[Open-education] Friday Chat: The differences between open (as in access) or open (as in participatory & contribution)

Sat May 24 07:39:58 UTC 2014

Thanks for that Terry, but I think you haven't got the whole story.

It seems to me that the real challenge to hierarchical assumptions started over
fifty years with the Civil Rights movement in America, in particular the Freedom
Schools <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Schools> which were tied in with
the sit ins <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins> were students
broke down the colour bar. I think it is important to remember that students
involved in this sit-ins took their college books with them and used the time to
study.

People like Mario Savio <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio> and Tom
Hayden <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hayden> always acknowledge the role of
what they learnt from their participation in the civil rights movement in their
subsequent activities like the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement> and the Port Huron Statement
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Huron_Statement> .

These social movements played a crucial role in providing the environment which
gave rise to Silicon Valley. The People's Computer Company
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Computer_Company> were advocates of
Open Source, and went on to spawn the Homebrew Computing Club
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club> .

So I am not sure I can go along with an approach based on technological
determinism. It was the social activism of the sixties and seventies which gave
rise to the knowledge revolution and the technological advances which have had
such an impact on contemporary society.

I agree that it is important to question the role of educational institutions,
but let's do this in the context of a questioning which goes back a long way.
Ivan Illich <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich> , for example, questioned
the role of schools and advocated learning webs:

And let's keep a balanced perspective which sees a dialectical relationship
between technology and human aspirations, as I sometimes worry that
technological determinism paves the way for technocratic solutions.

all the best

Fabian Tompsett

> On 23 May 2014 at 14:50 Terry Loane <terryloane at aol.com> wrote:
> 
>  My take on this, Marieke and Pat, is that up until a few years ago we held
> long-established hierarchical assumptions about the relationships among
> students, teachers, institutions and published resources. In crude terms these
> relationship looked something like this:
> 
>  Institutions
>    |
>  Teachers   -  Publishers/resources
>    |
>  Students
> 
>  But in the last few years technology has completely challenged these
> assumptions and all the relationship are in a state of flux. So issues of
> access, participation, collaboration are all beginning to look quite
> different. People who find themselves in the roles of teacher and student have
> to negotiate new ways of relating to each other, and the institutions and
> publishers have to negotiate new and (in my view) significantly reduced roles.
> (I recently questioned the very need for educational institutions in a
> conference presentation called 'Who needs institutions?' - and it went down
> very well.) OERs and MOOCs are just part of the process of destabilisation of
> the whole educational environment, and the whole process will be painful and
> unpredictable.
> 
>  Picking up your footpath and park metaphor, Pat, I think that all we can do
> is to explore the new educational terrain that technology has opened up, and
> that sometimes this will feel like walking along a path with a fairly clear
> destination in mind, but at other times it will feel more like wandering
> across open parkland searching for waymarks. We live in exciting times (and I
> am very glad to work neither as an institutional manager nor as a publisher).
> 
>  Terry Loane
>  How do people really learn? <http://terryloane.typepad.com/reallylearn/>
> 
> 
>  On 23/05/2014 12:24, Pat Lockley wrote:
> 
>      > >      I've mumbled about this before re open access as a geography (
>      > > http://www.slideshare.net/Pgogy/open-as-in-oer-and-open-as-in-mooc).
>      > > The analogy I use is in the UK we have footpaths, which the public
>      > > are allowed to walk on - even if say they cut across your land.
>      > > Whereas in the US you might have a national park, which is open but
>      > > you have to get to it.
> > 
> >      Footpaths aren't big, parks are. Footpaths tend be nearer, parks tend
> > to be further away.
> > 
> >      I think shifting the burden of accessing openness onto developers is
> > problematic for two reasons
> > 
> >      1) How could they know what to do? Are we talking a Berners-Lee like
> > star system?
> >      2) How could taking things to people not seem a bit Victorian Empire
> > Missionary?
> > 
> >      I would say developing an accessible first (akin to mobile first) style
> > of openness makes sense. So make transcripts available for MP3s as an
> > example, but again, are we having better forms of open? And can we do this
> > and not put people off being bad open?
> > 
> >      So you can be open, but at a point of moving your openness onto people,
> > do you close things down? Or does it look a little spam like?
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >      On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org
> > <mailto:marieke.guy at okfn.org> > wrote:
> >       > > >       Hi Everyone,
> > > 
> > >       Sorry we missed our Friday chat last week - this was due to the
> > > Making it Matter workshop (lots of good discussions
> > > <http://linkedup-project.eu/2014/05/21/what-we-learnt-at-making-it-matter/>
> > > there though!)
> > > 
> > >       So on the open design list there was an interesting conversation
> > > <https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/opendesign/2014-May/000390.html> about
> > > the differences between open (as in access) or open (as in participatory &
> > > contribution)? They were trying to decide which is the most important and
> > > if we have, in the past, focused too much on access?
> > > 
> > >       I was wondering how this ties in with open education. Are
> > > conversations too centered on resources and fail to consider whether
> > > people can actually participate. So here a couple of things come to mind:
> > >           * Being where people are at - do we often trying to force people
> > > to come to 'a place' rather than going to where they are?
> > >           * Language - we continue to use a lot of jargon
> > >           * Is open education elitist? e.g. material OER is WEIRD
> > > (Western, Educated, Rich, Democratic), much activity relies on
> > > infrastructure, learning & teaching practice approaches are often tied to
> > > cultures.
> > > 
> > >       Just a few thoughts.
> > > 
> > >       Marieke
> > > 
> > >       If you have an idea for a Friday chat add it to the etherpad
> > > <http://new.okfnpad.org/p/Open_Education_Working_Friday_Chats> .
> > > 
> > > 
> > >       **
> > > 
> > >       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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> > >       https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-education
> > >      > > 
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> >  > 

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