(Open) Attitude is Everything, Part 2

Cross-posted at The Educators' Cafe.
 

cc licensed Flickr photo by cogdogblog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/6476689463/

In my final reflection on #ETMOOC Topic #4: The Open Movement - Open Access, OER & Future of Education, I am going to focus on OER.  According to Wikipedia, open educational resources (OER) are:

...freely accessible, openly formatted and openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, education, assessment and research purposes.  OER are defined as teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

Sharing.  Sharing openly.  That's what OER are all about.  Alan Levine shared True Stories of Openness, an inspiring collection of true stories demonstrating what can happen when you share openly on the web.  Alan calls True Stories of Openness a celebration of the open attitude.  In one of the first stories Alan gathered, Nancy White succinctly stated,

"It isn't just about open resources, it's about open attitudes." ~ Nancy White

Attitude.  Open attitude.  Alan was inspired by his experiences with openness and wanted to provide a platform for others to share their inspiring stories.  I, too, was inspired by the openness I experienced through my interactions on the web, specifically through social media, only my 'platform' was in the form of a dissertation.  In my dedication page I stated,

I dedicate this dissertation to all of the innovative, inspiring educators who have enriched not only my learning but the learning of others by unselfishly spending hours of their own time using social media to connect, share, collaborate, and search for ways to improve their practice and in turn increase the learning and engagement of their students.

When asked why they used social media for informal professional learning, my research revealed that educators valued the community, sharing, and collaboration made possible by its use.  In other words, they valued the welcoming, open attitude they experienced online.  I highly recommend you take some time and explore the wonderful collection of True Stories of Openness on your own.  I wanted to share a few that particularly caught my interest because I have been following these particular people for a long time by reading, watching, listening to, being entertained/challenged, and learning from their work.

Wes Fryer - Open Sharing Leads to eBook Inspiration: Indonesia to Minnesota to Oklahoma - Digital BackPack Project.  "When you share openly and when you share publicly and utilize the social media channels like Twitter and blogs and other things like that, it really can be amazing and exciting to see what happens."

Howard Rheingold - Sharing Pays Back - "I am a communicator, well, why not? ... for every ounce of my time that I share with others, I often find I get a pound back."            

Amy Burvall - Nichetastic! - There's a Niche for Everything - "Weird and endearing things that have happened since posting some educational parody videos to a budding YouTube channel; History for Music Lovers.  It never ceases to amaze me that if you post it, they will come ... every niche, subculture, special interest out there.  Just do what you love and someone will invariably love it, too."  "Create.  Don't hate."  "Do it because you love it."  "I feel not so much alone."

...and my favorite, so far (True Stories of Openness is a project in process),

Darren Kuropatwa - Connecting with co-workers.  Darren shares pics via Flickr and videos.  He said after reflecting, the most important part of his sharing has to do with people and relationships.  Darren creates 'while walking videos' that he shares and people have started watching.  His coworkers feel closer to him so that when they see him during the day, there is a connection.  Darren shared a quote by David Wiley, "There is no teaching if there is no sharing."  In response, he beautifully reflected, "That's what I do.  I teach, therefore, I just can't imagine doing this any other way."

"That's what I do.  I teach..."  That's what I do.  I share...  That's what I do.  I connect...  That's what I do.  I learn... 

Isn't that why we all became educators?  To teach, to continually learn, try to be the best educators we could for our students?  During the various chats, discussions, and posts the roadblocks to openness were discussed.  Topics such as intellectual property rights, fear of theft, copyright/copyleft, and attribution came up, and they are terribly important.  It's our job as educators to teach the importance of giving credit and to model doing so.  In the years to come, these issues will evolve, but we shouldn't wait for a resolution.  We should continue to share openly with each other. 

cc licensed Flickr image by http://wikieducator.org/File:Recyclethis-185807557.jpg

The following quote was shared in the Topic #4 introductory post,  

Open Education is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge.  ~ The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

That's what we do.  We share, use, reuse, remix, revise, and share, again.  This openness not only benefits our students through engaging lessons/projects and collaborative experiences, it also benefits the educational community as a whole.  During the chat of Alan's session, Glenn posted, 'I live in an area where educators have little interest in being connected.  What would I do without Twitter, Google+, etc.'  Many people agreed with Glenn, including me.  That was also one of the themes that was revealed during my dissertation--isolation reduction.  As educators we have all worked with people (or institutions) who were not open for whatever reason.  The openness of social media has provided a lifeline to those of us who have felt isolated in our classrooms and schools.  We have been able to connect as never before with others in our own towns or around the world who believe in the open attitude that Nancy White spoke of.  After all, to paraphrase Darren Kuropatwa,

That's what we do.  We teach.  We share.  We are open.  We can't imagine being any other way.

(Open) Attitude is Everything, Part 1

Cross-posted at The Educators' Cafe.


After reflecting on the sessions I participated in, viewing the archives of the sessions I couldn't participate in, reading blog posts, and skimming Storifys of #ETMOOC Topic #4: The Open Movement - Open Access, OERs & Future of Education, my brain is once again in a state of jumbled awesomeness.  As stated in the introduction to Topic #4,

...the Open Movement is an umbrella term that describes a number of overlapping and interrelated movements that, collectively, support the idea of a free and open society in the Arts, Education, government, computing/code, research, technology, medicine, copyright/copyleft, and other key areas.

In Part 1 of my reflection on the Open Movement, I will explore the trouble I am having separating my different roles in education as I navigate my way through this particular topic with a particular focus on higher education: 

1.  classroom teacher
2.  instructional technology specialist
3.  graduate student (until December 2012)
4.  parent

First and foremost, I am an educator, whether thinking about my role as a classroom teacher for 19 years or as instructional technology specialist/classroom teacher for the last 9 of those 19 years.  Sharing is part of my DNA.  I simply cannot imagine NOT sharing resources, lesson plans, ideas, or time.  I was an early adopter of education technology, and the Internet made learning and sharing so much easier!  I curated resources and shared them on my webpage (No judging...cringe, comic sans!  This is a an early version, my oldest site is no longer available.) as a resource for students and parents.  As instructional technology specialist, I took sharing to the next level by curating resources for the teachers, students and parents in the K-8 school in which I worked, however, that was part of the job description, or that's how I understood the job description.  As Dean Shareski said, "Sharing = Accountability." 

As a student until this past December, I experienced various levels technology integration during my MAT and PhD coursework, but I wouldn't say I was exposed to open education.  I would venture to say that my experience was not that much different than most and having said that, I feel changes are inevitable for higher education.  George Siemens, in his Open Letter to Canadian Universities, states my fears regarding higher education so much better than I can:

I’m concerned that the ossification of higher education institutions, and a complete failure to build capacity for adaptation, will produce a bonanza for educational technology start-ups at the expense of the university’s role in society.

The current generation of leaders are overseeing the large-scale dismantling of the public university. Piecemeal outsourcing, growing prominence of adjuncts, and tendering key functions of the university (online course development), are creating a context where the university will no longer be able to direct its own fate.

As a parent of two young adults who each earned Bachelor degrees, one who graduated with no debt (state university), and the other with about $11,000 in debt (private liberal arts college), it is increasingly difficult to justify going back to school to earn an advanced degree when the careers they are interested in pursuing are changing at such a rate that their degrees could be obsolete by the time they graduate, not to mention the debt they would incur and the lack of job stability/opportunities in the current climate and foreseeable future.  In addition, there aren't programs of study that adequately address or explore their interests.  Colleges and universities can't keep up with the changing employment landscape.  This is where open education comes in by providing opportunities for people to gather and learn for the sake of learning, just as we do in #etmooc. 

The problem with open education at the higher education level is how do you prove your learning in these platforms?  Portfolio?  Badges?  Who is going to judge what a badge is worth?  Someone (sorry) mentioned something to the effect, 'It's not what you know, but what you do with what you know.'  Who is to judge?  Questions of quality abound!  I find the prospect of corporate funding of MOOCs extremely disturbing.  As Will Richardson recently stated in his post, We Need More Democracy in Education, Not Less, we need to protect our “freedom to learn…about the things we think you should learn in the ways we think you should learn them.”  It all goes back to the basic media literacy themes of authorship, format, audience, content, purpose, and eventual effects.  Replace the word 'message' with 'course' when considering the following media literacy questions:  Who created this message?  Why (profit? persuasion? education?)?  Who paid for this message?  How do you know? 

I know.  I'm sounding pessimistic and paranoid, which is out of character for me.  It's just that I care deeply about education at all levels, but somehow what is happening (or not happening) at the higher education level is really bothering me.  Paul Signorelli was wrestling with open education and rhizomatic learning the other day and wrote the following that I think applies to learning at all levels:    

For at the heart of all this is a wonderfully philosophical question that also has tremendous potential repercussions for how we develop, deliver, and facilitate training-teaching-learning in our onsite-online world: what can we do to build upon the best of our traditional models of learning while incorporating the techniques and tools that are quickly becoming available to us, show no sign of slowing down, and may have evolved further by the time you’re actually reading this?

I know a lot of people feel we need to turn the traditional models of learning upside-down or throw them out completely.  Admittedly, the existing model is struggling to stay relevant, but exactly how do we reform our educational system?  Who gets to decide what changes take place?  Who will these changes benefit:  corporations, institutions, society, or learners?  In a recent post, Hacking at Education:  TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hold in the Wall, Audrey Watters offers the following review: 

But what happens, when we “hack education” in such a way that our public institutions are dismantled? What happens to that public good? What happens to community? What happens to local economies? What happens to social justice?

Harold Jarche wrote an interesting piece, Keep democracy in education, where he stated,

I think we may soon get invited to another shotgun wedding, this time between techno-utopians, with financial speculators as bridesmaids, and libertarians, who feel the state and teachers have screwed-up education. It’s education as socialization, but socialization to the dominant business paradigm.

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, what do you think:

1.  about the state of higher education?
2.  about open education?
3.  we can do to make education at all levels more relevant?
4.  about the corporatization of our educational institutions--from charters to universities?