commonspace

Planting seeds with open content

John Moravec of Education Futures posted today on the Cape Town Declaration, worrying that open course materials will do little to change education. He asks:

Is there something else that we should focus on where we can use new technological and social models to develop innovative tools for education?

The answer is: of course! There are dozens of things that pop to mind immediately: Tools that capture, share and evolve the tacit knowledge involved in teaching practices (LAMS). Peer-to-peer learning platforms where students support each other and teachers become more like facilitators (Kusasa). Sites that connect 'amateur' teachers with interested learners (The School of Everything). For-credit classes that embed students in the real time, hands on learning environment of an open source software community (Seneca College). Or simply DIY learning by doing, which is the point of the web and open source in the first place (Wikipedia). While most of these are nascent examples yet to scale or even prove themselves, they hint at where things are going.

It surprises me how many people jump to the conclusion that the Cape Town Declaration ignores all this. The people who wrote the Declaration -- and I suspect most people who signed it -- totally get how education can and is changing. That's why the Declaration says things like:

We have a chance to nurture a new generation of learners who engage with open educational materials, are empowered by their learning and share their new knowledge and insights with others.

... and encourages people not only to think about content but also to:

... pursue additional strategies in open educational technology, open sharing of teaching practices and other approaches that promote the broader cause of open education.

We have a huge opportunity to transform what we mean by 'education' in the next 25 years. This will (hopefully) include a shift to more participatory, p2p, informal, learner driven approaches education.This shift may in turn totally transform how we deal with accreditation (can I prove what I taught myself) and even the whole way we organize publicly funded education (can me and my friends set up our own school with tax dollars?). While no one agrees on exactly how this will (or should) play out, one thing is clear: it won't happen all at once.

This is one reason the Cape Town Declaration focuses on educational content. We need a place to start. Opening up the content we use for learning, making it not only accessible but also remixable, is a super important first step. Once we've got the political, legal and technical seeds of a remix culture spread throughout the world of education, who knows what else we can create? I guess the idea is that we get to invent it along the way.

Old leftists are so boring

David Wiley came back with a Cape Town Declaration Spoof Both Funny and Depressing retort last night. Making the Linux / open content comparison, he writes:

If you’re having trouble imagining what Linux would look like without the involvement and support of these companies, let me help you out - just think about where open education is today.

He is right, of course. The underlying 'keep free content (or software or whatever) pure and non-commercial'  arguments behind the spoof are boohucky. We live if a hybridized-overlapping-all-the-models-and-boundaries-you-grew-up-with-are-gone kinda world. That's a good and creative thing.

Personally, I try to steer clear of arguments on this topic. They're old and they're tired. Laughing is easier and nicer.

Of course, I am happy to engage in what I see as the bigger underlying question here: how to we rebuild our political imagination now that 19th century notions of left vs. right / commercial vs. social / owner vs. worker are totally broken? We desperately need new political lenses. Digging into 'open' and imagining what these new lenses might look like is a very interesting topic indeed.

Open education revolution picks up steam

The conversation about open education picked up some steam yesterday with the official launch of the Cape Town Declaration yesterday. There was lots of good coverage including a nice piece on ZDNet UK and an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle by Jimmy and Rich. I just posted the following to Slashdot:

"ZDNet is running a story on the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which is "... designed to echo the disruptive effect that open source had on the proprietary software world by opening up the development and distribution of educational materials." The declaration calls for more educational materials to be open sourced and freely shared (like MIT did), and says that "all taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open". Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu), Larry Lessig (CC), musician Peter Gabriel and hundreds of teachers have already signed the Declaration."

... to try to build buzz further. If you want to help out, you can click here to vote for this article and get it on the Slashdot editors' radar.

There was some criticism of the Declaration before it launched. Philipp Schmidt did a great job of summarizing and countering the key criticisms in a post yesterday.My guess is that there will be more debate as the buzz builds. Of course, that's partly the point of the Declaration in the first place: to amp up the conversation about open education.

If you want to keep track of the Cape Town Declaration buzz, watch David Wiley's blog and track the 'capetowndeclaration' tag on del.icio.us.

As my friend Maureen says: wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. This is fun.

Cape Town Declaration. Read it! Sign it!

Over the past couple of months, I have been working with an amazing group of people committed to the idea of open education. The group ranged from university lecturers from South Africa to a woman managing a free textbook project in Uganda to America open education pioneers to a free culture activist from Poland to the founder of Wikipedia. Coming from a dozen countries, it was one of the most diverse, productive and creative groups I have worked with in a long time.

Working together, this group has produced the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. Intended to inspire and accelerate the growth of open education, the Declaration begins:

"We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go."

While these may sound like high-minded, idealistic words, they reflect something that is actually going on. There is an open education movement afoot around the world. And, the aims of this movement are as ambitious as those of projects like Wikipedia, not only providing access to all knowledge but injecting collaboration in to the core of how we create and share knowledge.

Of course, the Declaration is not just about big visions. It also includes a number of practical strategies and recommendations. All taxpayer-funded educational content should be open educational content. Open educational content should be licensed so that it is not just free as in beer, but also free for remixing, translating and redistribution. Teachers should be supported and rewarded if they want to engage in open education. These ideas can guide our daily open education practice and also act as policy levers, especially if we can get 1000s of people to sign on to the Declaration.

It's worth noting that we've already taken some flack for the Declaration. Concerns have been around things like the need to better include informal learning and the strong focus on open educational resources. There have been some very good (and more eloquent than I could have written) responses as well, especially from David Wiley.

Please take a look at the Cape Town Declaration, let us know what you think ... and sign on if you agree.

Talking about open education (Thursday)

I am scheduled to give this talk about open education in South Africa at the Seneca open source symposium this Thursday. The general gist of my talk is:

South Africa has tremendous potential, with a new generation of young people poised to become global leaders and innovators. Unfortunately, most of these young people are attending schools that are underfunded, lack teachers and have poor access to educational materials. Tapping into South Africa's potential will require dramatic improvements -- and innovations -- in how education works. The question is: can open source thinking spark these innovations? Would free, editable textbooks for every grade make a difference? Could students teach logic and analysis skills to each other? Can schools and local entrepreneurs team up to make sure students have access to the Internet? These are some of the questions that South Africa's Shuttleworth Foundation is asking. This talk will provide an overview of three Shuttleworth Foundation initiates that apply open source thinking to the challenge of radically improving education in South Africa.

This will be mashup of my Ubuntu Live presentation, the paper I did with Philipp and the emerging Cape Town Declaration. Oh, and bits from my talk on the broader meaning of open.

David Eaves and I are also planning to convene a lunchtime conversation on open source community management. The blurb we've written goes like this:

Open source. Open communities? What make open source communities work? What are the biggest challenges for community managers? Join us for lunch on day 2 of FSOSS to dig into these questions. Hosted by blogger David Eaves and Mark Surman from the Shuttleworth Foundation.

We're doing this partly because we're simply interested in community management, and partly because we have an instinct that open source community building techniques also have alot to offer outside the software domain.

You can still register for the Seneca Free Software and Open Source Symposium online. It's a great event. If you are in Toronto and have some flex time on Thursday and Friday, it's worth attending. Hell, I'll even offer to give you a drive from downtown if you need one.