International accredited OER based university

[Peter]

What would it take to create an international accredited university
that gave graduate level degrees based on the completion / creation of
OER? And if this was possible, would it cost anything?

[Leigh Blackall]

Internationally recognised competency standards like the ones used in Aust', NZ and South Africa and then Recognition of Prior Learning RPL services.

Otago Polytechnic has RPL services. Any day now we expect a person who has done a course on Wikied that is designed around competency/assessment standards that we recognise (NZQA) we will be able to accredit their learning if they wish. It wouldn't be free however.

Learning is still free, education still costs.

--
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)21736539
skype - leigh_blackall
SL - Leroy Goalpost
http://learnonline.wordpress.com

[Peter]

Leigh and others who may be interested,

Thanks for this reply. So what your saying is that Otago will give me
credit for a WikiEd course that is designed around the NZQA as long as
I give them money. Is it a graduate level course? Is Otago working
toward being able to complete WikiEd courses and get a graduate level
degree? Can I transfer this credit to another institution for my
graduate level degree? It would seem to me that what Otago is doing is
great, and a step in the right direction but it is still essentially
using WikiEd as a LMS (or part of their LMS for I still have to
complete assessment activities) and I still have to pay for the
credential... Please correct me if I have misunderstood... I'd change
your last statement to say "Learning and education is free, assessment
and credential still costs"

Anyhow, I want to dive deeper on this topic. I want to discuss if
people think it is possible to create an international accredited
institution that gave 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?

Thanks for your time,

Peter

On Mar 24, 2:52 am, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Internationally recognised competency standards like the ones used in Aust',
> NZ and South Africa and then Recognition of Prior Learning RPL services.
>
> Otago Polytechnic has RPL services. Any day now we expect a person who has
> done a course on Wikied that is designed around competency/assessment
> standards that we recognise (NZQA) we will be able to accredit their
> learning if they wish. It wouldn't be free however.
>
> Learning is still free, education still costs.
>

[simonfj]

Thanks Peter, Leigh,

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?
>

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?

> 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?

It IS the point isn't it? I'll use Liam, who 'runs' Wikipedia Weekly
as an example here.
No doubt the employers of his new role at the Dictionary of Sydney
were influenced by the proof that he can get stuff done. They just
have to look. Most of DoS board are academics who are old enough to
feel out on a limb, and thankful for the proved expertise.
http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/www/html/51-project-teams.asp

Now i'm not saying this approach is going to replace ALL the old
bricks and mortar credentials. But so far as the new
(Interactive)media industries are concerned (and this IS the growth
area in employment); how much proof do you want that their credentials
are passe/irrelevant? The aim of an .edu is simply to pass on
expertise isn't it? They (simply) can't.

The assumption = " they still assume loads of affiliations and
partnerships with existing Universities"= makes the point. If you
could see the number of Memorandums of Understanding I've seen signed
over the past years and the lack of anything tangible coming from
them... well, "samo, samo".

I'm taking it that terrya is a playmate of yours Peter, so I've said
my piece on his terrific paper.
http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/networks-versus-groups-in-higher-education/#comment-1433

But until we see consortia like the Open CourseWare consortia start
focussing on the communications of groups that stand between their
institutional members, I guess we'll just have to put up with the
"Successful disaster", which they've created..
http://ochre.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/pittsburgh-fortune-cookies/#comment-1008

PS Anyone interested in hosting a wikieducator forum over at Wikback?
http://wikback.com/forums/

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...
>

>

[Cormac Lawler]

Thanks for this thread Peter. :-) I think that what you envisage is possible - ie creating an international accredited institution that would award academic degrees on the basis of a set of work (OERs, blog posts, papers etc) - let's call it an "e-Portfolio" (in the current UK government lingo). However I would envisage a number of issues:

* Authorship - if you are creating a resource on, for example, a wiki, how is someone evaluating your work to know that this work is your own work? Or how much of it is yours? Digging through a page history can be a lot of work - would we expect the evaluator to do this? And this idea of authoring materials leading to accreditation - does *everyone* developing a certain amount and standard of OER materials automatically get a degree? (What then constitutes "OER" - any article on Wikipedia, etc etc?)

* Academic standards - notoriously varied across national educational systems. It would be a huge challenge to such an institution - though it is already being addressed within the OER movement.

* Evaluation/supervision - someone is going to have to be the person to say: "yes, this person deserves a degree/PhD..". I would say, especially at PhD level, that this person would need to be familiar with your work, and not be simply handed a portfolio after three years - and I would then argue that this would constitute a form of supervision (ongoing critical dialogue) - perhaps in the network-based way you envisaged. There seems to be a significant "other people's time" element to all this. Which brings me to..

* Money - I know you didn't mention this explicitly - but did you envisage all this to be free? Subsidised? Paid for by whom?

I'll just add a slightly different slant on this discussion - education is obsessed with formal accreditation - but perhaps there might be another model - one of recognition. Perhaps after working on a solid body of OERs and published papers etc, you don't get a PhD, but you might be a damn sight more eligible to get a job with a certain employer institution that is open-minded enough to recognise this particular work done. I think Teemu Leinonen has written about this before (perhaps on his blog <http://flosse.dicole.org/>, though I'm not sure). Sure, this option is far weaker than the current accreditation model - but it just might become an option in certain contexts.

In any case, I'm only throwing these ideas into the pot - but it's a great discussion to be having!

Cheers,

Cormac

[Leigh Blackall]

Peter,

There was a proposal somewhere in Wikied to collect the competency standards that different countries where using and to load them to wikied and work towards an international standard for as many as possible. I'd expect that, with many skills based vocationally orientated stuff, this would be pretty straight forward. These standards could serve as assessment guides for industry and developing education sectors; they could serve as learning objectives for people; and they could serve as online learning development guides.

If Wikied was successful in bring together an international collection of standards like these, they could present them to the likes of UNESCO and say, "will you help us promote these as an international assessment standards". If that was done, then institutions like Otago Polytechnic would have a direct interest in assessing and awarding qualifications to these new International standards. It would be likely that our courses would start using both NZQA and UNESCO QA!

Eventually, UNESCO QA certificates and degrees might become more usable for migrating workers. The worth of UNESCO QA Units would increase to the point where many nations started recognising people with these certificates. UNESCO would have to make sure that the standard of assessment was actually being met, and could even accept individuals as qualified assessors..

It would then be very easy for Institutions and individuals to then develop courses on Wikieducator around these standards, and also to offer assessment and accreditation to people who complete these courses. People would be free to do the courses at their own pace and self directed, gradually building a learning portfolio of assignments and activity evidence (set in the curriculum designs) that would be used for some sort of RPL process. Through an international network of teachers and assessors, we might see the cost of such processes and services greatly reduced!

[Peter]

Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others...

Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in...

Cormac,

There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution
is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a
single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day
(soon), see these two references;
http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~luca/papers/07/wikiwww2007.pdf

I think we could do with a Wiki based Open Educational Resource
Maturity Model (WOERMM). I start to touch on this in a paper I wrote a
few months back; http://www.rawsthorne.org/docs/PeterRawsthorne.QualityOERbasedWikis.pdf

I'll definitely invest the time and read terry's paper.

Peter

> > from the OLCOShttp://www.olcos.org/cms/upload/docs/olcos_roadmap.pdf

[simonfj]

On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter <prawstho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others...
>
> Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in...
>
> Cormac,
>
> There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution
> is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a
> single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day
> (soon), see these two references;http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~luca/papers/07/wikiwww2007.pdf

Ooo! I can't see it. But that's only because i never have. Evaluation
to me, and I've had to employ graduates to do media jobs, always comes
down to seeing of they, or their teachers, can do it. i.e. have
institutions prepared the inexperienced for it?. Old industries, no
problem. New industries, like the interactive media ones; rarely a
clue.

Let me give you an illustration of a change going back 30 years. Unis
were trying to "teach" AV production stuff. Many didn't have a
recording desk. Even fewer had relationships with bands or actors
interested in recording. Even if some students did, they wouldn't be
encouraged to bring those noisy long haired gits into a lovely clean
studio.

So one dirty engineer in Sydney started offering courses in his
studio, which now, though some unis in 49 countries, offers accredited
courses. http://www.sae.edu/. But it wasn't until the unis were
included in the Learning mix of enough working engineers that the
accreditations were given. Until then, we usually just gave students a
piece of paper, and for the more determined, helped them find them a
job. Now a three month course has inflated to three years.

The thing i find fascinating - when watching new interactive & global
media institutions, like Wikipedia, et al, get their Project Groups'
Learning ground(s) together and professionalize good habits, while at
the same time watching national Teaching institutions struggling to
think outside their squares - is that nothing seems to have changed.

In the professionals' web space, you see the beginnings of global
interactive environments, which are obviously self sustaining and
appear to help people meet peers, get their heads around the things a
good web designer needs to know and maybe get some (paid) experience.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/ And then you look at unis' web sites/
brochureware, ho! ho! One obviously puts an emphasis on their
members' communications, the other on the institution's information.
i.e. communicating global GROUPS vs, National (.edu) NETWORKS.

As Cormac says, "you don't get a PhD, but you might be a damn sight

more eligible to get a job with a certain employer institution that is

open-minded enough to recognise this particular work done". I don't
think it's even a matter of them being open minded. It's more a matter
that in the commercial world, one gets paid for results, and if you
can point to something, like Liam can, who do you think will get the
job?.This is very new ground.

I also think Leigh is quite right. "Through an international network

of teachers and assessors, we might see the cost of

such processes and services greatly reduced!" But you have to have the
"international network" first, and all we do have at the moment is a
bunch of National .edu ones. Thankfully Web 2.0 Inc. are able to help
fill the obvious gaps. But you got this wrong. "Learning is still
free, education still costs". Nah, "accreditation still costs". You
know, priests used to sell indulgences. That's why the Reformation
(supposedly) started.

Perhaps, rather than talking about accreditation, we should be talking
about where the new jobs are, what skills are required and who's doing
the employing.

[Leigh Blackall]

Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :)

Maybe I should clarify what I say about "learning being free, education still costs"

I mean the same as you mean - learning is what people are always free to do, and with todays enhanced capacity to access information and communication, learning might be vastly improved.

But what is education in all that? Well, to me education is the formality that we agree is the extra, inflated, and fee driven bit. Education is the bit of paper that says you have been learning...

So I think we actually agree, but it may be that I'm being a bit too cynical in my use of the work education.

Here's a longer post I wrote on it if you're still troubled by my slogan.

[David Wiley]

Simon and Leigh,

We haven't been talking about it much, because we're still one step in
the approval process away, but for a year now we've been working on
establishing the Open High School of Utah - a publicly funded (and
therefore free as in beer to students in the state of Utah) completely
online high school that uses OERs exclusively throughout the entire
curriculum. The final approval should be given this May for a Fall
2009 opening in which we'll admit a class of 9th graders, meaning that
we'll have 15 months or so to put together the entire 9th grade
curriculum's worth of OERs built out to stand-alone quality (i.e., not
OERs to supplement textbooks, OERs as the primary content for the high
school). Then in 2010 we'll do 9th and 10th grade, etc., until in 2012
we're running all four years of high school.

All the materials will be freely available, as will our charter
document, as will all the technology we will use to run the school. We
hope to be a model of how OERs can revolutionize the practice and the
funding of both learning AND education...

D

[Peter]

David,

This is great to read. What an amazing step to put all this forward as
an OER Highschool. You say it will be free to students in Utah, will
students outside of Utah still have access? Or will all this just be
"open" within the state of Utah? And therefore be used to prove out
the model...

There is one thing that jumps out at me from within this discussion
thread. Are we mis-using the word "Education" within OER. As we seem
to have agreement that Education is the whole, where learning is what
you do with the resources. Education includes the assessment,
accreditation, etc. that the educational institutions provide.
Shouldn't we really be calling these materials Open Learning Resources
(OLR). My point being (in the context of this Bissell article;
http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bissellboyleedtecarticle.pdf);
Don't we require Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accrediation
before we can achieve OER? Because this then makes free the whole of
Education. Wikipedia and Open Source have nothing restraining their
domain toward openness. OER has a huge restraint in that Assessment
and Accreditation are still closed. As we stumble toward OER don't we
need to wrestle it (assessment, accreditaion) away from the
institutions (like MIT, UNESCO, OU, etc) and also make it open and
free? And not until we have wrestled it away, OERs success will be
restrained. I wonder what Paulo Friere would have to say about the
institutions still controlling the Assessment and Accreditation?

I look forward to your reply(ies)...

P

> >  On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:52 PM, simonfj <simo...@cols.com.au> wrote:
>
> > > On Mar 25, 2:05 pm, Peter <prawstho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Cormac, Leigh, Simon, Others...
>
> > > > Thanks for the great feedback. I certainly hope some others jump in...
>
> > > > Cormac,
>
> > > > There is a body of work where the evaluation of a persons contribution
> > > > is evaluated via software; it's not so advanced that it can target a
> > > > single person and evaluate what they have done... probably one day
> > > > (soon), see these two

> > references;http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/http://www.s...

>
> > > Ooo! I can't see it. But that's only because i never have. Evaluation
> > > to me, and I've had to employ graduates to do media jobs, always comes
> > > down to seeing of they, or their teachers, can do it. i.e. have
> > > institutions prepared the inexperienced for it?. Old industries, no
> > > problem. New industries, like the interactive media ones; rarely a
> > > clue.
>
> > > Let me give you an illustration of a change going back 30 years. Unis
> > > were trying to "teach" AV production stuff. Many didn't have a
> > > recording desk. Even fewer had relationships with bands or actors
> > > interested in recording. Even if some students did, they wouldn't be
> > > encouraged to bring those noisy long haired gits into a lovely clean
> > > studio.
>
> > > So one dirty engineer in Sydney started offering courses in his
> > > studio, which now, though some unis in 49 countries, offers accredited

> > > courses.http://www.sae.edu/. But it wasn't until the unis were

> > > included in the Learning mix of enough working engineers that the
> > > accreditations were given. Until then, we usually just gave students a
> > > piece of paper, and for the more determined, helped them find them a
> > > job. Now a three month course has inflated to three years.
>
> > > The thing i find fascinating - when watching new interactive & global
> > > media institutions, like Wikipedia, et al, get their Project Groups'
> > > Learning ground(s) together and professionalize good habits, while at
> > > the same time watching national Teaching institutions struggling to
> > > think outside their squares - is that nothing seems to have changed.
>
> > > In the professionals' web space, you see the beginnings of global
> > > interactive environments, which are obviously self sustaining and
> > > appear to help people meet peers, get their heads around the things a
> > > good web designer needs to know and maybe get some (paid) experience.

> > >http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/And then you look at unis' web sites/

> >http://learnonline.wordpress.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Patricia Schlicht]

Dear David,

Wow, this is really impressive!! and will serve as worldwide and leading
example. Great work

Warm regards,
Patricia

[David Wiley]

Peter,

The content will be open to everyone, but enrollment in the school
will be restricted to those in the state of Utah (since the state govt
pays the bills).

D

[Leigh Blackall]

This is awesome David, it will be right up there with the South African Curriculum on Wikibooks, but taking it one step further by the sound of it.

Peter, I agree.. many are perhaps misusing the word 'education', but rest assured, Otago Polytechnic is working towards Open Education as well as Open Learning...

I think this is an important distinction you make in the OER effort and should be carried further. It will help up the ante I reckon, into what you initially call for in this thread... Open Access, Open Learning AND Open Education.. and if that can be free (as in beer) then great! Or at least, vastly reduced in cost...

[Peter]

David,

Patricia, had it right, this is really impressive!!! It really gets me
thinking and excited about the possibilities for use by WikiEd or
other OER projects. I get particularly excited about its reuse and
what will be learned from that. Is there any further information
(published or otherwise) available about what you are doing? I am
curious about things like; licensing approach (CC GPL ??), who will be
the content authors / editors / creators, what technical platform /
architecture will you be using? Will there be some kind of version
management? And given its structure, how easy would it be to localize
(language, culture, context)? etc...

On Mar 26, 4:49 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is awesome David, it will be right up there with the South African
> Curriculum on Wikibooks, but taking it one step further by the sound of it.
>
> Peter, I agree.. many are perhaps misusing the word 'education', but rest
> assured, Otago Polytechnic is working towards Open Education as well as Open
> Learning...
>
> I think this is an important distinction you make in the OER effort and
> should be carried further. It will help up the ante I reckon, into what you
> initially call for in this thread... Open Access, Open Learning AND Open
> Education.. and if that can be free (as in beer) then great! Or at least,
> vastly reduced in cost...
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, David Wiley <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Peter,
>
> > The content will be open to everyone, but enrollment in the school
> > will be restricted to those in the state of Utah (since the state govt
> > pays the bills).
>
> > D
>

> > On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Peter <prawstho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > David,
>
> > > This is great to read. What an amazing step to put all this forward as
> > > an OER Highschool. You say it will be free to students in Utah, will
> > > students outside of Utah still have access? Or will all this just be
> > > "open" within the state of Utah? And therefore be used to prove out
> > > the model...
>
> > > There is one thing that jumps out at me from within this discussion
> > > thread. Are we mis-using the word "Education" within OER. As we seem
> > > to have agreement that Education is the whole, where learning is what
> > > you do with the resources. Education includes the assessment,
> > > accreditation, etc. that the educational institutions provide.
> > > Shouldn't we really be calling these materials Open Learning Resources
> > > (OLR). My point being (in the context of this Bissell article;
>

> >http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bissellbo...
> > );

> > > > > >http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/Andthen you look at unis' web

> > > > >http://learnonline.wordpress.com-Hide quoted text -

[David Wiley]

I realize my way of thinking about these things is simplistic (hey -
it's all I'm capable of!), but in my mind:

open educational resources + open learning support + open
credentialing = open education

So OER is an important, infrastructure-like piece, but is certainly
not equivalent with open education. We need large numbers of people to
have access to OERs before we can figure out how to answer questions
and provide other support, and we have to do these two things before
we can move on to awarding people degrees.

D

[David Wiley]

Peter, we're still working out all these details. As I said in my
previous message, the school won't receive it's final approvals from
the state until May of this year. So while we're working ahead
somewhat, we're still waiting to really turn things on until we know
we have a green light.

D

[Leigh Blackall]

quite right, nothing simplistic about it. realistic

[Peter]

David, I completely agree. Resources are the first step (or maybe
second or third) in the journey to comprehensive open education. I
agree that one of the next steps is having support (with some
assessment) and once we have these we can move toward accreditation.

P

On Mar 27, 9:09 am, "David Wiley" <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter, we're still working out all these details. As I said in my
> previous message, the school won't receive it's final approvals from
> the state until May of this year. So while we're working ahead
> somewhat, we're still waiting to really turn things on until we know
> we have a green light.
>
> D
>

> > > > > > > >http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/Andthenyou look at unis' web

>
> > > > sites/
> > > > > > > > brochureware, ho! ho! One obviously puts an emphasis on their
> > > > > > > > members' communications, the other on the institution's
> > > > information.
> > > > > > > > i.e. communicating global GROUPS vs,
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Randy Fisher]

Hi David,

Great initiative - were you aware that WikiEd received a donation of chemistry labs for Gr. 10 and 11 - we have to get them into wiki format...but we've got 'em (they were generated by much lauded BC Science Teacher, Jim Hebden). Would these be of interest to you?

- Randy

--
________________
Randy Fisher aka "Wikirandy for WikiEducator"
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Wikirandy

+ 1 604.684.2275
wiki...@gmail.com
www.hirerandy.com

Skype: wikirandy

[David Wiley]

Randy, I ~didn't~ know this and we would be absolutely giddy to see
them. Many thanks for the heads up...

How do we access them / how can we help?

David

[Randy Fisher]

Hi David,

Glad to hear that you might be interested in them - I have them on my machine at work - they are in MS Word, I believe.

We'll need to get them into wiki format (whether that's ODF and WikiEducator's format or both, I'm not a techie but maybe both - so it's useable and reusable). Then it will be available to you, and everyone!

A few links:

• Here's Jim Hebden's bio: http://www.kamhigh.com/history/Jim%20Hebden.asp - He's a retired science teacher from Kamloops, BC
• Here's some bumf on Jim (from the BC Science Teacher's Federation - we also got their permission to use the resources on WikiEd, since it was already hosted on their site).  - http://www.bcscta.ca/resources/hebden.htm
• There's a pdf on the BCSTA site - which will give you some examples of what Jim donated to us....He sent us a ton of labs.... many that are not in this document - http://www.bcscta.ca/resources/HebdenEnrichingChemistryTeaching.pdf

Also, if you're able to use these, we could also make an announcement to that effect - good publicity for everyone!

- Randy

[simonfj]

On Mar 26, 6:44 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great post Simon, I enjoy your wit :)

Which Half?

>
> Maybe I should clarify what I say about "learning being free, education
> still costs"
>

Hey, that's fine Leigh. We know what we're thinking.
The thing I'm monitoring is the growth of the new (interactive) media
industries. If academic institutions didn't have people like yourself
and our playmates on this thread, then they're a bit left out. David's
a pretty good example of what is happening. Taking a global
perspective, you'd look at the inhabitants of the OpenCourseware
Consortia.
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ocwcforum/viewtopic.php?t=158
(They don't talk much)

All of them beaver away in splendid (National) isolation. producing
"me too" resources, which display a huge range of good and poor.
Meanwhile (their inhabitants) we communicate on little (global)
community hubs like this, preaching to the converted and comparing the
silk purses which have been whipped up on a sow's ear's budget.

Its only when you start to talk about Sustainability and "the next
steps" where the new industries start to get noticed, primarily
because they all seem to be based around (global) Communications. The
emphasis on OER used to make a bit of sense. Now that there's so many
OER, the real challenge seems to be helping people like David get
together with his global peers and including students in the
development of a constantly evolving (global) course. As you would
(probably) say, "we are sharing a learning, not delivering an
education". Regardless of the tool we might use - wiki, moodle, blog,
etc - it's an understanding we are attempting to share.

You might be interested in this conversation which has just started
down at the Open Uni's OpenLearn initiative. They're an OpenCourseWare
member (funded by HP for US$5m.) who are trying to figure out their
next steps.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=980

My main interest here is much as yours is. (I've seen you play with
the Skypecast beta). But getting the NREN engineers to configure their
networks around a (global) Community hubs rather than (National)
institutional ones means we're going to have to turn a few heads and
change a few routines. Still, I know you've already changed yours. You
do realize this makes you a multimedia personality don;t you? :) (Can
I have your autograph?)

[Leigh Blackall]

Holy sh!t SFJ, you are ruthless! Just read through the forum, am liking your angle very much. But its demanding dialogue.. I have 5 minutes spare between now and another meeting, report to write, and marking to do.. (do you hear the little violin just for me?) Can I check the main thrust of your statements?.. it was in that forum, pointing to the numbers that the WMF pull in, and the top 10 Google results.. That's exactly what I'm trying to make fly down here.. we (waste in my opinion) so many millions (collectively) 100's of 1000's institutionally on projects that only do less than 1/1000th of what WMF and other utility scale initiative are doing. And I would have to disagree with Peter Keyse when he says that OpenLearn buz "it won't happen spontaneously".. why not? The biggest things on the Internet seem to have been very spontaneous compared to what we collectively try to engineer in education.. if we engaged with those things we just might find that spontaneity ready and waiting. Is that what you're trying to get them to see?

We could be adding to the likes of Wikipedia, Youtube and Google results..  and extending on them.. instead, some of our lecturers actually physically look the other way when I show them a Wikipedia entry on their topic of expertise.. why is that? These people have PHDs, they should surely be able to put aside academic snobbery and apply critical skills.. (I have to man handle their heads to get them to look) a whole other story to get them to edit. But some do and are! I will jump with joy when the first funding for R&D is pinned to something like us and WMF projects or similar..

Can you call a Skypecast Beta (or Flashmeeting) to further this discussion? I'm at a point where I want to hear it from you some more, reading it is a little cryptic (which I like) but with my time flashing before my eyes, I'm finding it hard to stop and think in this text world we exist on.

[mackiwg]

Hi David (& friends)

On Mar 27, 9:08 am, "David Wiley" <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> open educational resources + open learning support + open
> credentialing = open education
>

Apology for the late contribution to the discussion -- I've just
returned from my home visit to NZ where I was able to live out my
promise to the family by staying away from my laptop. I made a point
of travelling to places where I wouldn't have connectivity -- so apart
from withdrawal symptoms - was able to live out my commitments :-).

David -- I'm VERY interested in learning more about the Open High
School of Utah initiative -- where do I find out more? This is a model
which could be replicated throughout the Commonwealth and would like
to see how WE could build communities of teachers/educators to support
the success of initiatives like this. BTW -- I really like the
equation: Open educational resources + open learning support + open
credentialing = open education -- somehow I think this equation also
provides valuable insights into economic sustainability of the Open
Education movement.

Cheers
Wayne

[David Wiley]

Wayne,

There's nothing online yet - official notification from the state
government should come on May 9 2008 (for a fall 2009 start). Once
that happens, there will be a deluge of info. I'm extremely excited,
and have been trying really hard to sit on my hands waiting for the
announcement - I didn't want to get everyone all worked up if they're
going to tell us "no." Every indication is, though, that they're going
to tell us yes. I hope to find a creative way to partner with you on
the project ("creative" since I'm not officially part of the
Commonwealth).

I think the equation is important, too, and I agree it says a lot
about sustainability. Now if I could just understand my own
equation... =)

D

[Cormac Lawler]

Hi David, I'm also very excited about this project, and I hope the state government will see the bid for the revolutionary contribution it makes! I'd also like to do anything I can to coordinate communities of teachers/educators AND learners from the Wikiversity end.

Cheers,

Cormac

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio

http://cormaggio.org/

[mackiwg]

Hi David,

Creative partnerships are certainly possible :-) and I have good news
on this front. UNESCO and COL have revised and updated our collective
work plan. You will see that OERs @ all levels of education &
WikiEducator are clearly specified in the work plan:

http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/4658

This partnership will enable WE to work outside the Commonwealth
involving UNESCO member states.

We're hoping to make a more concrete announcement about the practical
components of this collaboration in the near future -- so lets keep in
touch on this one.

Cheers
Wayne

On Apr 7, 2:22 pm, "David Wiley" <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wayne,
>
> There's nothing online yet - official notification from the state
> government should come on May 9 2008 (for a fall 2009 start). Once
> that happens, there will be a deluge of info. I'm extremely excited,
> and have been trying really hard to sit on my hands waiting for the
> announcement - I didn't want to get everyone all worked up if they're
> going to tell us "no." Every indication is, though, that they're going
> to tell us yes. I hope to find a creative way to partner with you on
> the project ("creative" since I'm not officially part of the
> Commonwealth).
>
> I think the equation is important, too, and I agree it says a lot
> about sustainability. Now if I could just understand my own
> equation... =)
>
> D
>

[David Wiley]

Excellent news!

As soon as we have the official word, we can figure out how these
things all fit together...

D

[Jibril TOUZI]

This is a very good news,

The BREDA (the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar - the largest UNESCO office in Africa) has posted on his website the FLOSS4Edu initiative, see http://www.edusud.org/spip.php?lang=en (english) and http://www.edusud.org (french).

Cheers,

Jibril

2008/4/8, David Wiley <david...@gmail.com>:

[mackiwg]

Well done Jibril and the FLOSS4Edu team!

FLOSS4Edu is a great project inspired by Africa for Africa -- I'm very
chuffed to see the project listed on the UNESCO BREDA site.

Cheers
Wayne

On Apr 9, 1:11 am, "Jibril TOUZI" <jibril.to...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very good news,
>
> The BREDA (the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar - the largest UNESCO office
> in Africa) has posted on his website the FLOSS4Edu initiative, seehttp://www.edusud.org/spip.php?lang=en(english) andhttp://www.edusud.org(french).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jibril
>

> 2008/4/8, David Wiley <david.wi...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>
> > Excellent news!
>
> > As soon as we have the official word, we can figure out how these
> > things all fit together...
>
> > D
>

[simonfj]

Hi Leigh, Wayne, (Guys)

I'm sorry I hadn't caught you before the Tectonic Shift pow wow. It
looks as interesting as the Australia 2020 summit . You know, get a
bunch of bright minds together in a little room and bash around some
ideas for a day or two. I'm also with you when you say "with my time

flashing before my eyes, I'm finding it hard to stop and think in this

text world we exist on". An occasional verbal get together would be
the way to go, especially if it can be remembered (recorded).

You should know i met Liam's (the publisher of Wikipedia Weekly) new
boss, Stewart Wallace, at the New Idea's conference at the Aussie
National library, last week. He (and so many other old farts including
moi) are coming to terms with having some quiet conversations with the
domain centric, which might get above the radar, in a stream or on a
pod, and help them discover how to collaborate rather than duplicate.

But I just can't go down the Skype route. It's a bit stupid being pure
OS with the web stuff, while using a proprietary network for the
comms, especially when there are plenty of OS comms tools in the
offering, and needing an injection = getting some global communities
involved with their developments.

So excuse my heavy duty lobbying around the Open Uni's Moodle. It
tends to be one of my little hubs for talking with some playmates
about David's experience = replicating learning objects a thousand
times across the hundreds of Open(CourseWare) domains. It's no wonder
things never become sustainable. We have the critical mass, but the
comms are as scattered as the domains.

Can I ask you (and anyone else that's interested) to take a squiz at
my "remote presentation".
http://wikieducator.org/Tectonic_shift_think_tank#Remote_presentations
I really could use some advice, and help getting a proof of concept
together now my patent has gone through the US office. And please
don't think that just because I've said "patent" that I'm trying to be
meglomanic (OK, "Yes" to a degree). I'm just an old media guy whose
eyes are starting to go, and might have a chance of being useful if we
can use, and develop, the OS version of a Skypecast, and find its
content's logical repository. Thanks in advance, simon.

[vmensah]

so it will not be called free in terms of cost, but "free" in terms of
access to materials.

On Mar 26, 10:47 pm, "David Wiley" <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter,
>
> The content will be open to everyone, but enrollment in the school
> will be restricted to those in the state of Utah (since the state govt
> pays the bills).
>
> D
>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Peter <prawstho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >  David,
>
> >  This is great to read. What an amazing step to put all this forward as
> >  an OER Highschool. You say it will be free to students in Utah, will
> >  students outside of Utah still have access? Or will all this just be
> >  "open" within the state of Utah? And therefore be used to prove out
> >  the model...
>
> >  There is one thing that jumps out at me from within this discussion
> >  thread. Are we mis-using the word "Education" within OER. As we seem
> >  to have agreement that Education is the whole, where learning is what
> >  you do with the resources. Education includes the assessment,
> >  accreditation, etc. that the educational institutions provide.
> >  Shouldn't we really be calling these materials Open Learning Resources
> >  (OLR). My point being (in the context of this Bissell article;

> >  http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/bissellbo...

> >  > > >http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/Andthen you look at unis' web sites/

> >  > >http://learnonline.wordpress.com-Hide quoted text -
>
> >  > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Leigh Blackall]

Free as in cost is something I'm interested in. Indulge me on the following:

Music will survive long after its institutions die
Journalism will survive long after its institutions die
Education will survive long after its institutions die

(Inspired by a recent post by George Siemens)

Granted, there will be a lot of loses, but with that impending doom as a possible future for educational institutions, it is interesting to imagine how education might be post apocalypse?

Recently, I have been looking at student debt in New Zealand, their costs of living, the sacrifices they have to make to get an education.. and then the cost to institutions for offering the education services. I'm convinced that we could get the cost way way down, to a point where it could be conceivably free - so long as there is about 60% public funding behind current education services, as it seems there is in NZ. And that's without changing much in the way of education practice - most of it comes from rethinking ICT budgets.. we in this thread are only skimming the surface of what the future may look like...

[Peter]

Leigh,

I am curious why you think it is mostly about rethinking ICT budgets?
At present the internet is pretty much a free and shared service
available to all education. Once you have access, there isn't that
much you cannot do for free on the web. I'll go back to the beginning
of this thread and re-state, I believe it has more to do with
rethinking assessment (or support) and accreditation, and making these
two open... Are you suggesting the ICT budgets be moved out of the
institutions hands and put elsewhere (funding access, or further
funding the internet as a global shared service)?

Peter

On Apr 17, 1:37 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Free as in cost is something I'm interested in. Indulge me on the following:
>
> Music will survive long after its institutions die
> Journalism will survive long after its institutions die
> Education will survive long after its institutions die
>
> (Inspired by a recent post by George Siemens)
>
> Granted, there will be a lot of loses, but with that impending doom as a
> possible future for educational institutions, it is interesting to imagine
> how education might be post apocalypse?
>
> Recently, I have been looking at student debt in New Zealand, their costs of
> living, the sacrifices they have to make to get an education.. and then the
> cost to institutions for offering the education services. I'm convinced that
> we could get the cost way way down, to a point where it could be conceivably
> free - so long as there is about 60% public funding behind current education
> services, as it seems there is in NZ. And that's without changing much in
> the way of education practice - most of it comes from rethinking ICT
> budgets.. we in this thread are only skimming the surface of what the future
> may look like...
>

> > > > > > >http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/Andthenyou look at unis' web

> ...
>
> read more »

[Leigh Blackall]

In our institution, we provide access...

This means:

Terminals = NZ$2000 x 100s
Support perosonel = $40 000 per year x 6
Internet provision = 10s of 1000s per year
Software on terminals = $700 x 100s
Maitenance = $500 per terminal per year (includes depreciation)
Periphials = $500 - $1000 per terminal per year
Servers = $15 000
Website = Team of 4 @ at least $40 000 each per year
Server software = 10's $1000
Staff training = $100 000 per year

should I go on?

ICT is far from cheap, and is probably the single most expensive cost. Rethinking the way we do all these things - such as FOSS, $500 laptops, Wireless etc etc.. could save huge money

[Peter]

Leigh,

Upon reading this reply I believe we have considerable alignment on
this issue. A few questions on this topic as I believe them imporatnt
to this conversation.

1) Someone pays for access somehow. To say your institution provides
access for free I would question this. Where is the cost for this
infrastructure covered? In student tuition fees? or internal to the
institutions budget? Or is it provided for free by national
infrastructure budgets? Other?
2) No need to go on... But I wonder if NZ has an initiative to create
an academic shared service for much of this infrastructure. One thing
I have been advocating for is national (or provincial, as in Canada)
shared service for many of the items you have listed. Just imagine how
great it would be if there was a NZ national infrastructure for all
this. I could see at least six of these items moved into this national
infrastructure and the costs shared among all the institutions of
learning that consume it. (that would be great savings for each
institution) Just think of the competative advantage NZ institutions
could have in the global distance ed space if they pulled this off. So
much more money would be made available for the development of courses
not in dealing with infrastructure...

Then make a deal with ASUS and give every student an Eee PC 900 with
very little (or maybe no) increase to tuition fees...

Cheers,

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -

[Leigh Blackall]

Yes, that's precisely what I am thinking. Utility internet services, wireless, and individually owned units. And then some.

Cost of ICTs is covered by institutional budgets, that are suplimented by government funding, as well as student fees... so indirectly the cost of ICTs affects student fees.

So, from a campaign perspective, one would have to be careful when lobbying and then over seeing such a cost reduction proposal, that it did indeed have a direct impact of student fees. A bit like global aid money.. we have to follow the trail all the way to the end to make sure it gets to those who need.

[James Neill]

Perhaps uni's provide minimal baseline IT service. Students and staff then receive their proportion of IT budget to spend it how they see fit. That would fun to see.


Leigh Blackall wrote:

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Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.3/1390 - Release Date: 21/04/2008 4:23 PM
  

--
Email:     ja...@wilderdom.com
Web:       http://wilderdom.com
Twitter:   http://twitter.com/jtneill
Wiki/blog: http://ucspace.canberra.edu.au/x/fIAeAg
Bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/jtneill

[Leigh Blackall]

it would be hey James.. there must be organisations out there that do that. I heard that Apple Australia issue macs in a box to all their employees, and then it is up to them to work out how to get them running and keep them running.

I think Utility web services with networked users and support is clearly the way to go.. why is it taking IT units so long to catch on? Oh, I know.. jobs on the line..

[Peter]

Leigh,

I'm not sure if you said ...jobs on the line... with tongue in cheek?
but all the institutions I have worked for [colleges and universities
(particularly recently)] have had problems filling IT positions. And
when I consider global demand for experienced IT people I don't think
job losses should be an issue. I think it's more conceptual and local
competition between institutions. I just don't think the current crop
of senior institutional management truly understand the concept of a
national or regional shared service and the huge financial benefits it
could provide. Well have to wait for a change of the senior management
guard before we can make great headway...

On Apr 21, 5:57 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> it would be hey James.. there must be organisations out there that do that.
> I heard that Apple Australia issue macs in a box to all their employees, and
> then it is up to them to work out how to get them running and keep them
> running.
>
> I think Utility web services with networked users and support is clearly the
> way to go.. why is it taking IT units so long to catch on? Oh, I know.. jobs
> on the line..
>
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:05 AM, James Neill <li...@wilderdom.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps uni's provide minimal baseline IT service. Students and staff
> > then receive their proportion of IT budget to spend it how they see fit.
> > That would fun to see.
>
> > Leigh Blackall wrote:
>
> > Yes, that's precisely what I am thinking. Utility internet services,
> > wireless, and individually owned units. And then some.
>
> > Cost of ICTs is covered by institutional budgets, that are suplimented by
> > government funding, as well as student fees... so indirectly the cost of
> > ICTs affects student fees.
>
> > So, from a campaign perspective, one would have to be careful when
> > lobbying and then over seeing such a cost reduction proposal, that it did
> > indeed have a direct impact of student fees. A bit like global aid money..
> > we have to follow the trail all the way to the end to make sure it gets to
> > those who need.
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[simonfj]

Leigh, Peter,

Hope you don't mind me piping in. Just reading the conversation. "So
say all of us". You mentioned 'utility computing', which is a banner
that might grow legs if only wikieducator's (for one) global groups
might act as the hub for funding rather than your individual
institutions. I guess the hardest thing to believe for people who
mostly work in institutions is believing research AND development
should be funded through their institutions.

If you read what major donors like HP are saying, they're struggling
to find ways that encourage the silos to collaborate. All the millions
flow out, and the only effect, especially in the Open Education
Resources Space, is the constant repetition of "me too" course
materials, marketed by babies, to a world overloaded with information.
http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER/OpenContent/Hewlett+OER+Report.htm

The institutions will not change their habits, primarily because they
have people like you in them. If you were to walk out the door and
say, thanks very much but I can do a lot more with my global mates, do
you think things might change a bit faster? So never believe THEY are
going to change. They, and their routines, will become more or less
relevant as time goes on. That''s always been the way of institutions.
(I mean routines, not just architecture)

So you can talk forever about your frustrations with them or you can
start working on a grant for funding, and what you would do with the
pennies. And if you are successful in achieving some goal, you'll
probably get more funding. That's just the way of the real world. In
the meantime, all we can do is talk and talk and talk and...........

BTW Leigh, remember that silo called edna? They've just started a
thing called me.edu.au. I don't think they've realized that they've
started a learning account for all Aussies. But now they've let the
cat out of the bag, they can't put it back. Now if only i knew some
people who had the same type of account in different countries. They
might get the NREN's engineers to begin aligning their pipes to suit
their global groups rather than their National institutions. In the
meantime, we'll just have to talk here, with our heads in a cloud.

> ...
>
> read more »

[Leigh Blackall]

Well said Simon. Do you keep a blog I'm not aware of? I'd like to be following this type of advice and insight.

Regarding very slight change all too slowly...

The thing I am seeing more and more of in the institutions and the people like me that have been in them for far too long, is the adoption of the rhetoric but not the action.

I am seeing many projects get funded based on their 'participatory' models, their openness, their 'action' research. But in reality they don't have anything near participation or openness, and as a result very little action to then research.

Simple things like, a fella in charge of a project organising a public seminar to launch the project, in which 3 other fellas position themselves centre stage and proceed to TELL everyone what they have planned. Typically, they have not organised any back channel, their feedback loop (if they have one) involves sending an email to info@project that gets no reply. And at the end of the seminar people walk out feeling ripped off that they missed their fav TV show to attend it and NOT participate.

I'm sure this is the way it has always been, but today it is even worse because we have all the lobby and research that says participation and oppenness is the way, and the government and funding bodies are positioning their criteria for this, but the measures and accountability for participation and oppeness are not in place. As a result, millions of $ are being awarded to some projects for people who are simply good at wearing rhetoric without really changing their action. Their reports end up the same camelion output.

I hope all this ranting is trikiing a chord your end, because I am seeing it more and more, and it is concerning me a great deal.

So, your suggestion to get the grant and do it 'ourselves'. Would we do it any better? Given that to get the grant we have to adopt both theirs and our rhetoric AND be accountable to that? The projects I am a part of that have that accountability involve so many compromises that its easy to lose sight of what you were trying to do in the first place.

How can we obtain resources and retain the freedom to act and react quickly and spontaneously like we have done so all along? Is this what the US ideology of free markets and corporatism is trying to tell us? This self organising principle based on a very simple funding arrangement of user pays and demand...

I'm starting to wonder off and become incoherent (if I'm not totally that way already).

In short, it seems that we ARE doing it already, and each of us individually dragging our institutional blobs and resources along with us. I have managed to position my job and its performance indicators so that my work with Wikieducator can be sustained. So in that way, the institution I am working in is changing, and I have the freedom to act and react in that new framework. When I started, they would have had me work in their LMS. So if we can get enough people doing that (positioning their job into this Wikied utility web service), we might start seeing more sustained resources into Wikieducator's participatory and open model, and the individual freedoms with that. At the moment, I suspect that most people are simply dabbling in Wikieducator and are doing so outside their job description and performance indicators.

So either things like WIkieducaor continue on that path and be patient, CoL and other facilitators doing what they can to promote and develop it. And/or we find a way that will suddenly tip the balance in a Google/Youtube kind of way that involves us getting a large amount of money and working outside our institutions with a very to subverting them...

[simonfj]

Hi Leigh,

Sorry this has taken so long. A lot going on at present.

Re the blog. What would I want want with a blog when people like you
say everything so much better than me?

You know i inhabit lots of forums like this one - some inside
institutions, some (like this) on the border, some which represent the
new (global) institutions like sitepoint. The nearest thing to a blog
= http://me.edu.au/p/Simonfj

It's not much but you know it's constructed by education.au, and
they're starting to see that me.edu.au could also be an Aussie's
lifelong learning account = an OpenID to other .edu and .gov.au
domains.

Like most institutions, the edna guys have a problem separating
eteaching from elearning. http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=25285#78420
But there getting there. Conflation is such a wonderful description
isn't it?

You might want to keep tabs on Moodle's Social lounge.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=6801
And compare it to what Wayne''s doing and the (unreported) Tectonic
Shift between wiki stuff.

We seem to be at the stage now where there's starting to be some focus
on the Real Time Communications stuff. The 'web 2.0' focus is tiring
now = so many domains producing so many "me too" courses/information.
But the driving factor is that the National telcos have squeezed the
lemon dry (with VoIP, etc) and Skype has attuned global communities to
just how much they are ripped off. So all those skills you've picked
up by working with it should prove to be useful as its Open versions
grow legs.

I can't push this (my lady is sooo ill, so i can't get out) but i do
have a patent which should be useful as the geeks start focusing on
this little challenge. http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1172

In the meantime, thanks for all your stuff and others around this
space (Wayne). It keep sane to see so much creativity and common sense
in the one place.
Here's one other. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66
regards,
http://me.edu.au/p/Simonfj

[David Wiley]

Our application to create a new public, online high school based on
OERs has been approved!

http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/499

Now the real work begins...

D

[Peter]

David,

This is an amazing initiative. I truely hope it will become an
exemplar toward a world full of localized and community relevant OER.
I believe its pedagogical ties to the service-learning will bring the
technology based social-network closer to the geographical community-
network.

I look forward to watching and supporting this initiative as it grows.

Peter

On May 12, 9:42 am, "David Wiley" <david.wi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Our application to create a new public, online high school based on
> OERs has been approved!
>
> http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/499
>
> Now the real work begins...
>
> D
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 4:01 PM, simonfj <simo...@cols.com.au> wrote:
>
> > Hi Leigh,
>
> > Sorry this has taken so long. A lot going on at present.
>
> > Re the blog. What would I want want with a blog when people like you
> > say everything so much better than me?
>
> > You know i inhabit lots of forums like this one - some inside
> > institutions, some (like this) on the border, some which represent the
> > new (global) institutions like sitepoint. The nearest thing to a blog

> > =http://me.edu.au/p/Simonfj

>
> > It's not much but you know it's constructed by education.au, and
> > they're starting to see that me.edu.au could also be an Aussie's
> > lifelong learning account = an OpenID to other .edu and .gov.au
> > domains.
>
> > Like most institutions, the edna guys have a problem separating

> > eteaching from elearning.http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=25285#78420

> > But there getting there. Conflation is such a wonderful description
> > isn't it?
>
> > You might want to keep tabs on Moodle's Social lounge.
> >http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=6801
> > And compare it to what Wayne''s doing and the (unreported) Tectonic
> > Shift between wiki stuff.
>
> > We seem to be at the stage now where there's starting to be some focus
> > on the Real Time Communications stuff. The 'web 2.0' focus is tiring
> > now = so many domains producing so many "me too" courses/information.
> > But the driving factor is that the National telcos have squeezed the
> > lemon dry (with VoIP, etc) and Skype has attuned global communities to
> > just how much they are ripped off. So all those skills you've picked
> > up by working with it should prove to be useful as its Open versions
> > grow legs.
>
> > I can't push this (my lady is sooo ill, so i can't get out) but i do
> > have a patent which should be useful as the geeks start focusing on

> > this little challenge.http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1172

>
> > In the meantime, thanks for all your stuff and others around this
> > space (Wayne). It keep sane to see so much creativity and common sense
> > in the one place.

> > Here's one other.http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

> >> institutions with a very to subverting them...- Hide quoted text -

[Wayne Mackintosh]

David

WOW! I'd like to join Peter in echoing our congratulations.  This is a landmark milestone for the free knowledge community.

The WE community will help in every way we can in collaborating on the development of free content for this initiative. 

Well done Dave --- still leading the pack hey!

Cheers
Wayne

[Leigh Blackall]

Inspiring Dave and the gang. I'm once again motivated and directed by your work, and will now begin attempting to position Otago Polytechnic as a 100% OER Education and Training Org following your secondary school as an example.

[David Wiley]

Do I smell an articulation agreement? =)

D

[Randy Fisher]

Hi David,

As you prepare your requests for partnerships, it would be great if you could put together some kind of a visual matrix of needs  / requirements, so that folks visiting your site, could fairly immediately ascertain how they could be of help.

It will also help us spread the word within the WikiEducator community, so that we can facilitate linkages which our mutually beneficial.

Congrats!

Randy

--
________________
Randy Fisher - Facilitating Change & Improving Performance - for People, Communities, and Organizations
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Wikirandy

+ 1 604.684.2275
wiki...@gmail.com
www.hirerandy.com

Skype: wikirandy

[David Wiley]

Randy, great idea! Thanks!

D