it if you're still troubled by my slogan. On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM, simonfj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others... Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in... Cormac, There is a body of
