Open Ed Conf. Keynotes: Cable Green & Philipp Schmidt

Image representing Creative Commons as depicte...Image via CrunchBaseThe Obviousness of Open Policy


Speakers: Cable Green
The Internet, increasingly affordable computing, open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which a quality education can be a basic human right. Yet before we break the “iron triangle” of access, cost and quality with new models, we need to educate policy makers about the obviousness of open policy: public access to publicly funded resources.

Speaker/Artist(s) Info
Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons

Notes:
“If we had a food machine that could feed everyone in the world and the marginal cost is zero, and it won’t hurt farmers, should we turn it on?”

His dream – everyone in the world can get the education they desire. If there are is a need to educate 263 million students – we could never build enough traditional schools to educate those who need it.

If we are not sharing, we are not teaching. David Wiley

There is a huge community of open source organizations.

Problem: Most of the policy makers do not understand 20th cent. technology and tools (open licensing, mobile tech, the affordances of the internet). They do not understand the tools collectively – they are able to collectively create OERs.

Rivalrous vs. Non- Rivalalrous resources – NR is digital and open licenses.

Publicly funded resources should be available to the public who paid for them.

If the world spent 5% of the GDP on edu that would equal 3 billion dollars.

How do you sustain OERs? If OER is the default of our normal work, then we do not need to invest new money. The policy is simple to explain: if work is in public domain it goes to the public; if it is licensed, the license should be open.

“We should get what we pay for.”
Cooperate & share = we all win
Affordability
Self Interest

If we had open policies what could we do? Billions is given out to ed institutes for research but there are few requirements to share that research with an open license.

English Comp – 55k enrollments x $100 text = 5.5 million dollars a year to the state of Washington. Does this make sense? The open text saves millions. The money comes from fed and state financial aide.
WA will pay 2 mil for an open textbook, spend 100,000 to update it every year and still come out ahead. And then they will openly license it and still offer it for free.

Brazilians have to search for open texts before investing in commercial texts.

Efficient use of public funds to increase student success and access to quality educational materials
Everything else including all existing business models are not sacred.

If we had a food machine, we have a moral obligation to turn them off.

“The opposite of open is not closed; the opposite of open is broken.”

The Impossible Open Education Future

Speaker: Philipp Schmidt  (bokap.net)
Executive Director and Co-Founder, Peer 2 Peer University

He is a Shuttleworth Fellow

“The Capetown Declaration twist”

Started Peer-to-Peer University in 2008 – Vijay Kumar said “You are starting from the wrong point – imagine that there was no university – what would it look like?”

They launched the first courses in 2009.

Anyone can join, OER, light interface, badge system. Their site is a light weight connector rather than an LMS. “School of Open” is being cooked up right now.

His frustration: Asking too much and expecting too little at the same time.

  • OER cost savings are a big deal.
  • Open is not a quick fix for all challenges in broken system. 
  • Brihanna needs an affordable student loan (in most places in the world, she would not have to work so hard)
  • Disruption comes from the fringes – make open research institutes 
  • Open education is global – we are not paying attention to what is happening in dev world
  • Open needs to keep the spirit of a lab
  • Open – participation, making, tinkering, experimenting, social, serendipity
Brothers Wright: If we had studied flight we would have never done it because we would have learned that it was impossible. 
Imagine the Impossible Open Education School of the Future
 In P2PU – they tend to use cohorts rather than MOOCs
A strong social bond of cohorts
Great facilitators are hard to scale
Alternatives? A learning expedition – following the markers of others up the side of the mountain. You can hire a guide. There model is “challenges.” There is a badge system and a “Request a Mentor” button. There is also a “Become a Mentor” button. 
Learning = making things with others
What makes a good challenge? These can make good portfolio pieces
Goal: enable community to contribute “challenges”
How to: What makes a good challenge?
Testing challenges in other domains
Assessment: Every time you do an assessment apart from the activity you introduce inaccuracies.
Why not use gaming as assessment – assessment needs a “Press R to Try Again.”
You fail a test – when you lose a game, you try again.
1st Step – Collect Data
2nd Step –  Showcase and share portfolios
3rd Step –  Listen to the community
“Framework and Design of Social Learning”
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