[Open-education] Open Government Data: Helping Parents to find the Best School for their Kids

Wed Jun 4 13:54:42 UTC 2014

Hi Pat and Terry,

Thanks for your contributions here. They've given me a lot of food for 
thought and I will look in to some of the points you make in more detail 
when I have time.

For example Terry - your post on schools being locked shut is a good 
resource for the Friday Chat question I posted last week 'Is traditional 
education not open?' - maybe I'll repost on Friday ;-)

Anyway I just wanted to share my gut reaction to your comments about 
this particular use of open data in education.

Terry says: "*Surely, surely open education should be about far more 
than just using performance data to try to get our kids into a better 
school than our less well informed neighbours.*"

And my answer to this would be: *Yes, yes it is, and there is so much 
more we can do with it, but open data is by it's very nature open and 
available for people to use in anyway they see fit. This is one 
interesting approach with huge amounts of potential.*

The open definition states (and this is referenced in the handbook).
"A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and 
redistribute it --- subject only, at most, to the requirement to 
attribute and/or share-alike."

This then means it can be used for good, and for bad, and for commercial 
exploitation.

Enabling parents to make choices about schools seems to me to be a good 
thing. We are not just talking about better academic schools but more 
appropriate schools (ones that support particular student needs with 
regard to academic ability, special needs, religion, disability, 
possible vocation etc.) I totally understand that league tables have in 
the past caused hysteria, but much of this is to do with media 
interpretation. Surely more data and more eyes on that data can bring us 
a more objective perspective. Data is not elitist, it is a tool. The 
elitism element comes in when people cannot interpret that data or have 
access to it. This means more tools to aid data interpretation, more 
training in data skills and more open data. Opening up data is to me an 
essential part of opening up education.

You might find it interesting to read about what other countries such as 
Holland <http://education.okfn.org/open-education-holland/> and Tanzania 
<http://education.okfn.org/open-education-tanzania/> are doing in this area.

In UK (where I am based) the ODI Data Challenge 
<https://hackpad.com/Education-Open-Data-Challenge-kLW3ZeR98lj#> 
mentioned by Ed has supported the development of some really great apps 
built on open education data. The expression 'the best thing to done 
with your data will be thought of by someone else' certainly holds true 
here.

So, to use one of my personal much overused phrases, "all possibilities 
still exist"!

The matter of marketisation of learning is something for another day, 
but for me it's a shifting area, especially when you think about 
countries outside the global south.

Anyway thanks again for your comments. Always great to hear.

Marieke

On 04/06/2014 12:47, Pat Lockley wrote:
> hear hear
>
> And this is what I was going to say re Friday's chat. To me a lot of 
> the open data / open access arguments around openness are a lot more 
> neo-liberal / neo-con. So when we say traditional education, do we 
> mean before league tables? Or before licensing? Or before openness?
>
> As an experiment, contrast our "Open" (if that thing exists) with 
> Corporate Openness (say 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil) and then 
> perhaps tie this to citzens united and the openness of lobbying 
> organisations.
>
> Paraphrasing this quote "The society which scorns excellence in 
> plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy 
> because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor 
> good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
>
> Because if we have a public openness and then allow a corporate 
> "closed" then the benefit of the openness looks to me like it is lost, 
> or worst, has the negative outcomes you'd expect to have once 
> neo-liberal competition kicks in.
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Terry Loane <terryloane at aol.com 
> <mailto:terryloane at aol.com>> wrote:
>
>     For me there is a huge irony here.
>
>     The very concept of open education is surely that people should be
>     "free to use, reuse, and redistribute [resources]" (to quote from:
>     http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/what-is-open/)
>     Now this is the very opposite of a market approach to distributing
>     goods and services. Marketisation of learning runs counter to open
>     education because it is has to involve an assumption of privilege
>     for those who access a particular resource/institution, which by
>     definition will be scarce (e.g. an expensive textbook or an
>     over-subscribed school.) The first paragraph of the quotation from
>     Radu Cucos is a text-book, neo-liberal rationale for the market
>     approach to schooling:
>
>     "Each country has its own school market, if education is
>     considered as a product in this market. Perfect information about
>     products is one of the main characteristics of competitive
>     markets. From this perspective, giving parents the opportunity to
>     have access to information about schools characteristics will
>     contribute to the increase in the competitiveness of the schools
>     market. Educational institutions will have incentives to improve
>     their performance in order to attract more students."
>
>     Do we really believe that the idea of using 'open data' to ensure
>     that our kids attend a better school than the ones next door who
>     do not have access to such data is what open education should be
>     about? Do we really believe the last sentence of the above
>     quotation: "Educational institutions will have incentives to
>     improve their performance in order to attract more students"? (The
>     evidence in the UK is that publication and fetishizing of league
>     tables can have a detrimental effect on learning because it
>     focuses the attention of the institution on improving performance
>     data rather than providing the best for each individual child.)
>
>     I am also struck by the irony of using 'open data' to choose a
>     school, because schools are such 'closed' institutions, in just
>     about every sense of the word -- I have blogged bout this recently
>     here:
>     http://terryloane.typepad.com/reallylearn/2014/03/why-are-schools-locked-shut-most-of-the-time.html
>
>     Surely, surely open education should be about far more than just
>     using performance data to try to get our kids into a better school
>     than our less well informed neighbours.
>
>     Terry Loane
>
>     On 03/06/2014 16:02, Marieke Guy wrote:
>>     There is a great post on the Open Government Partnership blog
>>     about using open government data to help parents find the best
>>     school.
>>     http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/radu-cucos/2014/06/03/open-government-data-helping-parents-find-best-school-their-kids
>>
>>     The post, by Radu Cucos from Moldova, lists several apps from
>>     different countries that have been built on government data
>>     related to education and education institutions. I'll be adding
>>     these to the Open Education Handbook
>>     <http://booktype.okfn.org/open-education-handbook/_draft/_v/1.0/open-data-use-cases/>.
>>
>>     He concludes by saying:
>>
>>     "Open data on schools has great value not only for parents but
>>     also for the educational system in general. Each country has its
>>     own school market, if education is considered as a product in
>>     this market. Perfect information about products is one of the
>>     main characteristics of competitive markets. From this
>>     perspective, giving parents the opportunity to have access to
>>     information about schools characteristics will contribute to the
>>     increase in the competitiveness of the schools market.
>>     Educational institutions will have incentives to improve their
>>     performance in order to attract more students.
>>
>>     While adopting the Open Data Initiative policy in the education
>>     field has advantages for everybody -- parents, schools and state
>>     authorities, it falls to governments to take the leading role in
>>     promoting Open Data. First of all, governments have to make sure
>>     that data on schools is being publicly released and regularly
>>     updated. Second, state institutions have to incentivize
>>     developers to create innovative apps. Third, governments have to
>>     increase demand for educational apps by raising awareness,
>>     lowering the costs for Open Data apps accessibility and
>>     decreasing the costs of accessing additional sources and
>>     information about schools."
>>
>>     I'd be interested in hearing more about this from a country
>>     perspective. Anyone got any interesting use cases to share?
>>
>>     We plan to have a community session on 'What has open data got to
>>     do with education' during June - details to follow.
>>
>>     Marieke
>>
>>     -- 
>>
>>     Marieke Guy
>>     LinkedUp <http://linkedup-project.eu/> Project Community
>>     Coordinator | skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 |
>>     @mariekeguy <http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
>>     The Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/>
>>     /Empowering through Open Knowledge/
>>     http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/okfn>| OKF on
>>     Facebook | Blog | Newsletter
>>     http://remoteworker.wordpress.com
>>
>>
>>
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-- 

Marieke Guy
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<http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
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