Nature is a CC-BY-SA

I just finished reading a classmates post which is titled "The truth according to wikipedia". Their post embeds a great video about wikipedia and the Web 2.0 and where all this free knowledge could be going. The post and the video had some very interesting points. What it really got me thinking was; I really don't believe any of the main points get to the nut of the issue, which is, the keepers (of the last 100 years or so) of the current truth got us into the current mess of consumerism, inequitable capitalism, non-sustainable consumption of the earths resources, etc... It's no wonder there is a movement in redefining the truth and taking truth away from the current ideology. IMHO the current truth is deeply flawed and needs to be rewritten. The new truth needs to build sustainability into its core, the new truth needs to build the natural environment into its core. This idea is well discussed in a podcast/video by Dr. David Orr titled "the end to education". The new truth needs to make the stand that the natural environment is a CC-BY-SA, and not to be exploited and "owned" by the few. The natural environment was created before human arrival and should not be consumed by a truth that if you innovate nature, you not only own your innovation you also have rights to the nature you based your innovation upon. Nature is a CC-BY-SA. We live in a truth that allows companies like Monsanto to "steal" nature and make it their own and then try to sue those who have treated nature as an open resource. It's time to rewrite the truth. Flatten it out, share it, have us all accountable (and attributable) to take care of it, its a matter of our survival. This is why truth needs a collaborative rewrite so it is no longer controlled by the few who want to perpetuate an ideology (or truth) that is deeply flawed. Everything that was on earth before human arrival should have a Share-Alike license.

WEEK 7: Bowen Island, BC, CANADA

For this weeks activity I took a photo from the window of my house, recorded a short description of the photo using audacity, save the audio file to an ogg format and uploaded both these digital objects to the wiki commons.

1. The photo: TheLionsVancouver.jpg
2. The audio: BowenIslandView.ogg
3. The location: Longitude: -123.347626 latitude: 47.570178

What I found most interesting about this activity was how I could only upload ogg audio files to the wiki commons and how you were forced to choose a licensing model if you wanted your content not to be deleted from the wiki commons.

WEEK 6: IMHO, Canada is beautiful!

It never stops to amaze me the number of top quality and creative photos that exist on flickr. All the licenses combined add up to over 65 million photos. WOW.

This weeks activity forced me to revisit GIMP and to take a deeper look at the features already available with flickr (in particular, picnik). I still believe that GIMP is the best photo editor available (open source or otherwise). And using it to alter and improve photos is free and easy. The number of GIMP tutorials available on YouTube is impressive.

I went for a walk with my son Lucas and took some photos of our beautiful island paradise. From the photos I chose the best ones and uploaded them to flickr than I edited (mostly cropped) them with picnik. I believe the results of our Bowen Island walk-about are pretty good.

I also managed to upload a file to MediaWiki Commons. The photo is of the Battery in winter from the families one year stay in St. John's Newfoundland.

WEEK 5: An Adult Wikimedia?

The work of the wikimedia foundation is exemplary when it comes to free culture, openness and creating free content. And the relationship among the wikimedia projects, OER and education IMHO will be a growing and deepening endeavour. Much of what other course participants have said this week points out why the wikimedia foundation has had such success;

• Anika points out that wiki contributors are learners, collaborators, producers and researchers all at the same time.
  
• I agree with susanne when she mentions that the line between student and teacher is blurring and that much of learning will be self-directed. The Wikimedia projects contribute a lot in this capacity.
  
• I'm happy that Luca pointed out the importance of having free media assets and how wikicommons is building this.
  
• And as Daudi said, the internationalization and translation of wikipedia is impressive. Particularly given it this is a volunteer effort.
  
• I really appretiated Juha's critical appraisal of different Wikimedia projects. The inclusion of the longtail was important, and if through time wikipedia articles become watered down?
  
• Kieth really got into it and I was glad he brought up the issue of context and localization. This is where I see wikipedia doing good work for it allows (even encourages) localized versions.

Where do I see the future of wikipedia, OER and education? That is a big question, that has many parts;

• First, I see wikipedia as a struggling teenager right now. It is trying to find it's adult persona; financially, and ideologically. Where it ends up in the next few years will determine how it will align with the OER movement and with Education in general.
• Second, I believe all the WikiMedia projects need to go mobile. IMHO it is the mobile user community that is the road ahead, particularly in regards to OER and Education. We have over 1.3 billion coming of age in the developing world, and easily accessed OER based education is the key.
• Third, As some of you may have read I believe that for OER to become successful it needs to include assessment and accreditation. I believe WikiMedia needs to create WikiAssess (or something similar).
  

WEEK 4: Open Access Assessment and Accreditation

I found this week postings quite amazing. I found myself very aligned with all that Nichthus said and appreciated the perspective provided in the conclusion. In my mind a free culture is about honoring everyone and all positions and perspectives; this includes the closed and proprietary. I've been a follower / fan of Lessig’s work for some time now, and i think what he has done for copyright is a significant human contribution. And the reality / changes he is offering is well overdue in terms of copyright law...

I find this weeks exploration of copyright, licensing and OER happens at the right time in the progression of this course and all the readings got me thinking deeply about the similarities and differences of Open Content (Wikipedia), Open Source and OER. In particular, I spent considerable time thinking and discussing the Bissell / Boyle article. In their article they write about the success of Wikipedia and Open Source and the slower progress of OER. They offer three items to bring OER to a closer level of success that Wikipedia and Open Source have had. I believe they have missed a couple of aspects within the openness of OER, and it is missing these aspects they have missed identifying what is required to bring OER to the same level of success as these other two.

To explore this I believe we need to look at the permission required for accessing the domains of these three open initiatives. Neither Wikipedia nor Open Source has constraints to their domain. These two have complete openness from a technical, content, social, and bureaucratic (administrative) perspective. OER has openness to the technical, content and social, but is closed to the bureaucratic. What I mean by closed to the bureaucratic is that the assessment and accreditation is still closed. People can access all the open learning content that is available as OER but they still have to go through a bureaucracy to be assessed and accredited. I believe that until we have Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accreditation (OAA) OER will be severely restrained and should be renamed Open Learning Resources (OLR), because education includes assessment and accreditation. See an associated Google group discussion for further insight into my belief on the need for OAA.

Open Access Accreditation

I want to discuss if people think it is possible to create an international accredited institution that could give me a graduate level degree based on my completion / creation of OER (and related published research)? Maybe the international institution is a social network with a top quality reputation. i.e. if your level of scholarship is recognized by this “institution / social network” then it is considered the same as a PhD from Athabasca University… lets call it Open Access Accreditation… Isn’t this the natural progression from connectionist (see siemens) approaches?

It would seem that an institution like UNESCO or ICDE is where this could start and with the writing coming from these institutions regarding OER they (I believe) should be addressing the issue. I’ve been reading papers from these institutions for a while and everything still assumes the OER are utilized within existing institutions and existing courses and existing programs and in the end you still have to pay for assessment and the credential. In particular, the roadmap from the OLCOS http://www.olcos.org/cms/upload/docs/olcos_roadmap.pdf seems to be a deep dive into all this, yet they still assume loads of affiliations and partnerships with existing Universities. Essentially you still have to pay to get assessed and credentialed even though you are using OER created by someone only loosely affiliated with the university granting the credential. Why?

You could assume a PhD is the equivalent of 2-3 years of full-time work, for easy math lets 5000 hours. Let’s say I am prepared to work 16 hrs a week for 46 weeks a year for seven years (5152 hours total). And during this time I create a solid amount (potentially a complete Masters degree amount) of OER (with accompanying collaborative research papers) on WikiEducator and Wikiversity. Shouldn’t I be able to take all this work and be given a PhD? Universities provide honorary doctorates; why not use this same structure to offer a PhD to someone who completes what I previously suggested? Or would the reputation I created on WikiEducator and Wikiversity by collaboratively creating a PhD effort equivalent in OER be the same as having a PhD? In fact could this not be the new PhD? And in the end I would have saved myself the 40k - 100k $ that I paid to an institution for a credential (not including 5152 hrs of lost salary). And I could do all this in a truly self directed manner without having to be “supervised” by a tenured academic. When I know that most of my supervision is going to come from the social network anyway…

Or maybe what I am asking is; what role does the graduate level university play in a Connectivist world filled with quality OER, hard work and an active social network?

WEEK 3: Shoulders of Giants

During this weeks task we had a look at a number of sites / references that set the philosophical foundation for OER. The sites we visited include;

• Enlightenment - The Age of Enlightenment
• Science and "standing on the shoulders of giants"
• Library Movement: Origins of the public library as a social institution
• Free Adult Education: Popular Education and Folk High School
• Free Software Movement

From my readings of these sites the following things stood out for me most.

During the age of Enlightenment people began to recognize that they had the freedom to use one's own intelligence. This really sums up this time in history. It's hard to believe that at times in our history we didn't realize we had such power. The frightening part is that in some parts of the world there are people who still haven't caught on to this or are so oppressed that they don't have the freedom.

When it comes to the Shoulders of Giants I really like the quote

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants

This ties so many things together, it is the acknowledgment that whatever we do, we draw on the past and by drawing on the past we can see further to the future.

The Library Movement is an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Having free access to books and the support in how to use the books raises us all up. And having ways to further the library movement will increase the global populations ability to enter into the dialog required to increase our shared abilities to be good stewards of the planet.

As I read further I found this description in the Popular Education reading;

Popular Education may be defined as an educational technique designed to raise the consciousness of its participants and allow them to become more aware of how an individual's personal experiences are connected to larger societal problems. Participants are empowered to act to effect change on the problems that affect them.

I like this a lot for it really connects individuals to the larger and implies a responsibility to effect change. This is what I consider a theme behind OER and the larger open movement... Empowering people to act!

Gosh, with this definition of Folk High School I see it as the definition of a Personal Learning Environment;

The character of folk high schools differs from country to country, but usually such institutions have the following common features:
- A large variety of subjects
- No final exams
- Focus on self-development
- Pedagogical freedom

Last, and certainly not least, we had the reading of the Free Software Movement (FSM). This section can get into some heady thoughts and as I drilled down into some of the supporting links I got the feeling that this chapter is far from done. I mean when I read about the Library Movement and the Age of Enlightenment, I see these items as historically complete, they still influence our lives and the cities we live. But the Free Software Movement isn't done, it isn't historically complete, it still has some change and "maturing" to do. Nonetheless, this movement is having a big influence on much of what is going on... When I consider that Microsoft (IMHO, the farthest away from FSM) engaging a collaboration with eclipse then I realize that the FSM is having an influence and that fundamental changes to the FSM are still afoot.

Conclusion
When I consider all these writings, and I consider the trajectory they have created I really like the future that I see. It seems to me that we are heading toward a place where the world is flat and people are engaged in adding knowledge to the collective of people on the planet. And whether that addition is for self or other it doesn't matter cause the tools and approaches we use benefit us all...

WEEK 2: Introduction to Wikiversity

This week we are exploring either LeMill or Wikiversity. We need to set ourselves up to be a contributor to one of these OER sites by creating a profile. We also need to contribute to an area of interest by contacting the editors, contributing to an existing resource and create a new resource.

My Profile
My Wikiversity profile is a work in progress as I have bigger plans for my work here (and will post this later). This wikiversity profile does link to my web portfolio site. To view my MediaWiki profile go to my profile on WikiEducator.

My Notification
I began by investigating materials for how to get started in programming with PhP. I found a number of introductory programming resources. Nothing that provided OER for how to set up the development environment. The lessons I found were lessons on beginner programming with different languages, nothing how to set up the software development environment to start the actual programming. So I posted a question on a couple of talk pages. The question was;

getting a development space
I'm wanting to get into programming PhP, there seems to be a number of good open access courses for intro to PhP and further. What I am looking for is a course on how to set up the development environment. Can anyone point me to such a course? -- Prawstho 17:19, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I posted this question to the following two talk pages;

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic_talk:Computer_programming
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Talk:Web_design

My New Resource
As eluded to in my notification, there seems to be the requirement for a course on setting up a software development environment. Now this may be only my need, but I will assume that as I develope out the course it may attract some attention. We shall see... I created a new Wikiversity page within the Computer Programming topic called "Creating a Development Environment". Let's see what interest this draws...

Conclusions
It would seem success within Wikiversity comes from engagement. I couldn't find a place to sign-up for membership or contact this particular person to become an auther for a particular school. I guess the idea is to just jump right in, keep going and wait for feedback and the engagement from others.

WEEK 2: Existing OER projects

I’ve been familiar with all these open education projects for a while;

• Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative
• Rice Connexions
• MIT OpenCourseWare
• LeMill.net
• Wikiversity.org

The OpenCourseWare project at MIT has always amazed me the most. Cause to see all their curriculum online and available for download just seems to go against the American ideology of capitalism. I’ve always been surprised that they are putting it out there for free and under a CC-BY-NC-SA license. I remember reading a while back how they aligned what they were doing with opencourseware and the universities mission. As their mission states they want to "advance knowledge and educate students ... that will best serve ... the world", there doin' it!

When I was looking at all these open education projects I was asking myself, which one I would use if I was developing a new course or program. And what was important to me is that I am familiar with the technology (publishing and course development tools) and that the project embraces a licensing scheme that I am happy with. The licensing scheme is important as it encourages or restrains the reuse of my work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the projects have embraced a CC license of some sort. So I felt comfortable that I could work with all sites. Being familiar with the technology pushed me toward Wikiversity. I am already familiar with using MediaWiki to publish content and find it an effective tool for developing courses online.

OER - Two important and relevant views

This 2006 stream speaks to what MAY be coming with OER.



This more recent 2008 stream that looks at the reality of the sharing we need to enjoy what the previous stream spoke of...

Download media

Models for sustaining OER

Stephen Downes wrote a good article on approaches to sustaining OER. It's a good read if you have the time. http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf

WEEK 1: Ilkka has created a valuable contribution

I found this paper by Ilkka filled with a very good description of OER and some very important statements about OER and it influence on education. I really appreciated the historical references and how OER is tied to the Open Source movement. Tuomi (2006, page 4) makes the important observation that “When educational processes and objectives qualitatively change, new systems are needed for measuring their performance and benefits.” This stands out for me because I am seeing change in much of education and I see OER as one of the influences. I also believe this is important for it recognizes that we need new approaches to measuring performance and benefits within the use of OER.
Pedagogical Benefits
Ilkka also does well in pointing out the pedagogical benefits of the Open Source movement where he speaks of how “The informal communities of practice that develop open source systems have produced some of the leading software engineers of today. In some cases, open source projects seem to clearly outperform traditional formal educational models in their capability to create expertise and skills.” I share the constructivist belief that one of the best ways to learn something is to have to teach it. So having people develop OER and be a contributor to a global OER repository may be the best way for them to learn the subject. Being involved in a community of practice focused upon the developing OER for a subject domain may well be the best way to learn the subject.
Context Area
As I got further into the paper my appreciation for its depth increased. The introduction of the three areas (page 25) really got me thinking and I began to wonder if there was a fourth area, the context of the resource. Or does context fall into the social? It doesn’t seem to in the paper. Either way the three areas are valuable, though I believe context needs to be considered an area itself.
Levels of Openness
The three levels of openness are also very thought provoking and Openness II makes me wonder if there is the need for a new type of global institution that grants formal degrees after working through (or creating) a number of OER courses.
The fountain
I really like the visual of the open fountain and when it comes to education where knowledge can be shared and created in large numbers of learners from a single source really is a fountain. How this will be recognized within the concept of the commons and the idea of academia and commercial endeavour will be interesting to be a part of.
More on Context
As the paper came to a close with the five points of view I again began to wonder where learning context fits within these views. I believe there is room for one more view that would sit between learner view and teacher view. It would be the contextual view – context of learning (the what/where/how/language/culture/localization of the OER being utilized). I believe this idea is reinforced at the top of page 33 where Ilkka speaks to how the resources are consumed in qualitatively different markets.
My Conclusion
I found this paper a great introduction to OER and all the issues which surround this amazing topic. I did find the paper did require a level of technical understanding with regard to the subjects of frameworks, SCORM, etc.

Lawrence Lessig Free Culture Video

In my opinion this video is an accumulation of Lawrence Lessig's work. It shows his historical depth regarding the issue of freedom and copyright, it shows his outstanding presentation approach, it provides a roadmap to those who want to engage and it tells of the importance of this issue to our future and our children's lives. For all those interested in the free culture and creative commons movements it is a must watch video.

Peter welcomes everyone to composing OER

Hello all participants, I am very excited about this wikiversity course. I have had an interest in OER and all things open and free for a while now and over the last 18 months have been focusing on OER within completing a Master of Education (IT). I live on the west coast of Canada on an Island that is one hour from Vancouver. I am interested in this course for I believe that if we are going to create all the OER to meet the global and developing worlds needs for curriculum it will have to be done by a large participatory and collaborative group. I believe this course will cover most, if not all, the topics important to understanding the development of OER. I also believe that after this course I will be able to further the message of OER and speak to most questions that could be asked regarding OER. If you want to get a greater idea of who i am please visit my web site at http://www.rawsthorne.org or view my wikieducator profile at http://wikieducator.org/User:Prawstho

Buy only what you NEED

This is something that has kicked around in my head for many years and i try an practice it every day... This 20 minute flash video explains why.

Composing free and open online educational resources

I just signed up for this course about developing OER. It is very similar to what I was proposing in my paper titled "Utilizing Open Educational Resources for International Curriculum Development". I believe this will be an excellent course as I have been following the work of Teemu for a while. He also posted a comment to one of my blog posts a while ago. So it would seem the seven degrees are reducing...

The OER4D Program

So I finished another paper and put it over on my academic blog. The paper is more of a proposal for a new university level program about utilizing OER for development. Or in other words it is an Open Educational Resource (OER) about how to create, eruse and alter existing OER. I believe a course like this is overdue. So I've written this proposal and if all goes well, I hope to start building the resource in the new year.

Why a Learning Systems Architect?

So I was prodded into making a defense for my new role of Learning Systems Architect… Here is my rant of a response, enjoy.

Nobody apparently needs!?! Everybody needs! They just aren’t aware of it yet. But they should be, and will be. What sort of organization? Any organization engaged in the knowledge based economy and want to encourage their employees to self construct knowledge and thrive within their organization. See John Seely Brown; http://www.johnseelybrown.com/speeches.html#digitalage The organizations internal pain would be

1. employees seeking more interesting opportunities elsewhere, 
2. a general erosion of an organizations ability to identify and create new knowledge at an ever increasing rate… 
3. let your mind wonder…

A Learning Systems Architect works as the implementer and technical eyes / expert for the Chief Learning Officer. The Chief Learning Officer makes sure the organization has everything (politics, budget, infrastructure, knowledge, etc) in place to be a learning organization. Otherwise, the organization dies… The World 2.0 is here, knowledge doubles every 18 months, 1.3 billion youth will emerge from the developing world in the next 10 years to fill an estimated 380 million new jobs, only 130 million university seats exist today in the developed world, where will the 130 million (10% of the 1.3 billion) of the developing world students get their education? When all the seats are occupied by developed world students? Answer: the learning organization with a learning infrastructure built by a Learning Systems Architect…

Thanks again for prodding me to clarify… Please, prod me again. This is known as socio-constructivist learning. It is a core theory that a Learning Systems Architect builds a learning eco-system…

Learning Systems Architect

Learning Systems Architects perform some or all of the following duties:

• Collect and document user’s requirements and develop logical and physical specifications
• Liaise with clients, product managers and senior management regarding the feasability and design of product development
• Research, evaluate and synthesize technical information to design, develop and test computer-based learning and instructional systems
• Develop data, process and network models to optimize architecture and to evaluate the performance and reliability of designs
• Ensure that performance, scalability and extensibility requirements of the product are gathered and met
• Plan, design and co-ordinate the development, installation, integration and operation of computer-based learning and instructional systems
• Assess, test, troubleshoot, document, upgrade and develop maintenance procedures for operating systems, communications environments and applications software
• May lead and co-ordinate teams of information systems professionals, interactive media developers and instructional designers in the development of courseware and integrated information systems
• May research and evaluate a variety of learning management systems, interactive media software products and software frameworks.

Employment requirements

• A bachelor’s degree, usually in computer science, computer systems engineering, software engineering or mathematics
• Post-secondary education and experience in education and learning theory within K12, adult and life long learning.
• A master’s or doctoral degree in a related discipline(s) may be required.
• Experience as a computer programmer and software designer is usually required.

New Job Description

I am looking for a new job. I have just spent a year in St. John’s Newfoundland on a paternity leave and doing some instructional design and workshop facilitation. My family has now returned to Vancouver. I have fired up my networking engine and have begun to send out emails and contact people I know in Vancouver. One of those people; Troy Angrignon after receiving an email from me asked for me to be more specific to what I was looking for. I know what I am looking for; I’d like a job as a Learning Systems Architect. A formal job description of a Learning Systems Architect doesn’t exist, so I am going to write it myself. After some reflection and some google searches I came across a few web pages that I will use as reference to build this job description;

1. The Canadian National Occupational Classification site; http://www23.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/2001/e/groups/2173.shtml
2. The Learning Systems Architecture Lab; http://lsal.org/
3. A Senior Architect position description I pilfered from
   desire2learn (I wish they had an office in Vancouver); http://www.rawsthorne.org/docs/SeniorArchitectDesire2Learn.pdf
4. A description of a Learning Technology Systems Architecture
   (LTSA) put together by the IEEE; http://www.edutool.com/ltsa/04/index.html