Forwarding Valerie's great post and my response to all our lists on collabOERate :-)
Read on ... W ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wayne Mackintosh <[email protected]> Date: 20 March 2010 11:09 Subject: Re: [WE Council] Supporting WikiEducators in walking the talk :-) To: [email protected] HI Valerie, Great insights and questions. "Technical" interoperability is an important dimension and I think Stephen is right to suggest using RSS feed mechanisms to help widen access and break down OER silos. This will certainly help. I also think that its important to build OERs collaboratively, to share OERs and to collaborate on how to use them. We should be doing all this stuff. My concern with the OER silos is not related to OER interoperability per se but rather the lack of collaboration in the international OER landscape that seeks to build on the strengths and core competencies of individual projects, eliminating unnecessary duplication in the co-opetion sense of the word -- i.e. where we agree to work together so that all our projects get better at what they do. - How many OER projects who are supposedly committed to the idea of sharing, develop their funding proposals as open content? - How many OER projects who are supposedly committed to the idea of sharing, license their administrative and legal documents under open licenses (eg membership agreements, policies etc) We could reduce wastage and unnecessary duplication by an order of magniture by sharing these resources. - Do those of us working in OER really get and understand the meaning of open? The emergent thinking about "collabOERate" for me, is more about fostering the growth of the OER ecosystem. I think this is a behavioural change for educators and organisations (as opposed to a technical interoperability). I think the notion of a network (recognising that this is a very restricted metaphor to represent an ecosystem) can help to illustrate the opportunities for change and future success of OER. Eben Mogline uses the analogy of pipes and switches to explain the "network". Pipes carry the digital data between A and B. Pipes don't make value judgements -- they just move the knowledge around. The switches (or nodes in the network) make value judgements. They determine who gets access to what, the price etc. The nodes regulate the stream and the flow of the data and where the money gets invested to support projects. Think of OER as the pipes. Ideas, knowledge and educational materials that want to be free :-). It shouldn't matter where the OER artefacts reside. Think of the OER projects (silos) and their respective institutions as switches in the network. These are the individuals and organisations that control and regulate access to the OER. While I'm not a great fan of learning management systems, why does content imported from an external source using the technical interoperability specifications always look less elegant than the original content generated within the respective system itself? W3C and TCP/IP are de-facto interoperability standards of the network. So who is sitting round the table determining the specifications like IMS? What are the interests and motivations of the traditional distributors of knowledge in development of these specifications? Ebin Moglins thoughts on the system of ownership of ideas is well worth a look to help is think about what this means for OER. Check out these three short videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN00_v7gpbo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDFVAA_Mb5c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlf_3JD3l8I CollabOERate is still a fledgling concept -- but I think its important for us to ask ourselves about the behavioural change that is required to take OER to new levels. - What are the the non-zero sum solutions to take OER to the next level for all projects to become more efficient, successful and sustainable? Great conversation. Wayne 20 March 2010 06:04, Valerie Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > Are these projects concerned with building OERs collaboratively, > sharing OERs or collaborating on how to use them? > > Stephen Downes regularly writes about OER RSS feed mechanisms and the > like as a means to get around the problem of OER silos. Is that an > activity that would be within scope? > > ..Valerie > > > On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:49 PM, Wayne Mackintosh > <[email protected]> wrote: > > HI Erik, > > > > LOL :-) > > > > We're getting serious about promoting collabOERation --- among OER > > initiatives. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "WikiEducator Community Council" group. > To post to this group, send email to > [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<wikieducator-community-council%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator-community-council?hl=en. > > -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. 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