OpenEd+2007+-+Day+1

"The Prospects and Challenges of OER for development in Nepal" - Manohar Bhattarai
"Telecentres" - provide easy and affordable access to ICT; community located centres pop = 25million, growth 2.5%/year Priorities - sustainable development and poverty reduction; improvements in health, education and agriculture, "Millenium Development Goals" Need to provide support to health providers, teachers, the "changes agents" in these communities challenges - low level of outreach of education services, quality divide between private and public schools huge connectivity issues - $1500-1700USD/month for satellite/radio link "Open Centre for Excellence" for developing countries? - need to help developing countries develop THEIR OWN OERs, so that the knowledge that is being shared is relevant to their context.

Part II - Ramita Shrestha [|Nepal Youth Managed Resource Centers]
"Rural Info Tech Centre" she is the manager and 'mobilizer' the image of the 2 computers in the Rural ITC Centre is powerfull in illustrating the true Digital Divide with the developing world "website printout" - much of the content is experienced this way and not online because of the lack of machines and connectivity I find myself humbled when faced with the real challenges faced by the speakers in Nepal. I already feel grateful to this conference for bringing me back to this reality. Faced with this, the idea that "open education" is a basic human right doesn't seem contentious at all

=A Way Forward for Open Educational Resources: Deliberations of an International Community of Interest= Susan D’Antoni and David Wiley Susan was not able to attend; David gave the talk synopsis of OECD community that has been discussing the issues for the last 2 years (email forums!) - cf http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER:_Findings_from_an_OECD_study In light of the discussions around connectivity, my attitude towards email forums looks a lot like 1st world chauvinism. email *is* anappropriate technology if the developing world is to be able to participate in the discussions.

INTERLUDE: KEY IDEA - Open Educational Resources as a fundamental responsability of the developed world. But also moving away from strictly North-South knowledge transfer

[|Designing Appropriate Collaborative Learning Technologies for the Developing World]. Christopher Hoadley
metaphor of British planting pines in India to supply paper making - creating monocultures, non-native species understanding the context of content is critical to knowing if it can be sustainable context of project - working on project in the Himalayas for the last 4 years "conserving things 'as they are' is rarely sustainable the realities of trying to role out ICTs in Uttarakhand in a statewide effort- high cost; generators too loud; didactic style; content weak; community unimpressed vs. Community Balwadi - 1st thing they do is set up a women's group; create a Balwadi (community hub, allows for employment of girls, a pre-school) - locally based community and pedagogy biggest predictor of whether girls would go to school - how far from their house was fire and water, b/c if someone has to get these, it will be the girls - connection to the global economy was what created dependence - really an issue of *inter*dependence


 * get a copy of the awesome picture of the importance of community in relation to education - almost identical to Chris Lott's diagram***

gave kids video cameras and training (trained the girls who then trained the boys) and sent them out into the community to film stories about how things are done, history, cultural stories, told by people from the community. They dictate the importance

What are the differences that make the video camera exmaple work - Infrastructure - uses cameras and video players (not relying on computers and network that don't exist) - Content - is local - pedagogy - works because kids are engaged with community issues and generating content - costs - about $1000/school

compares OLPC against their grid (Infrastructure/Content/Pedagogy/Values/Cost) and finds it mostly a wash; oone laptop per child is isloating, doesn't reflect the communal generation and onership of knowledge that is found in these communities

=OpenCourseWare in Motion- Pedro Pernias= "if you've got it, flaunt it" while it is all well and good to offer the legal rights to alter OERs, if they are offered in technical formats that are not amenable to simple alteration by faculty, many of the rights will not be exercised - no RSS for MIT OWC courses - why? well, no 'news' after a course is published OCW -> send2wiki -> dokuwiki there is definitely better ways to do this!!! scrap it automaticallly (I guess this is kind of what it is doing); cf. http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010236.html and also http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/openlearndaily/ (All hail Tony Hirst, RSS pirate!!! ) N.B. see 'OCW In Motion' Plugin - http://ocwinmotion.com/doku.php - COOL; set of dokuwiki plugins that in conjunction with send2wiki wikify any existing OCW content and add other collaborativve features (including RSS feeds) to the new page, turning OCW courses into live, usable courses. "when instructors start to do OCW they change from 'showing' courses to 'offering' them" doesn't capture on paper how he said it, nice turn of phrase

=Open Content: When is it Effective Educationally?= Andy Lane

what is open content - anything with an open license on it what is an OER - is it b/c creator deemed it to be so? b/c the learner learned from it? (YES!) open content contexts (formal, non-formal, blended, online, static, dynamic) overlayed on open content; overlayed atop this is "community discourse" (learner-learner; learner-teacher)

"not everybody is a sophisticated learner. in fact most people are not" Learner-content Interaction - prior sense-making, level of engagement, testing sense-making, augmented sense-making, community involvement very boring presentation, seemed kind of obvious.

=Open Content in Education: The Instructor Benefits of OpenCourseWare= Preston Parker

anecdote - Weird Al gave away his last album and it was the only one to get into the top 10 on Bllboard sales __**benefts to instructors**__
 * __Benefits of Open Content__**
 * Better Quality - all the eyeballs finding bugs
 * Better compensation to Creators (credit to the right person)
 * More Efficient
 * Less Expensive Product (eliminate the intermediary)
 * __How are Creators compensated in an open content model__**
 * traditional methods
 * supplementary goods (anecdote of Star Wars kids selling his image to clothing companies)
 * supplementary service and support - linux resellers/support
 * sponsorship/endorsement
 * advertising
 * __Benefits of OCW__**
 * institutions**
 * recruitment (anecdote - 8% of MIT freshman indicated that the OCW content played a role)
 * showcase outstanding faculty content
 * consolidate on and off campus sites
 * offer alumni lifelong learning opportunities
 * make connections with lifelong learners
 * students**
 * increase opportunities for those not in class
 * access course materials before and after course.
 * recognition
 * marketing (Do instructors actually want the institutional 'brand' on their open content?)
 * leave an accessible academic legacy
 * connections networking/collaboration
 * reach learners not otherwise reachable
 * increase class enrollments
 * easier content dissemination
 * instructor learning about novel uses of the course content
 * the openness of the resource can add value to their portfolio for tenure (where closed CMS content does not) - "almost equivalent to a peer reviewed publication" in eyes of tenure committee
 * the openness of the resource can add value to their portfolio for tenure (where closed CMS content does not) - "almost equivalent to a peer reviewed publication" in eyes of tenure committee