Better late than never. AHHHHH! Smell the asynchronicity !!!

The topic for the interstitial week 6/7: Find and OER repository and comment on it's sustainability.

What does it do...............?
In the interest of expediency I chose to just WRITE about my findings rather than do any kind of multimedia formatted information. I have done podcasts, video podcasts (misnomer -as they are just called videos to the non-digital natives or questioning immigrant) Slideshare, Voicethread and numerous other multimedia presentations for other Emerging technologies courses and for my teaching assignments. I know the time commitments involved and qualities of the end products and I must say I have to defer to the age old medium of print ( as anachronistic and Luddite that may be.......... can you say Kindle boys and girls) as being the more expeditious means given my less than enthusiastic engagement in the course thus far. We will examine why if there is an exit survey at the end of the course.I chose a Secondary School repository for OERs using Universal Design for Learning, in the progressive province of British Columbia (The Special Education Technology British Columbia (SET BC). ).This is Governmental/Provincial site, so may not fit the parameters of what we were asked to investigate in our online assignment on the viability and longevity of OERs. The SET has been around since 1989
so I guess would classify as a mature OER. It was created "To enhance student opportunities for success by providing access to curriculum through the use of appropriate educational and communication technologies." They provide assistive technologies to teachers and students and support for same, to all teachers and their charges in British Columbia.This is a very specialized repository which I assume would attract all the technologically adventurous and those with the trouble-shooting skills and tenacity to stick with the project even when most would give it up as lost cause. I think that a lot of these OER sites have individuals with such rare and diverse skill sets that are willing to contribute and work pro bono , but even they cannot withstand the bureaucratic onslaught of apathy coupled with poorly thought out ICT goals.

Where is it now.................??
Since 'high' or 'special needs' students are a growth growing segment of our population, it is little wonder that this OER site is still functioning at it's full capacity ( or so I assume without any statistics to back up my claim). Of course with an unlimited revenue stream provided by tax dollars it is easy to stay viable.
There are two areas you have to log in
and there are two areas for student work. The Learning Objects Repository has quite a few resources for K-8 but is sorely lacking in High School materials. I counted only 22 lessons for all secondary levels dating back to 2007. CurriculumSET was equally as sparse for secondary school with nothing for ICT in middle scholl or High school and only one resource for elementary. I guess sharing is not all it could be even in British Columbia. The pictureSET was the same .
However, the Learning Centre area had quite a few resources for teachers from 1997 onwards. This bodes well for the people who are contributing. Like most OER repositories however, statistics on use/resuse are lacking and simple hit counter tracking says noting about how or who the resource is being used by. Manitoba Ed has invested a lot of money in WebCt infrastructure , course development, promotion but they will be the last ones to give you any negative statistics on it's under utilization. I suspect the same is true of OER repositories


What is its prognosis for the future...............??I believe that there is a very good chance of it program surviving in some form or other (even if it is much diminished due to less government funding) since it is well distributed program over a lot of highly qualified ( and well paid ) individuals.


From my readings and discussions it seems clear to me that even with well established goals and progress assessment toward those goals, adequate funding ,and ongoing creative input that sustainability will remain elusive. Power structures aside, I think it is like Scott says, that the burden on the creative, technophilic educators will reach a point of futility and they will choose to disengage or contribute sporadically. People will cease to do work they perceive as unproductive. Once and OER smells stale , death is not far off

The dilemma for OERs:why they will not survive as socially created,shared, free entities.

This is a brain-dump too, as it appears, according to my wife, that this is the type of writing is of which I am most capable.Maybe I should write my own On The Road?

As we were encouraged to rant, I will oblige accordingly

If our most successful OERs in 'production' or 'mass circulation' now are the ones that are highly organized and stripped of cultural content, and if we agree that OERS that are the most pedagogically beneficial should be imbued with socially, politically, economically or culturally relevant context embedded or integrated, then we have a huge diametric contradiction here; one that cannot be solved by love nor money. Also if the ultimate goal is to have the underclasses of the world maximize the use of OERs, we need to scrutinize their underlying objectives, both overt and covert.

Are they to:

1/ gain legitimacy or prestige for the content creators and the 'experts' on these much debated learning objects

2/ build momentum for rapid adoption of OERs based on altruistic, democratic, humanitarian and philanthropic reasons for all learners to usher in a new golden age of teaching and learning

3/ monetize all online courses to eliminate the messy human element of teaching in favour of a more streamlined, cost effective, non-unionized, self-directed learning model for all learners, while still applying the ShirkyPrinciple.

We must examine not only who the target audience is for these individual OER commodities, but also , if we are serious about their use as a 'global levellers' for education, how we can give the content creators, regardless of geographic and economic constraints, the means to create their own OERs and by extension, their own reality. While this is on the radar I think it is imperative to any successful global pragmatic implementation or sustainability
I think I would have to agree with Douglas Rushkoff's argument in his recent book Life Inc., that global societies have essentially been systematically stripped of social interaction in favor of passive consumerism. We, as individuals, have become slaves to our ideals of private ownership and are only capable of identifying ourselves through branding and consumption. (For me, MIT's branding is the main reasons for MIT's success in the OER field). Because this anti-socializing corporate mentality is so firmly embedded in the global psyche that even questioning the power structure is tantamount to heresy, we cannot even approach framing a cogent argument toward the fact that OERs cannot exist in the diametrically opposed medium in which it (and all of us) exist.

As Rushkoff and many others point out, there has never been a level 'playing field' for any human endeavour since the ascendancy of money but rather one of privilege and monopoly. A lot of us are just becoming aware of this in the crisis situations unfolding around the world but rationalize this out of our academic and everyday lives. This rationalization is being applied in huge doses to the online OER debate."If the OERs had full funding...." or "If this technological roadblock were only removed...." or "If the Institutional leaders could only see....The commercialization of this section of the Internet has the same underlying constraints as those of the green energy revolution: Unless it can be controlled for private gain, it will be always subordinate to, if not actively fought against, by the status quo of more profitable means of business. There is no money in poor folks (former Yugoslavia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda...........) and no money in OERs. Thus they will not continue.