Blogging the OpenCourseWare (and OER) Movements
Just a note that since the conference in Monterrey a number of slidesets have gone up on Slideshare. If you are interested in seeing some of them check them out, using the tags below:
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/ocwcglobal2009
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/ocwc
And for those of you who presented, but have not furnished slidesets, post them on Slideshare and tag them with the ocwcglobal2009 tag.
The conference site is here. The conference tag is OCWCglobal2009.
For those wishing to take part in the business meeting remotely, here is the dial-in info:
Dial-in number for Tuesday Business Meeting (see schedule for times):
Reservationless-Plus Toll Free Dial-In Number (US & Canada): (888) 830-8920
Reservationless-Plus International Dial-In Number:(770) 657-9185
Code: 510 267 9409
Finally, we encourage people not in Monterrey to join in the conversation around subjects by using the conference cloudscape and to browse our SlideShare site.
As we update our web presence throughout the day I’ll post more here.
We’ve tried various ways of building conference communities online in the past, and most have relied on a third party site. And usually these sites have followed a sort of bizarro Pareto rule — for the 20% of the product that integrated a twitter feed or flickr gallery the other 80% forced and encouraged the typical walled garden approach. Whatever integration was just sweetener to get another signup.
This time we’ve done it a bit differently. Clay Whipkey, our technical director, took the open source conference system we are using to post schedules, sponsors and paper lists, and after a week of little sleep, created a plugin for the system that allows the front page to aggregate all #ocwcglobal2009 material from all blogs indexed by Google, all flickr pages, tweets, etc. And as an added bonus it is lightly integrated with the Cloudworks system (though right now that integration is limited by the lack of a lower-level RSS).
You can check it out here. Be gentle with us, there are still some holes on the site, we put it up in the course of one of the longest weeks in my recent memory (while trying to assemble everything from the program to the keynote). There are some holes. There is some missing content.
But all the code that Clay has put into that front page is designed as a plug-in (and will be released after some tweaking), and the base software (which is designed primarily to run registration and the submission review process) is available open source from OCS. Hopefully this is a start to getting people off of Crowdvine and the like, and out of the walled gardens.
(Ignore the login link at the top which is really only for people who are uploading schedules and conference materials).
Anyway, let us know what you thing. And tag related content OCWCglobal2009.
T4E, a conference we are co-sponsoring, has extended their paper submission deadline to June 15th. The conference will be in Bangalore, India, on August 4-6, 2009. More information about the conference and submission process can be found here.
As most of you know, we are gearing up for the Monterrey Conference next week. We realize we are very late in announcing our keynote speaker, but I think it was worth the wait.
I’m happy to annouce we have been lucky enough to get Jon Udell to keynote the conference. Jon is one of the pioneers of social software, and continues to be a thought leader in how open networks will revolutionize learning, work, and community life. From his bio:
Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and new media innovator. His 1999 book, Practical Internet Groupware, helped lay the foundation for what we now call social software. Udell was formerly a software developer at Lotus, BYTE Magazine’s executive editor and Web maven, and an independent consultant.
A hands-on thinker, Udell’s analysis of industry trends has always been informed by his own ongoing experiments with software, information architecture, and new media.
From 2002 to 2006 he was InfoWorld’s lead analyst, author of the weekly Strategic Developer column, and blogger-in-chief. During his InfoWorld tenure he also produced a series of screencasts and an audio show that continues as Interviews with Innovators on the Conversations Network.
In 2007 Udell joined Microsoft as a writer, interviewer, speaker, and experimental software developer. His portfolio includes an interview series, Perspectives, which explores how Microsoft works with partners — universities, governments, NGOs — to develop new and socially impactful uses of its technologies. Currently he is building and documenting a community information hub that’s based on open standards and runs in the Azure cloud.
His keynote is titled “MINDS, HANDS, AND HEARTS — LIFELONG TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE DIGITAL AGE” .
We’re getting some coverage in Vietnam on our decision to host OCWC Global 2010 there. This morning, I noticed that the Voice of Vietnam had picked it up.
It’s a little harder, I suppose, to get coverage of the decision in the U.S., but for any reporter reading this I think the main takeaway is that nations all over the world, many with much fewer resources than ours, are experimenting at a national level with open education.
There are some people in the public policy arena who still think that OCW is primarily a philanthropic endeavor — a gift from the haves to the have-nots — and in this model the U.S. is often seen as leading the way, with major U.S. universities producing materials used all over the world. What we’re finding in other countries, however, is that open education is increasingly being seen more along the lines of things like national health care — a project whose raison d’etre is to eliminate wasteful redundancies, spread best practices quickly and efficiently, and spur innovation in areas of national priority. The variations in implementation between say, China and the U.K., are huge, and certainly could form the grounds of a vigorous debate. But whether the approach involves a full-blown OER organization or a more light-weight block-grant program, countries like these share in common a belief that open educational resources are part of the new national infrastrcuture.
I guess that is pretty long for a takeaway. The shorter version is this: not long ago, Vietnam and many other countries came to the US to see how we “did OCW”. Increasingly, however, we are turning to these countries to see what happens when the movement is integrated with national educational policy.
We’re hoping that both the location and the agenda of OCWC Global 2010 will make that a fruitful discussion.
Washington, D.C., March 31, 2009 - The OpenCourseWare Consortium is pleased to announce Vietnam will be the site of the 2010 Annual OCWC Global Meeting. OCWC is honored that the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) and the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) have agreed to organize the international event in cooperation with the OCWC. The 2010 OCWC Global Meeting will take place in Hanoi on May 5-7, 2010.
Dr. Stephen Maxner, Chairman of the VEF Board of Directors, said, “It is truly a great honor that Vietnam is selected to be the site of this important 2010 Annual OCWC Global Meeting. VEF and MOET, together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Vietnam Advanced Software Company (VASC), have been instrumental in developing the Vietnam OpenCourseWare (VOCW) in Vietnam since its inception after the historic visit of former Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to the United States in 2005. VEF is honored to be chosen to be a primary coordinator for this important event. The 2010 Annual OCWC Global Meeting will facilitate the participation of Vietnamese faculty and students in accessing this online repository of knowledge and in understanding the emerging OCW movement in the world.”
Standing Vice Minister of MOET, Prof. Dr. Banh Tien Long, commented, “MOET is pleased to co-sponsor this meaningful event with VEF and OCWC. MOET has been supportive in bringing OCW to Vietnam. We consider the VOCW Program an invaluable resource to address the lack of learning and teaching materials in Vietnam and we have made efforts to disseminate VOCW to faculty and students nationwide. The 2010 Annual OCWC Global Meeting to be hosted in Vietnam is an outstanding opportunity for Vietnamese universities to network with various OCW experts from around the world.”
Mr. Steve Carson, President of the OpenCourseWare Consortium said, “With its innovative government run program, Vietnam has quickly become a significant contributor to the OpenCourseWare movement. Choosing Hanoi as the location of the conference in part recognizes that contribution and sets the frame for a discussion of sustainable institutional models for OpenCourseWare development and dissemination. We are honored to be working with VEF and MOET to put together this exciting event.”
The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) (www.vef.gov) is a special initiative by the U.S. Congress to bring the United States and Vietnam closer through educational exchanges related to science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, and technology. The Foundation is in its sixth year of operations and incorporates assistance from the U.S. National Academies in developing and executing VEF programs: the VEF Fellowship program, the Visiting Scholar Program, and the U.S. Faculty Scholar Grant Program. Among VEF’s science and technology capacity building endeavors is the VOCW Project. VEF serves as a financial provider and program manager of VOCW. VEF promotes VOCW among its grant recipients and partners inside and outside of Vietnam. For additional information on VOCW, please visit: www.vocw.edu.vn.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) (www.moet.gov.vn) is the governmental body responsible for education and training in Vietnam. MOET formulates government policies and regulations to encourage rapid deployment and utilization of VOCW at Vietnamese educational institutions at all levels. It is fundamentally responsible for the successful integration of VOCW into Vietnamese educational institutions.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) (www.ocwconsortium.org) is a collaboration of more than 250 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.
A PDF of the full press release can be found here.
T4E ‘09 has announced a call for papers for their Bangalore workshop. The workshop will be held August 4-6, 2009 in Bangalore, India. The workshop is co-sponsored by the OCWC and will focus on original academic or industrial research into the effects technology of education.
The theme areas are as follows:
OCWC members are encouraged to consider contributing to this conference.
You can read the full call for papers here.
From Anka Mulder:
Dear members of the OCW community,
As our Interim Executive Director, Terri Bays, prepares to depart for Divinity School, the Executive Director Search Committee has started the process of finding a new Executive Director with the help of Opus Partners, Inc. Our latest efforts have gone into crafting the linked job advertisement which we are posting on the following venues:
* Chronicle of Higher Education
* Chronicle of Philanthropy
* Idealist
* Inside HigherEd
* Mail & Guardian (South African Online Newspaper)
* The Nonprofit Jobs Cooperative, posted through The Nonprofit Center
* Opportunity Knocks
* UNESCO OER List
We are inviting our members to help us find the best candidate for this job. So please link to this ad in any relevant venues with which you are familiar and forward it to any likely candidates so that our posting reflects the international character of the OCWC itself.
Applications and formal inquiries should be sent directly to Opus Partners, but please be assured that the Board of Directors, the Search Committee and Terri are all happy to discuss the nature of this position with you on an informal basis.
The link to the ad is: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/edsearch
Best wishes,
on behalf of the Search Committee,
Anka Mulder.
From the UNESCO wiki:
Dear Colleagues,
Today we are launching the discussion of the topic, Access to OER. But first I would like to refer to the initial informal discussion of the issue (on the wiki), then outline the proposed organization for the exploration of the issue, and finally introduce our moderator for the session of the next three weeks.
THE ISSUE
The important issue of access was raised at the end of our community discussion in June. OER is seen as having the potential to extend access to knowledge worldwide, but there exist certain barriers to its achieving this objective. Access is one potential barrier – and a crucial challenge.
Although our initial interaction on the issue started with the consideration of limited or no connectivity, lack of electricity was identified as an even more basic barrier to access to OER. However, there are many other potential barriers or constraints and it will be useful to identify the range of them, for there are emerging solutions or approaches that would mitigate the problems. Developers of OER will benefit from having these in mind – donors and other agencies may be able to contribute to addressing them.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SESSION
In this brief session, let us take up the issue of access to OER and explore the challenges and some of the potential solutions at hand. This is an opportunity to share creative responses from different situations.
A simple organization is proposed for the exploration of the topic:
Week 1: Identification and description of the main problems associated with access, and an initial development of a classification scheme.
Weeks 2 and 3: Reflection upon and exploration of solutions and approaches and their potential for the various types of barriers identified.
OUTPUT
At the end of this discussion we should aim to have an overview of the various types of constraints that limit access to OER, as well as some tested or proposed solutions or approaches. A summary report will be prepared documenting these.
The challenges raised by problems related to access may justify further exploration and follow up action. This will depend upon the OER Community.
OUR MODERATOR
Bjoern Hassler will act as discussion moderator, introducing the issue, guiding the discussion and preparing a report of the deliberations.
For those of you who do not already know Bjoern, he is senior research associate at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he works on multi-media, and Open Educational Resources. He has worked extensively with Aptivate (a UK NGO, based in Cambridge), focusing on access issues, particularly for bandwidth-intensive resources. http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org
During the discussion, we will also hear from a number of experts who generously contributed to the planning of this session.
Now I turn the floor over to Bjoern,
Looking forward to an active discussion,
Susan
You can find out more about how to participate here:
http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Access2OER
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