Week 8: Economic Models of Open Education

This week we read about the economic side of OER. It's already Friday evening, and no one has yet posted!!! I wish we had a formal system of posting our thoughts, and then posting our reactions to others at a later date - I think I'd get more out of the course. I know I could do this - but things are just to busy unless it is a requirement - waiting for life to slow...

Some Q's of import:

How can you build a sustainable business around giving away educational materials?

I think the first thing to consider is that "sustainable" can have a lot of different meanings in the educational context. It can mean: a) not going into the red financially b) continually having people visit and learn from your ed materials c) continually building materials on your site for yourself d) continually having others contribute new material to your site. Wiley's definition of sustainability encompasses all three of these meanings individually and in combination:

sustainability will be defined as an open educational resource project’s ongoing ability to meet its goals.

The articles for this week show that the purpose of Open Education Resources can vary on these definitions - just as they vary in the purpose of their educational materials. For Carnegie Mellon U, which has very costly development, the purpose seems to be to educate its own 1st year University students in a better manner - and avoid the large "101" lectures. For them, sustainability might mean continually having their own students learn - and whoever else learns from them is just public good. Wiley compared three different OER sites that were premised on very different ideas. MIT, being costly, centrally controlled with all courses online to varying degrees; USU at half the cost, with little control, but lots of courses; and Rice Connexions, with almost no control and almost no direct costs, but the possibilty of lots of other people inputing into the courses/creating modules, etc. He points out that sustainability will mean different things to each group, as their goals are different!

One of the key components of being sustainable financially, however, is being able to harness the vast amount of "spare time" that people have. Benkler makes a great point about how this has been harnessed successfully by breaking tasks into smaller pieces - so one person is only responsible for one page, or one lesson, instead of the whole course/book/textbook/novel. This works better in some areas than in others - so it is likely easier to piece together a translation and an encyclopedia than it is a textbook. Of course, if you had a "Master" develop the template for the textbook, and then break it into smaller pieces for others to do in their spare time, it might be more successful.

Downes and Wiley both offer several suggestions of funding models etc. for OER. I can see how each model could be useful depending on the goals of the organizaiton - but that there is likely not one strict model. I'd like to know if others think that one model is better or worse than the others.

How can you build a sustainable business model around giving away credentialed degrees?

Why would we want to offer free credentialized degrees, unless those free degrees were essentially paid for by the taxpayers funding a public university? What are the benefits of this? How does "giving away degrees" interact with notions of quality? I mean, we have a hard enough time getting quality OER that aren't accredited. How much harder would it be to ensure the quality of a credentialized degree? Without such quality checks, would our degrees become meaningless??

As a student in debt, I really would love paying less for a quality degree. But then again, this already exists - I just have to learn German and move to Germany and I'd get not only a credentialed degree for free, I'd also get access to profs.

And if one argues that Uni's wouldn't make any money using the German model (even though society benefits hugely, including the German economy on the whole) - I think it's only fair to question why should Universities be in the business of making money?!?! Why have we chosen this social model, given how important education facilities are in our societies. As far as I know, this is a more recent trend - as compared to the past. If we are so concerned in OER about contributing to the common good, then one really should think about the common good in other areas, such as through traditional educaiton facilities.

Should governments fund open education?

Yes, governments should!! It is a public good!! Just as they should fund K-12 schools and universities. Really, it is the taxpayer that is funding these things. Education is well known as the "great equalizer" - i.e. a way to give all people in society an equal footing. Although this often doesn't happen in practice, given that richer areas always find ways to subsidize their schools, and richer people can send their kids to private schools, or after school tutoring, or piano/dance/art lessons which expand their creativity and knowledge and confidence. However, countries that do a better job of publicly funding their education seem to do a better job of reducing the rich and poor gap.

I think that this potential for equalization is even greater for open education, as our societies become more technologically savvy (Many poor kids in Canada still don't have frequent access to a computer, meaning that even if OER are available, they can't access them. But 100 years ago only rich houses had telephones, which are now ubiquitous, so I can hope the same will happen for computer access.)

Do governments already fund OER?

Well, Canada's SchoolNet and some United Nations programmes, described by Downes is one example of a government funded open education project - but how much it really is a OER? I don't know. And what other government initiatives are there? If you know of others, enlighten me!!

Missing CC License - CC-By->2@ (full c for 2 years, then CC-BY??)

I was talking with Stian the other day about some amateur filmmakers who were hesitant to post their stuff as CC...and how many filmmakers make their $$ in the first year or two after release, and then their films disappear into oblivion. And how this is a shame for artists from smaller countries, like Norway, who's work is heavily subsidized by the public.

This made me think that it might be beneficial to have a CC license that can change over time. I.e. it is maybe a full copyright, or a restricted CC for a few years, and then becomes CC-BY. I assume that people can change their copyright on their works on their own over time - for example, something of mine that is now copyrighted, I could make into CC-BY when I want - but knowing me, I would have forgotten about the work by the time I wanted to do that.

Perhaps we need:

CC-BY->2@ (i.e. becomes CC-BY, after greater/longer than 2 years regular copyright - and one could change the 2 to whatever number...).

Licensing Open Educational Resources - Week 7

Given that almost everything current is copyrighted, it makes perfect sense that we've developed licenses like CC and GFDL that explicitly tell people that they CAN use our stuff. Kudos to this movement!

But given this week's readings, I'm still really puzzled by where CC and GFDL have led us.

1. Why are CC and GFDL not compatible - I know the technical/legal reason - but what's making it so difficult for them to change their licences to be compatible with each other? Several of these week's articles highlighted this problem - that docs licensed under the share-alike must be shared under the same license, precluding mixing with other licenses. Ok. So what's the hold-up on the solution? It's just legal jargon that needs to be changed, no??
   
2. Why haven't we focused more on expanding "fair use"? Certainly this would be one way around the above conundrum. It would also help solve problems with using copyright materials. I mean, as an academic, I certainly give people their due, but don't need to ask them for permission each time I cite their stuff.
   
3. Stian speaks about the problems with Share-Alike and Non-Commercial versions of the CC. I agree with him - this is a serious problem for any educator who is working within an organization, or trying to make their bread and butter. Is there a need for a type of CC license that differs between commercial as in making money, and commercial as in monopolistic activities that limit future use/dissemination? One blog (I've lost where!) mentioned the instances where companies have managed to limit the future use of public domain items - isn't this really the issue?
   
4. Is there an easy educational tool yet - maybe a firefox plug-in - that can track the websites I've been - where I can quickly log the ideas so that over the course of a week of reading, I don't lose where I've read something? Maybe this is just my transition from paper to electronics - but you just can't flip through past history of web pages the same way you can through a book...It has posed rather serious challenges for me in trying to cite and follow articles. How to resolve?
   

Copyleft good?

I wish copyleft was good - I love the name. But I think it is a shame that the term must be associated with a "share-alike" clause. I'm in full agreement with David Wiley's assertions (1) (2) that sharing-alike really takes the freedom of choice out of FUTURE creators - and can cause serious problems for free educational resources because a GFDL and CC license can't necessarily be fixed. Share-alike is inherently a political act. And although I like the politics behind it, I want to be able to make the decision to make something educational freely open for myself and others. As Noam Chomsky says:

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

In forcing others to be open, are we really not just imposing new restrictions?

I love edocet's comparison to walking his dog through private property in the countryside - and compared it to OERs requiring a password to access the lessons:

The very most part of sites are “public” in the homepage, but when you try to access a single course, you are required a subscription (usual and maybe correct) and even a password, or you’re not allowed not even to see the material ... To me, it sounds more or like if during my walk with the dog, the men had told us “ok, you can see the path but you need to tell us the password to go through… or go simply back your way home”.

When I lived in Sweden, similar to edocet's Tuscany it seems, it was common for a public path to go through private land, and continue right on - this does not occur very often in Canada, nor I think in the United States. I've been told to clear off private land several times, while simply enjoying the view. In fact, I was driving on a public road, overlooking a lake, and happened to stop by a house for a final view of the sunset. The owner came out and was quite gruff about "his" land. This says more about our culture than about copyright laws. It is the same culture that can potentially limit fair use, or put registration on an OER page to control access.

My overarching question? Fair Use seems to be a culturally derived norm - i.e. there don't seem to be set rules around it, but it is evaluated on a case by case basis, based on past experiences. I don't think the problem is copyright, or non-commercial, or share-alike. I think the problem is a culture that sees everything as enclosed property (something that CC and GFDL try to get away from). Is it not this, then, that should be the focus of change? Can this not be done more through redefining fair use of CC and copyright material, instead of creating even more new licenses?

On a final note, there is a certain amount of education of the public that needs to be done to make CC more widespread. I think that the more symbols we get into with CC, the harder it will be for people to get their head around what they can and can't do with the material. David Wiley's GREAT CHART of CC licenses and their restrictions on future licenses is a prime example of mapping out something that confuses me to no end. I think it'd be smart to err on less licenses than more...

Licensing for the Public Domain? (Week 6)

I am still getting over my shock that almost EVERYTHING from 1923 on is copyrighted! And that, in essence, I'm breaking copyright when I cite someone's article in my scholarly article, except that I'm allowed to under "fair use". This thought leads me to several concerning this week's readings:

1. Why have we focused on developing new forms of copyright (GFDL and Creative Commons) instead of focusing on expanding and clarifying "fair use"?? Bound by Law - a comic that explains copyright - points out how ridiculous copyright can get for documentary makers - how a TV in the background showing the Simpsons may require the documentary maker to pay $10,000 to the copyright holders, or cut that scene out. I agree with the makers of Bound by Law, that it essentially prohibits the little guys from making films! So, why not expand fair use?

2. Lessig's Against perpetual copyright, and his interview, do a good job of explaining why we have copyright in the first place in the USA - "to promote science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors...the exclusive rights to their writings" (US Congress, cited in Carroll 2002). And how it is the balance between copyright and the public domain that helps further new works. However, I don't think that 'promoting the arts and sciences' are the reasons behind the lengthening of the copyright. I'm sure there is a huge lobby behind the push for longer copyrights. And I'm sure it is composed of those who are making a substantial profit from keeping things copyrighted (might Disney be a prime example?). And often government policies - or lack thereof - do not get made because it is in the interest of the public, but because it is the interest of powerful lobbies (e.g. lack of US commitment to legislation to control air pollution and global warming).

So, how do we refocus attention on the overall benefit to the public? Perhaps, as Lessig and Pollock suggest, this refocus may occur as we distinguish between the properties of physical and intellectual works? (Tangible goods being rivalrous goods, and private property too being connected to public works like roads). Pollock mentioned that the US Government's documents were all in the public domain, in contrast to European governments. I thought it was a very influential argument to show the economic benefits that resulted from this.

This week's readings did a very good job of teaching me about the values of both the public domain and the importance of copyright in some form. They also hinted at why new bodies like Creative Commons or GFDL have come about.

HOWEVER: I don't feel like I have a very good grasp of the differences between Creative Commons and GFDL (anybody that knows a great link to this, please comment!). And although David Wiley has asked us:

How much (what percentage) of [the value of the public domain] would you estimate is realized when works are licensed with a Creative Commons or GFDL license?

I actually want to rephrase the question to: what value of benefit to society, to promoting the creation of the "sciences and the useful arts" result from licensing through CC or GFDL? Becuase, public domain and copyright are intrinsically connected! And copyright is not necessarily bad. My understanding is that CC and GFDL are essentially just a freer and more explicit form of copyright - where people clearly are able to understand what use you as a creator are willing to give to your work! Am I wrong? In terms of the benefit to society through CC and GFDL, I think that it IS an incredible benefit (a high percentage!).

Wiley also asks:

To what degree would the open educational resources movement (and therefore the world) be additionally benefited if OERs were simply placed in the public domain?

In response to this, I think that OER should have some type of copyright - preferably CC based on my current understanding - as it helps give the organizations incentive to keep creating and posting the works - and yet OERs mostly seem to permit rejigging and recreation already - as long as attribution is there. I guess the benefit of putting OER in the public domain, however, would be that they possibly could be used in works that are commercial - and hence re-copyrighted. Economically beneficial. But I'm not sure if the additional economic benefit would equal the loss to the general public.

Any thoughts on these above are most welcome, as I'm really not firm in what I write here - still trying to muddle it out.

Week 5's assignment:

What do these representative open education projects have in common? What differentiates them? In the context of open education projects, what does "quality" mean?

Comparing six organization's examples of Open Education Projects, I have to agree with Karen that they have more in differences than they do in common. These six organizations are: Open U, Rice Connexions, Carnegie Mellon, UNESCO, MIT, and the National Repository. Rob and Greg have already described the courses individually, so I will leave that out and speak more generally to the set as a whole. The biggest commonality between them is the purpose of providing free and open courses (or parts of courses) to the public, without accreditation. They tend to:

• focus on higher education (usually 1st year university courses) and therefore focus more targeted at adult users;
• define "interaction" as writing comments/posts and have a "register" option which allows you to post;
• view content in the traditional "banking" way - where instructor GIVES info to students to receive (although there are exceptions here);
• not have a sustainability plan (as most seem to be funded through things like the Hewlett Foundation, and it is unclear what the contingency plan is when this dries up);
• English focused, particularly an American focus (even a course on World Religions was premised on the idea that the learner would be an American!).
  

Differences abound though:

1. The secondary purpose of each site differs. Some, like the Open U and MIT seem to also promote their university in this way. Others, like Rice Connexions and the National Repository, seem to focus on linking to other Universities (Rice does this a lot) or organizations (like the National Repository's links to Hippo Campus and OER Commons).
2. Some provide whole courses (Carnegie Mellon and UNESCO), while others provide modules that can be compounded into courses (Open U, Rice Connexions), while the others seem to mix these two (National Repository, MIT)
3. Types of courses also differed. Many offered 1st year University courses, particularly on the Maths and Sciences, with some History/Economics mixed in. But the National Repository also offered Advanced Placement and High School courses on these subjects. Rice Connexions had a great section on Music! And UNESCO gave the kitchen sink on subjects.
   
4. Users?! It is clear that several of the sites haven't really thought about their end users (I'd say Carnegie Mellon is the exception, focused on students!). Some of the courses/modules would be most useful for an educator looking for resources to teach. Others are more geared at students looking for stuff to learn. Most sites seemed to have a mix of these, without being clear as to who the info would be most useful to! In fact, most of the sites varied in learning levels as well - yet only Open U seemed to provide a useful scale to know how advanced the information was.
   
5. Content focused - what about skills?? Carnegie Mellon's courses were clearly designed for students to learn - and they have spent a lot of time honing the courses to engage students in an active learning way. Many of the other courses read more like a textbook or a wikipedia type knowledge - begging the question as to why I, as a student ,would look here for the information, instead of Wikipedia. Content seems to rule, with little attention paid to the skills that could be learned online. Perhaps the answer to this is contained in Scott Leslie's screencast on client-side extensions and educational resources (which fellow-classmate Abject Learning led me to! Thx!!).
   

I must say that the site that most impressed me was the Carnegie Mellon - because I readily saw its use in helping students that have to take basic "101" courses, typically done in lectures of more than 500, suddenly being able to learn better through this kind of medium. Their focus on how students would actually engage and learn something like Statistics (as opposed to just posting the content as a textbook) is commendable. Learning, not content, focused.

As for quality definitions, these also seemed to vary across the sites. Some retained their quality focus by just posting their own university's creations (Open U, MIT, Carnegie Mellon). In fact, with MIT, only some courses were really available online, whereas others were really just the syllabi and a few exercises thrown together - it was good quality, but limited content in some courses. In Open U, other creators can create in a separate space - but not post in the learner's space. In contrast, other sites allow content from wherever. Rice Connexions has a "post publication review" in order to allow for the fast pace of the Internet. The National Repository has developed a "course development guideline" which it uses to evaluate each course for quality. UNESCO doesn't seem to evaluate at all - and although some of the courses I looked at were incredible (e.g. Rural Finance Centre's material on starting micro credit orgs), others were an embarrassment, full of Google advertisements taking up more of the screen than the content.
I was very excited by the potentials of these organizations, despite the design improvements that are needed. I still don't quite understand how these organizations will create a synergy between them all. Someone last week had said something like "we don't need millions of 1st year university courses at every U, raising questions in quality - we just need a few really good ones, which everyone can use." (If anyone knows where this is from, please let me know!). How to do this remains an unanswered question.

A last comment, as Edocet asked, and I wondered:

At the end, from teacher to teacher, David: why didn’t you put in the list this resource? –> http://www.oercommons.org

Maybe next year?

Week 4 - Comparison of 3 Overviews of OER

Over the last few weeks, we have been reading four overviews on Open Education Resources (OER), from the OECD, OCLOS and the Hewlett Foundation (titles at bottom), for David Wiley’s Course. First, it is notable that these are three influential and large organizations. The very fact that they would have each undertaken an overview of OER, outlining its growth, shows how important they feel it is on the educational, economic, and region/global front.

The overviews have several features in common. First, their definitions of OER, as Antonio describes, are reasonably similar. It appears to have something to do with the expanding the common good, and cover aspects of content, software tools, and copyright laws. My fellow classmate, Mela, has drawn out some of the other common ideas that seem to be found in the three documents, which I agree with. In her/his words, namely:

• interoperable;
• accessible;
• re-usable;
• free;
• digital;
• shared;
• easy to be changed and translated;
• the way to supply them is the open source sw;
• the privileged media is the new technology;
• the preferred way to share them is Creative Common License (By NC SA).
• create contents repository open and free.

The three documents also similarly bring up the enablers/drivers and inhibitors/challenges to OER. However, they tend to limit their discussion to the realm of Higher Education, most likely because this is the area where the most financial resources seem to have been concentrated on developing OER to date. Karen notes the lack of focus on regular schooling, and textbooks in particular, the later of which I had mentioned in my previous blog. To this, they also lack OER’s potential for education in the realm of informal learning, popular education, adult literacy, potential for emanicaptory learning, or learning how to become a critical thinker and become involved in particular social movements. These latter, I think, has great potential, especially in the area of international development, governance and democracy. I can only imagine what will happen when social movements and NGOs start engaging in OER to systematically further knowledge about select issues (be it Darfur or water or the right to education).

There are several notable different emphases and biases in the documents. In fact, I would argue that these different emphases are the result of the hidden biases of the organizations. The OECD document tends to focus on the economic arguments. I found that the writers were almost surprised by the fact that people would be “giving knowledge for free”, and dealt with the potential economic benefits and the shortcomings of this. In contrast, OCLOS tended to focus on a discussion of learning styles, and OER’s potential to shift from a teacher-centered to learner-centered pedagogy. Karen describes this as a constructivist bias, and I think I agree with her. The Hewlett Foundation document profiles the successes and variety of the OER projects they have helped fund. It is an important document in that it highlights the fact that the initiatives don’t all connect and build into a greater entity – at the moment they tend to be more one-offs. As they describe, what is needed are a few high quality first year undergraduate courses, not every university to have its own, where people are unsure of who/where to trust for quality. The Hewlett Foundation report is also the only one to mention and draw out the importance of OER in Developing countries. I would like to see more work in this area.

The Hewlett Foundation report spoke most clearly to me out of the three. I think this is because it mostly dwelt more on highlighting concrete programmes, which forced me to briefly explore these programs online. Of the three documents, it was the one that actually needed to be read on the screen, so that I could flip frequently to the internet. By doing so, I gained a much greater and clearer perspective of what OER was. I know that the other two documents mentioned other projects, but their style of writing did not necessitate me to actually look at their references. In this manner, the Hewlett Document itself is much more in line with the new learning style that OER calls for, as compared to the other two documents which replicate a typical report. I also appreciated their International Development focus, as it is my area of study.

These readings have provoked numerous questions and areas for further investigation. In order of importance:

1. I feel very ignorant of copyright, and the inhibitions of it. I read a news article the other day of two cases (one Canadian, one America) where people’s pictures were used without permission by advertisers, b/c they were supposedly in the public domain! What are the ramifications of copyright, the lack of copyright, privacy, etc.?

2. Why are OER being developed? It is not free. As the Hewlett article points out, it cost MIT about $25000 to put each of its courses online. Although I can see the benefit for the common good, I still am skeptical about this being the reason behind its take-off. I just don’t think Universities are that altruistic, even if I wish they were. The overviews dealt with this subject, but not enough for me to truly grasp the rationale behind!

3. Why don’t we have OER K-12 textbooks, as both Karen and I have mentioned? This could be significantly more beneficial to the common good than university courses online!!

4. What are OER’s effects on democratization? Improving governance? These are key issues in many developing countries, particularly for USAID. How/Can OER contribute?

5. How sustainable, truly, is this?

6. David, in light of what I have learnt about OER learning processes, I wrote this last week - a tinkering suggestion for designing your OER courses - I think it is worth repeating, as I'm fairly certain you'll read this week's blog, but not sure about last week's:

Following on OLCOS's process of value chains I think it would be much smarter to require two posts - even if they are each a little shorter. The first would be one's own reflections on the reading (due on Sunday eve?). The second would incorporate others' views of the reading, - it would be my other reflections on the reading in light of this, or perhaps a change to my original post. It would be due a few days later, given that I and many of my peers seem to post nearer the Sunday deadline. This would allow me to articulate my own thoughts clearly, but would also force me to revisit/rethink them in light of others' comments - an excellent learning value chain. Because this would not all be done on Sunday night before midnight, I actually would have a chance to read my peers' work before posting mine.

Week 2-4 questions answered within:

What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did? Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why? What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently?

Three Overviews of OER:

Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources (OECD, 147 pages)

Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (OLCOS, 149 pages)

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities (Atkins, Brown, and Hammond, 80 pages) Hewlett Foundation

Week 3: OLCOS & Education as the practice of freedom?

Paulo Freire, in the 1960s, spoke about getting rid of a "banking" notion of education, and thought that learning, particularly literacy, should begin from the learner's own knowledge and building from their experiences (e.g. in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Education as the Practice of Freedom, and We Make the Road by Walking).

This week's reading, the European OLCOS article: Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012, seems to centre around these same themes - of slowly transforming the practice of teachers and learners. Although this vision has yet to be achieved, four decades later. Similar to Freire, OLCOS speaks about the need for teachers to change from dispensers of knowledge (i.e. banking), to facilitators of learning (Ch. 4). Although OLCOS explicitly recognize that changing institutionalized teaching habits takes time, I thought it is very important that OLCOS suggests that Open Education Resources (content, software and tools), are only the means to the end of furthering this innovative form of learning and knowledge creation (innovation being one of the key hopes of the institution). Their focus on practice, and innovative practice at that, is notable. Will open education become a practice of freedom? too early to say.

Below I have some of the more pertinent thoughts this week's reading elicited. namely 1) collaboration and creating garbage. 2) value chains - rejigging this course to ensure more reflection on others' work - thereby re-using/improving one's ideas. 3) why don't we have open textbooks?

1) I really like the idea of collaboration and co-creation. But I do wonder what will happen to quality of content, and what will happen when so much garbage is on the web. Although there has been a massive growth in the access to useful info on the net (it was amazing to research my thesis and have a digital library of 1/2 of my references, as compared to nothing 10 years ago), on the other hand, this growth has been dwarfed in comparison to the amount of non-peer-reviewed material I need to wade through. And I only expect it to get worse - especially if each class, each year, is constantly creating and recreating. This can be a really wonderful thing, but how do we deal with it in terms of volume? quality? the dividing line between learning for oneself and collective learning?

2) I was inspired by OLCOS's notion of "value chains", where content is provided on the web, then reused and modified by the learner to become better. From this, I have new ideas what I think should be the requirements of postings on Sunday night... The following is a description of the creation of a value chain:

"Collaborative learning practices are most likely to allow for such value chains to emerge and
progress, because the learning community will:
| use some existing digital content or courseware as a starting point;
| consult other available content from e-learning repositories or other relevant sources of
information;
| document their own study process and results, such as use cases, experiences, lessons learned,
guidelines, etc. (note: documentation also includes metadata);
| make this enriched content available again to other learners, e.g. via repository and/or syndication services, and
| thereby share the results for re-use, and enrichment, by other learners." (OLCOS pg. 43).

It occurred to me, while reading this, that this is truly how I do learn in collaboration with my peers in the Open Education course. However, I have noticed that most people do not post until Sunday afternoon/evening...making it difficult to read and incorporate their views into my postings. The fact that it is late Sunday evening also means that my peers don't have a chance to read my work! As well, if I read their stuff at this time, before I write/post my views, my own views tend to get muddied in my post. It is as if the speed of learning I need to compose something that I like, that reflects my views but incorporates others, is too fast. The time period is too short for me to do this!

Following on OLCOS's process of value chains, described above, I think it would be much smarter to require two posts - even if they are each a little shorter. The first would be one's own reflections on the reading. The second would incorporate others' views of the reading, - it would be my other reflections on the reading in light of this, or perhaps a change to my original post. This would allow me to articulate my own thoughts clearly, but would also force me to revisit/rethink them in light of others' comments - an excellent learning value chain. Because this would not all be done on Sunday night before midnight, I actually would have a chance to read my peers' work before posting mine. How this process would correspond to OLCOS's value chain is described below:

"Collaborative learning practices are most likely to allow for such value chains to emerge and
progress, because the learning community will:
| use some existing digital content or courseware as a starting point; [e.g. the OCLOS article is the starting point this week]
| consult other available content from e-learning repositories or other relevant sources of
information; [in this case, I drew upon Freire, or I could have drawn on past weeks info too, or some of the resources mentioned in the OCLOS article]
| document their [the student's] own study process and results, such as use cases, experiences, lessons learned, guidelines, etc. (note: documentation also includes metadata); [I think this would be exploring my own ideas, as I have done in this piece - documenting what "I" think about this]
| make this enriched content available again to other learners, e.g. via repository and/
or syndication services, and [This would be through my post, by Sunday evening midnight]
| thereby share the results for re-use, and enrichment, by other learners.[Well, I think that by Wednesday evening, I should have to post another short blog, highlighting worthy thoughts/comments on other people's blogs. it would allow my thoughts to grow as a learner] (OLCOS pg. 43 - [closed brackets are my thoughts]).

Based on this thought process, I think I will try to imitate this chain over the coming weeks...starting this Wednesday...(David, let me know if this is not advisable, please - but it is my recommendation for future courses...)

3) The OLCOS article touched the important and different roles played by teachers vs. publishers. However, it also described publishers as the stop-gap for open content. Copyright issues can stop the re-use, modification and open sharing of content (p. 29). Although I recognize the important work that publishers do, I am of a similar opinion that textbooks are one area where the public would greatly benefit from having its own group of publishers that produces textbooks for schoolkids Gr. 1-12, within one country or region. The price of these textbooks, and replacing them every few years, is quite costly for the school system, and the books are "static" content - which is not very compatible with OCLOS's vision of the new learner in an information society. By having public publishers, we could afford to create high quality textbooks at a much lower cost, as the costs would be dispersed across a whole nation. How else would we resolve this tension between creating profit for publishers, and serving the common good? Or do we encourage a new breed of publishers to emerge as well....??? Perhaps I need to look again at OCLOS and the OECD's description of incentives!

My good friend, Mark Federman, drew my attention to the issue of providing textbooks for free as an OER quite a while ago. I later found out he had blogged on this very issue of free textbooks in 2005. I think it is an idea that should be thought about and grown - in the very same way that a values chain grows...it is a worthy idea!