[Open-education] Openness and piracy in commercial publishing & a new group-based MOOC from edX at McGill

Thu Sep 17 14:21:47 UTC 2015

Thanks, Alistair, for taking the time to look up ELT as standing for
English Language Teaching in this highly burdensome age of the acronym.

Yes, ELT, that highly commercialised industry that profits from linguistic
imperialism that we all love to love. Exposing the disingenuous behaviour
of commercial ELT publishers is one tack along with building discussion
around the responsibility publishers have in creating the culture of piracy
that surrounds their closed publications.

Alannah

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 5:05 AM, Alastair Clark <alastair at aclark.eu> wrote:

> Very interesting dialogue you are promoting Allanah (I have to admit I had
> to look up the ELT - but I have added it to me list of TLAs)
>
>
> In my experience this interface is dominated by publishers desire to be
> seen to be 'good' by actually offering free samples which then are useless
> without the paid for extra - eg the rest of the book or the accompanying
> sound files / CD.
>
> I am just jaundiced and is there really an appetite to exercise genuine
> CSR? (you see you got me with the TLAs now)
>
> Alastair
>
>
>
>
> On 2015-09-16 23:16, alannah fitzgerald wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> If any of you have any experience in working with commercial
>> publishers or with growing open business models and improving
>> corporate or institutional branding through openness, would you please
>> consider contributing to a blogpost discussion [1] I have started at
>> ELTjam? I’m trying to focus this discussion on key issues in ELT
>> publishing, namely: access, copyright and piracy by bringing this
>> discussion to the mainstream English language education community via
>> one of their well-known blogs.
>>
>> In short, the issue of piracy with ELT course book resources is a hot
>> and highly moralised topic as these resources tend to live a second
>> life as .pdf versions via pirate websites (some free and many for
>> payment) as befits the culture of the digital commons. I’m asking
>> the big brand ELT commercial publishers who make a mint out of the ELT
>> industry to look at ways to acknowledge the greater need behind the
>> piracy issue as one of access. I’ve had the predictable response
>> from ELT publishers of why should we care about providing accessible
>> resources to those informal online learners if this is not affecting
>> our current closed business model for those formal learners who can
>> afford our resources, in addition to side-stepping issues I’ve
>> raised about corporate social responsibility and the success of other
>> open business models e.g. the Open Access movement with research
>> publications. Anyway, it’s good to have them enter the discussion
>> but I’d like for this discussion to not only be a one-sided response
>> from me representing the open movement, so it would be great if any of
>> you could add to the discussion.
>>
>> I’m also inviting anyone here, in addition to those I’ve invited
>> from the ELT community, to the first group-based MOOC with edX which
>> I’m involved in facilitating at McGill Uni on Social Learning for
>> Social Impact [2] to bring forward social justice initiatives
>> including access to education. If you’re interested in exploring
>> this group-based MOOC model – we’re aiming for as connectivist a
>> MOOC as possible within the edX platform - we’ll be accepting
>> registrations until October 16th. Hope to see you there.
>>
>> Many thanks for reading!
>>
>> With all good wishes,
>>
>> Alannah
>>
>> Alannah Fitzgerald
>>
>> FLAX Language Project (flax.nzdl.org [3]) Open Education Research
>>
>> PhD Candidate in Educational Technology at Concordia University,
>> Canada
>> https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alannahfitzgerald [4] /
>> alannahfitzgerald.org [5] / @AlannahFitz [6] /
>> http://www.slideshare.net/AlannahOpenEd [7]
>>  a_fitzg at education.concordia.ca / alannahfitzgerald at gmail.com /
>> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+alannahfitzgerald [8]
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1]
>>
>> http://eltjam.com/rebalancing-english-language-education-access-materials-writing-and-copyright/#comment-269911
>> [2]
>> https://www.edx.org/course/social-learning-social-impact-mcgillx-groocx
>> [3] http://flax.nzdl.org
>> [4] https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alannahfitzgerald
>> [5] http://alannahfitzgerald.org
>> [6] https://twitter.com/AlannahFitz
>> [7] http://www.slideshare.net/AlannahOpenEd
>> [8] https://plus.google.com/u/0/+alannahfitzgerald
>>
>
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