Hi Leo,
OCW is an impressive project by virtue of MITs involvement. They were
certainly a landmark project in the global OER landscape. However, I'm
not a great fan of many of the OCW initiatives for the following
reasons:
* Most OCW projects, including MIT use the NC restriction in their
license, and technically this is a "non-free" content license
which is not approved by the free cultural works definition
(see: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition ). Fortunately WE
uses licenses which are approved <smile>.
* Most OCW projects are not community driven projects in the sense
that its more difficult to participate collaboratively in
content development. That's not to say that we have got
collaborative development right in WE -- but there are no
philosophical or technological barriers to collaboration. WE
encourages and tries its best to connect people from different
parts of the world working on similar projects.
* WE goes out of its way to build capacity in developing OERs,
especially in the developing world -- for example the L4C
initiative.
If we look at the global OER landscape I see two generic approaches:
* Producer-consumer models of OER development (eg MIT OCW) --
currently the majority of OER projects
* Collaborative-peer production models like WE, Wikiversity and
Wikibooks.
My personal view is that the open and distributed peer production models
will achieve sustainability before the producer-consumer models --
simply because of the principles of self-organisation and the infinite
scalability of distributed production systems.
Granter -- we all have lots to learn regarding the best ways to achieve
sustainability of the OER movement -- but everyday WE're getting better
at doing this.
Thanks for the though provoking post.
Cheers
Wayne
On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 22:53 +0800, Wong Leo wrote:
> it is very late in China , but before I go to bed ,wake up forgot what
> I wanted to say to George Simens's Post :
>
> 1 I think it is totally or partly waste of time to translate the
> whole course of MIT especially what Taiwan is doing now , too
> radical , let me finish , they even translate the name wrong into
> Chinese !
>
> 2 I am particularyly interested in how Developing countries develop
> their own OER and what kinda of OER existed in those countries
> especially to do with Non-technology course like Chinese history or
> Chinese history
>
> 3 I feel strong about the culture part of Creataing and reuse OER , I
> think WE does have a culture projects going on , how is it now ?
>
> 4 I am interested to hear about what you have to say George Simens
> comments on OER
>
> Leo
>
>
> 2008/5/6 Wong Leo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> was at CNIE earlier this week and participated on this panel
> discussingopen educational resources (OERs). Educators are
> periodically afflicted with a psychological condition called
> "Cute Kitten Syndrome". This syndrome manifests itself as
> evoking perceived universal favor for an idea or concept and
> with those opposing cast as lacking some key element that
> comprises humanity. I mean, really, who doesn't love cute
> furry kittens? If a person is to speak against OERs, they are
> essentially revealing their callus nature. But, I must say a
> few critical things. First, I'm in favor of OERs as a concept.
> In fact, in 2003, a group of us started a community on open
> educational resources based on a few articles I had posted
> online (Free and Open Source - Part 1 and Part 2 and Why we
> should share learning resources) and Stephen Downes' concept
> of DLORN. Summary notes from our first meeting are here: Open
> Education: Moving from concept to reality. We set up a few
> discussions, ran a few listservs for a while, tried to
> organize sub-committees, but things never really moved forward
> as Stephen and I had hoped (well, as I had hoped, anyway). The
> group slowly breathed its last and the domain name went to the
> land of unfulfilled dreams. Where are we now with OERs? The
> term is used very broadly and the landscape is shifting
> constantly. MITs OpenCourseWare initiative is often cited as
> the starting point of OERs, but David Wiley and others were
> already dealing with the notion of openness from a licensing
> perspective in the late 90's. (Slightly off topic, David's
> involved in a new project with open textbooks: Flat World
> Knowledge). Some view OERs as simply making resources freely
> available. Some - such as OCWconsortium have a required
> minimum commitment in order to participate. And it appears,
> that OERs are the new hype feature of educational
> conferences...almost getting to the learning object and
> repository level of late 90's early 00's. We're in that same
> happy state of chaos where we find ourselves in so many areas
> of emerging technologies - moving too fast with too many
> voices to give this thing a concise name. As we were. While I
> have huge appreciation for OERs and hold out for the prospect
> that OERs will truly make a difference to people who most need
> them, I still have a few critical views. 1). Why OERs? What
> are we trying to achieve? Marketing our institution? Reducing
> costs for learners? Better quality learning materials? Making
> the world a better place? Help people in developing countries?
> What's your motivation or the motivation of your institution
> in pursuing OERs? I fear too many educators are talking about
> it because others are. Look deep within your soul. Why are you
> interested in OERs? What can we do with them that we cannot do
> under our current system? From my perspective, resources
> developed with public funds should be accessible by the
> public. Journals publishing research funded by the government
> should be open. Content/curriculum created by public
> institutions should be made public. Additionally, education
> has been listed as one of the primary determinants of life
> expectancy, reduction of poverty, etc. To deny people access
> to education has an ethical dimension. In a wealthy country,
> we could make the argument that learners who pay for their
> education possess a reasonable prospect of earning sufficient
> revenue from having a degree that some trade off is possible.
> I won't get into this discussion here...after all, even in a
> prosperous country, opportunities for education are confined
> to a certain segment of society. In developing countries,
> those with greatest need to access education, are often locked
> out due to high resource issues. A typical learner from Africa
> cannot afford to attend a well known university. It's not just
> that finances are a burden. Finances are an insurmountable
> barrier. But to withhold the prospect of education to learners
> in developing countries is to condemn people to the
> possibility of a perpetual cycle of poverty. For me, that's
> the big "why" of OERs, but concerns exist with targeting this
> audience, as detailed in #3. 2). OERs are window dressing if
> systems and structures of education do not change. Toward the
> end of the panel, one member stated "OERs can change
> education". No. They can't. OERs, like blogs, wikis, podcasts,
> and other ideas and tools are daily blips in the long term
> trend of how we are interacting differently with information
> and with each other. OERs have not yet achieved divine status.
> I don't think they will. They are an important reflection of
> the larger trend wave, but the are not driving the larger
> trend. Paul A. David in The Dynamo and the Computer: An
> Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox
> suggests systems are confined by previous innovations. New
> innovations, in a very McLuhanesque sort of way, are used to
> do the work of previous innovations. It's only when we change
> the system that we change significantly. In our interaction
> with information, we have many constraining elements from
> previous innovations such as books, libraries, and even the
> design of school systems. Deep, significant, and systemic
> change is required (he says in a non-sweeping, non-overstated,
> kind of way). 3) OERs exhibit (are embedded with) certain
> ideologies/views/pedagogies, etc. For a student in the Middle
> East to use MITs resources requires they use the English
> language...or Aboriginal learner lose Indigenous knowledge
> when encountering resources created with a different world
> view. Better yet, how do we encourage people in developing
> countries to create their own OERs and export them to our
> countries? I had a discussion following the session with an
> individual who felt that as other culture appropriate OERs,
> they would naturally inject their identity and their culture.
> I'm not sure. But, in fairness, there are many things we are
> not sure about with regard to OERs. Who is using the
> resources? How are they being used? I've heard of Chinese
> students translating entire MIT courses into Chinese. How
> common is this? What is the impact of these courses? Why are
> students taking them? For personal interest or part of an
> academic program? And how will we sustain these initiatives?
> We need more research on the actual impact. BTW, I do like
> cute kittens.
>
> the above is taken from
>
> http://connectivism.ca/blog/2008/04/open_educational_resources_fur.html
>
> well my 2 cents , I strongly disagree with Georget Simens in
> many aspects , but agree with him also in many parts
> painfully ?
>
> Leo
>
> http://wikieducator.com/user:leolaoshi
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> blog:http://leolaoshi.yo2.cn
> HELP项目https://groups.google.com/group/helpelephantsliveproject
> >
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