Sense and Sensation

A decade and a half ago, Web 2.0 brought with it the promise of shared knowledge and collaborative networks.  It seems to me that education hasn’t realized this promise yet.  We haven’t yet created a shared knowledge base or a fully scaled social network for educators.  Surely, an open approach will be essential for succeeding in this.  And yet, before the education sector has figured out how we might realize the promise of shared knowledge, before we have created a successful open environment for teachers to share careers-worth of wisdom and/or to connect at scale, before we have succeeded in education at what other industries have succeeded in, before we do this, we’re instead trying to catapult into Web 4.0, a digital future of artificial intelligence, adaptive learning, mind-to-mind communication, and more.  We’re overleaping teachers and building tools that directly engage the learner. Surely some of this is appropriate.  The digital age offers ...

This course has been a welcome primer on the essentials of OER: from the philosophical foundations of openness to the reasons for each of the five R’s to the provenance and application of Creative Commons.  We’ve had an introduction to and overview of an emerging field.  Of course, the domain of knowledge about OER runs much deeper than the overarching concepts we’ve been exposed to here, but revisiting them at a high level has been a healthy and helpful refresher of what many of us have seen emerge over the past ten years. It was about ten years ago when I first had an idea for a platform for sharing.  Back then, building it would have been cutting edge.  Now, enthusiasm for yet another OER platform seems pretty tepid, maybe even worthy of a sigh.  So I’d like to ask this community for some advice. To do so, I’d like to share some of my key takeaways and impressions from the course, and ask for counsel on appropriate next steps for a project. ~ S...

Being reminded of the Reusability Paradox (something I had been introduced to a handful of years ago, but had no context for deeply understanding then) might have been one of the most critical components of this course to date for me.   In brief (and in my own words), the Reusability Paradox states that the more useful something is in a given moment in a given classroom, the less useful it is in other moments in other classrooms.  The more a question serves a particular purpose for you, the less it will be useful for others.  Conversely, the more generally useful something is for everyone, the less useful it is at any given moment.  But once you customize it to make it useful in a given moment, the less useful it is to others. The example of this in my mind has been the discourse surrounding growth mindset.  Everyone is excited about growth mindsets.  But how is that useful for a math teacher who is teaching how to factor polynomials?  I...

“You’re trying to get at two things—sort of the latent capacity of knowledge that exists with this system, and secondly, you’re trying to connect people as part of a network.” ( Siemens ) A shared knowledge base and vigorous, responsive innovation.   These are the purposes, in my mind, for a robust network of open education resources.   Without open knowledge , we cannot accumulate a shared knowledge base, we will continue reinventing the wheel in our classes.   Without an open network , even if we are able to establish a shared knowledge base, we will not be able to foster the creativity and innovation in education necessary to keep up with the creativity and innovation in the world we are preparing our students for—while also keeping our eyes on what is and ought to remain timeless.   We must establish a shared knowledge base, and we must be able to be as nimble and responsive with that knowledge base as other industries are. Siemens and Wiley articula...

Thomas Jefferson, on the ability for ideas to infinitely diffuse ~ "It's the economy..." ~ David Bollier : “But the commons isn’t a thing, it’s a process that involves everyone in the community working to share and distribute it fairly.   People continually and diligently build and sustain a commons by negotiating how best to distribute the commons, creating the rules they need to manage the commons together, and building the infrastructure needed to keep the commons thriving for generations to come.” ~ We just can’t escape you, Marshall McLuhan. The commons, David Bollier tells us, isn’t a thing; the commons is the process that enables the thing.   It’s not the pasture in the middle of town, or the knowledge we have amassed, it’s the agreements, habits, and behaviors that enable the shared ownership of the pasture or knowledge.   More concretely: Wikipedia isn’t about the topic pages we read when we look something up, it’s about the polic...

I’m participating this fall in a six week online edX course called “ Introduction to Open Education .”   It’s an effort to formalize and deepen my knowledge base on issues related to Open Education, which are central to my work developing  Athena , a platform for teachers to find, share, and develop practices.   The course involves a weekly written reflection, each of which I’ll be posting here.   A disclaimer: I’m new to academic study of the field, and I’m representing perspectives and texts based on my relatively limited exposure.   Please forgive any mischaracterizations—or better yet, in the spirit of the course, offer open and constructive feedback.   Thank you!   Six reflections on open learning and platform technology: Learning by Sharing: Why We Do, Sometimes Can't, and Often Don't (Part 1 of 6) The Commons: It's the Community (Part 2 of 6) Sharing Knowledge and Networks: Synchronous vs Stigmergic (Part 3 of 6) Resolving the Reusabilit...