Thanks Steve, Rebecca, It's a bit "do as i say, not what I do" isn't it?
Can we work this through as It's driving (driven) me nuts as well. The "Related Movements" that you are talking about take all sorts of forms. You point out that "client" software for OPEN operating systems is one. One would have thought that using a browser-based conferencing product for an OER get-together would have been obvious. These days, most of the "software for open operating systems" issues evaporate as bandwidth increases and "the (non flash) cloud/browser" model becomes the norm. If there is any question as to what I'm saying when I call it a "cloud/browser model" please tell me. Meantime, most app makers in the mobile market are going to have to produce at least 5 (Operating system) versions if they want to stay in the game. For some time at least. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mobile_os.png OER's most influential "related movement", from my perspective, is run by their member's network managers, i.e. the NRENs. I don't know what you'd call the movement. Perhaps 'Open Networks Movement' (ONM) might serve. The network, and apps, managers of NATIONAL Network Operations Centers (NOC) have the same problems as the OER movement. They don't know how to best "serve both the (international) individuals who use OCW (in this OER org's case) AND the (national) institutions that make OCW possible". i.e. http://www.ocwconsortium.org/en/members/members or e.g. http://communities.ocwconsortium.org/groups/ocwoer-research/ It's hard to serve two masters. (sorry for all the acronyms) So far as looking after "individuals or small groups" are concerned, NREN managers, invariably working on a National basis, are leaving this space to global "commodity service providors" like google and other proprietary platforms. Most OERers have had a play with them; go- to-meeting, Elluminate, etc,etc. NREN managers do collaborate in supporting the high bandwidth global specialists on a project-by- project basis. e.g. infereometry, halodren collider, grids, etc. This situation is further complicated because our OER ideas about an individual's lifelong learning override those of a nation's institutional teaching. In general talk? We want our National institutions to be "user centric", "more transparent" and "globally minded". N.B. By "institutions" I'm talking about all publically funded institutions. Egov, escience, eresearch, elearning, etc are just convenient banners that each profession uses to describe the same aspirations. The two groups - open network managers and open content creators/ curators (mousetrap builders and cheese makers) - have different professional ways of acheiving their common mission. To concretely illustrate the mousetraper's work, look at eduroam. This service allows users from one institution to go to any uni (and other non-edu institutions) around the country/world, open their laptops/device and use their home credentials to go online/gain access. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduroam Wayne mentioned that he's never been able to get the NREN's to buy into the OER agenda (as opposed to OERers buying into theirs). But they are helping. Last year has been a sea of discussion with the taskforce-for-media guys in Europe (tf-media) about how proud they are to provide services that "capture lectures" and, individually (i.e nationally), aggregate their own versions of youtube, in their country's language. The content is quite terrible, like most OER. I've heard the OER discussions about "achieving critical mass". Let's be clear. We're drowning in content, most of which is buried on some url and never looked at, twice. The problem we have is finding GooD (peer reviewed, well produced) OER. Connexions points the way. But more importantly, we lack a way for peers to find peers so they can review and share production costs. We also lack a business model which encourages them to do so. So let's look at at point of engagement with the network managers. It could begin with this group of federators. http://refeds.org/resources_info.html If you go through the list of the (publically funded) ID providers it becomes obvious that refed guys have limited contact with individual content communities. They are institution-centric and "services" orientated. The quality of content, or the way it's aggegated and disseminated, is not on their agenda. The fundamental points are that OERers have, up to now, largely been working hard at (poorly) producing duplicated content, in various forms and formats, which largely remain buried inside institutional sites. The refed guys have, on the other hand, are trying to provide an open inter-institutional framework so peers inside institutions can collaborate, share their apps/services & learning, and disseminate their courses/findings. Both initiatives are largely institutionally focussed. Both movements lack two things; a common directory (for Virtual Home Organisations, VHO is what aarnet call groups like wikieducator that span institutions) and agreement on a prioritized list of services. Compare the FederationServices tab for each NREN. https://refeds.terena.org/index.php/Federations . Confusion reigns because they can't decide whether they should be serving the institutions or the individuals, which each institution is supposed to serve. OK. That's enough for now. I'll go into the directory idea if anyone has an interest. It centers on one other "related movement". Maybe we could call it "open content preservation". http://www.educopia.org/past_events The main reason for my big mouthedness is that the network guys are changing their habits. http://www.terena.org/news/fullstory.php?news_id=2924 Thanks for putting up with the rave. simon -- 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 [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
