> > In a word, Yes. A key, not "the" key, but one of the next ones the world > will see. > > >> OERs are as big an advance as printed textbooks were > > > Yes. > > If you think of OER as "transparent, static, non-reusable publications > related to education" then I can see why you would not be excited about > their generative potential. > > But if you think of the movement as "global communities collaborating to > unify, organize, interconnect, enrich, and freely share knowledge" in the > context of education, then you have one of the cornerstones of societal > development in our generation. > > Thanks Sam,
Using the latter description I do of course. I'm just not sure how it changes the sociall dynamic of teachers being employed to reduce students to what they know. E.g. I'm in Phuket, Thailand. So many of the students here are being educated for (lots of) jobs in the tourism industry. When i talk to the Burmese illegals who do the talking on the front of many hotels and resturants, langauge is something picked up through necessity. When I talk to the students st the unis; well I can't, because their teachers can't and English and other languages are a minor, and/or badly taught part of the curricula. So the students are unemployable (acording to my discussions around the traps) . Same in southern spain, same in Italy, same in Portugal. It's this cultural thing which every OERer is working at changing. Call it distance learning, call it telework<http://www.techsource.ironbow.com/unified-communication/teleworks-achilles-heel-comes-down-to-culture/>. The thing I'm aways looking for, apart from getting some cool, easy to use and lowest costs "open network" tools to people who are a bit set in their ways, is how to present OER content so that it's more like a zerohedge. (if you notice, this is just a "scraping' from correspondents who are scattered around the web, where many of the ideas are resourced by the masthead journos, like cnbc, wsj, etc, usually after a prediction of an event comes true) The obstacle for OER today is that because not many teachers are seen to be collaborating, there's no one to learn from. And if we emphasize, "resources" and not "collaboration" the general message it sends (to an unimaginative mind) is "produce". So anyone coming through a"professional development" teacher's course has the collaboration drilled out of them. The hardest thing in all of this is that people are paid to live in an institution. Naturally, they are paid to believe in certain things, like "WE know what cognitive skills are. So how anyone can classify media into the two distinct boxes of "education" and "entertainment" I'll never understand. Regardless I do like the OER philosophy. You meet such nice people. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
