Online Educational Resources - The Capetown and Budapest accords

The course I am now enrolled in at the University of Manitoba is for me going to a further examination of OERS from both a critical and a practical view. From what I learned in the Introduction to Emerging Technologies course about OERS they are very English Language and High bandwidth oriented endeavours. On Stephen Downes blog (for example We Learn, Thoughts on Solutions, & OERs Moving On ) and Chris Lott's blog there are carefully thought out arguments on OER implemetation which are much more eloquent and erudite than I could ever hope to produce in this blog. Of course these postings have to be read after much foundational reading and rumination about OERs in order to have any value to us as educational professionals. (This I find true for all the courses I have done in the Emerging Technologies field;staying current, posting and sharing has to be a passion in order to stay engaged at a professional or graduate level and even then is hugely time consuming given our off-line life commitments )

But to the point of the course I guess I did not sign either of the two initiatives that are mentioned in the title of this blog and probably wouldn't have anyway for some of the following reasons

1. I wasn't aware of them


2. I have a philosophical and semantic issue with the definition of freedom and openness


3. It seems difficult to get educators and administrators in our economically privileged hemisphere to 'buy in' and engage in the new participatory learning models using OER therefore, how can we expect the whole world to sign on to a declaration of something that has no meaning for them
4. Anything that has George Soros' name attached to it cannot be a free endeavour devoid of attached strings. To short the English Pound and make 10 billion dollars does not sound like the actions of an enlighten philanthropist ready to change the way the way works (economically or otherwise). While I agree that money has to push innovation and mass acceptance I think this is counteractive to OERs ultimate goals for the world's education paradigm shift
   

While I agree with the principles espoused in these declarations and feel they need codified in some manner it seems, as with many things regarding the online learning communities, it is done by a relatively small cadre of over-committed and hyper-productive individuals; well meaning, idealistic and often times right in the convictions of what must take place The number of signatories (2328 for Capetown & 5228 for Budapest) attest to this. Not quite slacltivism but certainly not a deluge of participation of global scope. While these individuals may be influential thinkers and educators they will not be the ones to force change but I laud there efforts. It will have to be a mandate from the masses who have yet to engage in large enough numbers to create a critical mass for change in education ( and the others ....ecology, economics, politics.......)

They will have to 'buy in' in huge numbers which means they will have to have easy and fast access in huge numbers and see this 'product' as valuable to them in their own circumstances.

This being said I do agree with what the Budapest Declaration said regarding peer reviewed articles. If Shakespeare's plays not be widely disseminated and were treated only as a means of increasing wealth for his family (he'd be a corporation it today's world) we would have been greatly diminished as a species. Thus I think is essential to share and give away our knowledge and expertise. But I don't agree that the peer-review is the best or only type of shareable or worthy knowledge as they contend. A lot of what is valued is on the deep or hidden web; Intranets and wall gardens of corporations, schools and individuals. Also it presumes that a lot of persons in academia are willing or able to share their research because of institutional or corporate intellectual ownership.


To put my preceding comments into context I must diverge from the topic questions proivded to us by Ms. Keiller

Most people, myself included, lurk and learn without fear of embarrassment , loss of grade, etc. We take and use that which is useful to us and leave the rest. As I have learned from my readings by Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, we cannot impose solutions pedagogical or economic, but rather they must be created and consumed by and for the end user. If they are not producing then they are not actively engaged in the collaborative process that we all take for granted as the coming wave in education. The learning materaisl have to be set in context, practical and adaptive to be meaningful and adopted en mass. This is the antithesis of our 'systematic' and institutional approach in the west. Our 'hammer and nail' solutions are not practical in the underdeveloped or emerging world (notice they are always defined in term sof economics)

I have to admit that all of my thinking on matters in education have not only been colored by the above educational philosophers, but also by the likes of Naomi Klein( Shock Doctrine), Howard Zinn (People's History of the United States) and Chris Hedges (numerous books and online writings). They have greatly influenced my thinking on how matters of education are always circumscibed by the economic and political factors enveloping our global village. I think the paradigm shift for Open Education and its democratic principles supported by the freedom of the delivery method ( Internet) suggests nothing less than the dismantling of our whole capitalist/corporatist system of control, a mighty tall order indeed.

Digital Nation

There is a very interesting and disturbing trend to unchecked exhuberance for all things computer-related. PBS recently aired a documentary called Digital Nation, which among other things, showed how Korea is now feeling the effects of Internet addiction. Also of interest in the show was the interesting study done at MIT. If MIT grads function at diminished cacpacity while 'multitasking', where does this leave the continual partially connected secondary school students awash in a sea of information they are unable to decode. I am indebted to Chris Lott who is not only a great creative and thought-provoking blogger, but who also challenges the accepted wisdom of the masses when it comes to the wholesale acceptance of technology without questioning existing power structures that dominate all societies, corporatist, captialism and socialist alike.

http://chrislott.org/story/concentration-and-imagination-in-the-digital-age/

No Child Left Thinking – Dr. Joel Westheimer

Dr. Joel Westheimer is presenting a public lecture at the University of Regina on Monday, January 25th, 3:30-4:45 (CST). I will doing my best to stream the event live via this Ustream channel.

Details of the session are found below.

“No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools”
Dr. Joel Westheimer from the University of Ottawa will be delivering a free public lecture to the university and broader community on Monday, January 25th, 2010 3:30pm-4:45pm Education Auditorium (U of R) on the topic of social justice, citizenship, and democracy. His talk is provocatively entitled: “No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools” .

Hayes Carll and Steve Earle

Steve Earle is still battling his demons in more ways than one. Friday night at the Burton Cummings Center in Winnipeg, the reformed heroin and whiskey addict was battling that legacy yet again. A certain number of 'fans,' who still identified with pre-jail era Earle, seem to think that by recreating a drunken, drug-induced stupor, they were being as rebellious as him in his 'bad ol' days' and that this by extension was some sort of homage or flattery that Steve himself would appreciate. It was most decidedly not.
These boorish louts exhibited their undying allegiance to Earle's previous (and their current) lifestyle by continually interrupting in their self-induced 'Tourettes Syndrome' style by screaming for songs when he was trying to relate some solemn affair or detail of his hard worn life. The first shouts for Guitar Town (and many others to follow) brought the response from Earle,
"What are you? Retarded? This is acoustic. Just me and the guitar buddy."
Later he tried to make jokes about it by saying "I remember my first beer too buddy" and "This is the second drunkest audience I've played for in a while", but his humour vanished quite quickly and he said "I won't play Guitar Town because of you. Later on, when he apologized for losing his cool during an encore he did play the song so that"The asshole wouldn't killed on the way out" to quote Earle.

During his talks about his intimate knowledge of a friendship with Townes Van Zandt that most people came to hear, there were drunken moronic shouts and instead of Steve being allowed to share his personal insights and quiet reflections about his and Townes hard ridden lives, he was constantly staving off yelling and badgering requests for other songs.
To say the least, Earle was disgusted and he apologized to the "people who actually came here tonight to hear the music" for the idiots who ruined it for them and for himself.

Near the end he even asked why the house- policy was to serve booze throughout the concert and warned that "It'll be very hard for you to get a beer the next time I come here.You guys can't handle it."


Where were the Security that would not intervene to save both Earle's show and assuage the true fans who almost universally called for the expulsion of the riff-raff.We commiserated in frustrated mumblings while the security quietly admonished the churlish children who were 'acting out' to 'please please, PLEASE' behave. Even a misbehaving child would have been sent for a time-out. The Guardians of this venue obviously haven't been to that parenting class and these gin-soaked brats continued to verbally abuse Earle and those who were trying hard to be attentive patrons.


Shame on the Burton Cummings Center staff for not respecting Steve Earle's repeated requests to do someting about the rabble that were ruining the show. We'll not likely attract many more of his stature if concerts are treated as a wrestling-type event and in fact he himself may not ever return with such a repugnent assault on his talent and his fans. I also pity the poor patrons of upcoming events at the BCC, who will, it appears, have to be be subjected to drunken hillbillies' antics far and away more worse than any loud expository on a cell phone. So much for Friendly Manitoba! I don't think Steve Earle used those words to describe his reception in Winnipeg last night.The ignominious experience should make both the Burton Cummings Center, and Winnipeg in general, re-examine their place in the music scene across Canada and in North America. As Johnny Cash told us "Well bad news travels like wild fire...."

Openness 1.0

Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla is Associate Professor in the Department of Communications, at Pontificia Universidad speaks words of wisdom about the realities of open education from experience in the developing world
http://www.firstmondaypodcast.org/audio/open2_final.mp3

Cloud Computing podcast

Ismael Peña-López has locked down Digital Literacy for me Digital Framework for Literacy

Ismael Peña-López has locked down Digital Literacy for me



http://ictlogy.net/20090317-towards-a-comprehensive-definition-of-digital-skills/