The Ed Techie

Openness - catch my disease

Post title pinched from Ben Lee - Catch my disease

I'm in Barcelona for the last FLOSScom meeting and I'm presenting at the Free Knowledge Free Transfer conference. The talk I was going to give was about using open source approaches in education, but I've changed it to one on how openness can be seen as a virus, which higher education is catching.

The argument goes like this: once you start being open about content, it becomes contagious to all aspects of your life. There are different ways the open virus can spread, and some people are more 'resistant' to it than others. One highly infectious carrier is The Blog. Once you start blogging you need to create posts so that provides an incentive to share more ideas, often before they are fully massaged into a conventional publishable format. The blog further increases the rate of infection by acting as a central hub for reusable material. For example you may start embedding video clips, images, etc from other people as you blog about their work.

Then the next step is that you feel you should reciprocate. An urge to share and reuse are classic symptoms of someone with open disease. You start using Slideshare to upload all your Powerpoint files. You become more confident when you receive positive feedback and feel you can risk a slidecast. Then you want to embed video clips and dabble with Seesmic.

At the same time you play around with some social networks. A colleague holds you with a glittering eye and convinces you, nay forces you, to try Twitter. Despite some early reservations you are soon addicted, and tweet all manner of things. The open disease has now begun to infect your personal as well as professional life.

And then you need to write a paper, but instead of huddling away you decide to do it in the open, and create a wiki, which others contribute to. The paper goes in to a journal, but you are asked to sign a copyright form forbidding you from releasing the work yourself, and the journal is not freely available. This doesn't seem in the spirit with which you now live your life, and so you refuse, and go looking for an open journal.

You are now looking at your teaching load next year and thinking 'how can I make this more open?' Inspired by the likes of David Wiley, you create your course out in the open. Students come to your lectures, but you also upload these to the course blog and invite anyone to participate. You next eye the assessment and decide that a standard exam is no longer the best way to assess what students are doing and create a course repository where students are 'examined' by the contribution they make to the content for the next cohort.

Next you gain a research grant and are the Principle Investigator on a four-party research project. You figure that the open principles have served you well so far, so create a project wiki, invite others to rank the project's objectives, ask for feedback on the final report and make all the findings freely available.

Open disease now infects all aspects of your life. Congratulations, now spread to others.

The weirdness of copyright

I've written a chapter for a book with James Dalziel and we are asked to sign a copyright form. Now, I usually just sign these, but I've been getting fussy about this stuff recently. So, I actually read this one, and when you analyse it, there are a number of really draconian measures in there. If you look at it rationally you think 'no-one would invent a system like this now'. To be fair, they have said we can publish the chapter online if we ask permission, and this copyright form is fairly standard. But I think it's an interesting exercise to go through it.

"Author(s) agrees to, and does hereby assign all rights, title and interest, including copyrights, in and to the manuscript to Publisher. The author retains the rights to any intellectual property developed by the author and included in the manuscript including, without limitation, any models, theories, or conclusions formulated by the author. While the author may use any and all thoughts and research results developed or accumulated while working on a manuscript, and may rewrite, update, and re-title them for use in other publications, the author CANNOT use the verbatim text of the manuscript or any part thereof that has been copyrighted"

I love the 'author may use any thoughts' line - it's nice of them to let the author keep their thoughts I guess. But the key assumption we don't question here is that they own the chapter - you have written, edited, formatted it, but have surrendered all rights to it. This is particularly odd when you consider the next point:

"Author(s) understand that no royalties or remuneration will be paid by the Publisher to the author for the above named submitted manuscript. Further, Author(s) acknowledge the manuscript is being provided on a volunteer basis for the professional recognition obtained by the publication."

So, we do all the work, you keep all the money. Woohoo! Good job we like that professional recognition so much.

"The Author(s) will indemnify and defend Publisher against any claim, demand or recovery against Publisher by reason of any violation of any proprietary right or copyright, or because of any libelous or scandalous matter contained in the Manuscript."

And we have to carry all the risk as well.

"The Author(s) agrees that until the publication of the manuscript Author(s) will not agree to publish, or furnish to any other publisher, any work on the same subject that will infringe upon or adversely affect the sale of the manuscript. Furthermore, author(s) cannot post the contents of the article on any personal website or other sites, or distribute the work to others in either electronic or print forms."

I mean, seriously, come on. They have said that actually we can, as long as we seek permission. What I would like to know is if I put something online and it increases the sales of the book, do I get a cut then?

"Contributing authors will not receive complimentary copies of the handbook; however, publisher will provide contributors to the handbook with a copy of their published manuscript along with a copy of the cover page of the publication. In addition, Publisher will provide each contributor to the handbook a 40% discount offer if they decide to purchase the handbook."

I can buy a copy of my own work at reduced cost!

"The Publisher may permit others to publish, broadcast, make recordings or mechanical renditions, publish book club and micro-film editions, make translations, and other electronic versions, show by motion pictures or television, syndicate, quote, and otherwise utilize this work, and material based on this work."

Now, granted that Edtechie The Movie isn't coming to a cinema near you any time soon, but the control still resides with the publisher. As the author I would have no say in how it is later used. When you publish online you accept this to a degree, but at least a CC licence allows me to specify that it is share-alike, or non-commercial, so gives me some element of control.

Now compare this with, say, keeping a blog:

• I can still get the professional recognition,
• I still do the work, but I can style it and edit it the way I want
• If there were any money to be made, I would make it
• It potentially reaches a wider audience
• No-one will sue me if I put it in two places or reuse it
• It is free to the reader
• I own it

Hmm, wonder which one academia should choose...

Future of content vid with annotations

Accusations of flogging dead horses may well be justified, but just in case you thought my Future of Content was some randomly assembled clips, the annotated version is now up on YouTube (again you have to click through to see the annotations).

So, I've now done the article, made a video of it, then added textual annotation to explain the video. Erm, full circle anyone? Still, you do now have a choice of medium.

The eduWomble manifesto

For those who have difficulties with the connotations of edupunk, straight of Wales we bring you - eduWomble! One of my twitter friends Griffithss4 tweeted yesterday that regarding their learning environment

"Current approach can be summarised (and will be referred to) as the #'Womble Strategy"

For those outside the UK, the Wombles was a children's television programme set on Wimbledon Common about creatures who lived underground and made their homes and stuff by recycling the rubbish humans left around. The green message was very ahead of its time, but it's the theme tune that offers itself up to us educational technologists as metaphor.

The main theme is represented in the lyrics by "Making good use of the things that we find/Things that the everyday folks leave behind." For the modern educational technologist this means using non-educational applications in educational settings. It also applies to content - as I argued in the YouTube annotations post, what commentary allows you to do is to take any resource and make it an educational one, and what digital content allows you to do is find and locate any resource. So an average photo becomes part of a digital storytelling class, a clip from a 50s TV series part of a commentary on changing architectural styles, a Sex Pistols track a theme tune for RSS, and so on. We're making good use of the things people leave behind.

A second theme is that of the loosely coupled nature of the educational technologist. Obviously this applies to our use of applications, but also our network. We all belong to different types of network (e.g. I sort of belong to networks such as 'The OU', 'The OU plus associated people', 'UK edubloggers', 'The Canadian/US eduglu affiliation', etc). These are bottom up, but still highly effective networks. Here the lyrics do the Clay Shirky by stating " Wombles are organized, work as a team."

Another theme is that of change management by stealth. Here the lyrics remind us that " People don't notice us, they never see/Under their noses a Womble may be." And furthermore that " We're so incredibly, utterly devious/Making the most of everything". This sounds like Injenuity in Viral Professional Development mode.

And just to reiterate the reuse, mashup agenda the lyrics end with " Pick up the pieces and make them into something new/Is what we do!". Surely written with Tony in mind?

Recently David Wiley asked if we should have something akin to a carbon footprint for education, which calculated how much you reused material. The status one should aspire to is eduWomble.

Here are the lyrics in full:

Underground, Overground, Wombling Free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find,
Things that the everyday folks leave behind.

Uncle Bulgaria,
He can remember the days when he wasn't behind The Times,
With his map of the World.
Pick up the papers and take them to Tobermory!

Wombles are organized, work as a team.
Wombles are tidy and Wombles are clean.
Underground, Overground, wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!

People don't notice us, they never see,
Under their noses a Womble may be.
We womble by night and we womble by day,
Looking for litter to trundle away.

We're so incredibly, utterly devious
Making the most of everything.
Even bottles and tins.
Pick up the pieces and make them into something new,
Is what we do!

The future of content - the eduVJ mix

Tony has posted a follow up to his original vid, so in the spirit of friendly competition, I'd best follow suit. I have taken my Future of Content post and done an eduVJ (as Patrick dubbed it) mix. I'm not sure it works as well as the first one, mainly because this is trying to make more of an academic point, so maybe the fit to the song isn't as neat.

I'm enjoying doing these though, and this one taught me some more about using Camtesia (such as save your file because it might crash out half way through). The last one was a Camtesia recording of Powerpoint, this one was all done in Camtesia. I hope you'll forgive this experimenting in public approach, it's a good way of learning.

Anyway, here it is, I'll do a YouTube annotated version later too, but this is the Blip.TV one:

FlatWorld Knowledge - the publisher I've been waiting for?

David Wiley is part of a startup called FlatWorld Knowledge. Their aim is to release digital textbooks free of charge, with students paying for the print copy if they want. What is more interesting though is the way they take the notion of the text book and make it more of a social object. So the educator can edit the book for their class, the student can interact with other students around it, and people can sell related services and content. In fact, when you view their little cartoons it makes you realise just how limited the traditional text book model is in education. Why didn't we do this years ago?

From my point of view, I have a book proposal and want a publisher. I am currently with Routledge, but they have a traditional attitude to publishing, they wouldn't even let me put a couple of chapters up on this blog. So what I want is a publisher who will allow me to give away the digital version, but still charge for the print version. So I contacted FlatEarth, but it seems that at the moment they're just focusing on Business books, as they're in startup mode. Makes sense I suppose, but it means I'll either have to find another publisher or wait for them to open up their portfolio a bit. Does anyone know a publisher who isn't living in the dark ages?

With protection like this...

Just in case any of you haven't read David Wiley's reaction and follow up to the story that a publisher (Faulkner Press) and a lecturer are claiming that student lecture notes infringe his copyright, you should do so. Instead of just shaking his head in disbelief, as I would have done, David does some digging and finds this jaw-dropping quote on the publisher's page about the lawsuit (called, now get this 'The Future of Higher Ed'):

in this lawsuit Faulkner Press is proud to protect the rights of Professor Moulton and the rights of all professors.

Of course, the 'rights' of students aren't a concern here. David also enters into an email debate with the publishers, in which the publisher says:

I’m not familiar with your views on IP in general,

It's David Wiley!

but if you hold that a professor’s lecture is in the public domain, such that any third party may make as much money on that IP as the market will yield, then we disagree.

Well, a professor's lecture can be in the public domain, but that doesn't mean a third party can make money from it - here's a thought, maybe they could use a Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence? It's the being in the public domain that really bothers the publishers, because for this read 'then the reason to buy his books will be diminished and we will make less money.'

It's clear that these publishers, who are no different from any others I suspect, simply don't get it. Actually they don't get lots of its: they don't get that as an educator you want students to have as much access to your stuff as possible because it helps them learn; they don't get that books come off the back of our subject knowledge which is funded by students to start with, not the other way round; and they don't even get that by putting stuff out there you might actually sell more books.

It seems clear that in claiming to defend our rights, publishers really do think we educators just don't understand IP. The idea that you might want to give stuff away just does not make any sense to them. I am reminded of Clay Shirky's phrase when talking about open source support to AT&T guys, 'it was if we said we get our Thursdays from a banana'. Increasingly publishers and educators are talking different languages here, and the real danger for publishers is that one day all educators will realise that they don't really need them. If they think that taking strong legal action like this is the way to protect their business, then they should bear in mind it's exactly what record companies did when they first hit the download problem. And look where they are now...

In defence of openlearn

Donald Clark weighs in with some heavy criticism of the Open University's openlearn project. Some of his criticism is valid, but a lot isn't.

It’s really no more than a repository of old OU print documents with some tools on top.

This is a naive view of just how much effort it takes to convert existing material. These aren't simply PDFs of existing units. The trouble is with taking legacy material and converting it - often there are cross references that don't make sense, outdated historical references, and mention of the overall course context (e.g. 'In your assignment'). The openlearn team thus needed to create a system for 'scrubbing' material to make it contextually independent and then putting it online.

To be honest I think I could have published this lot using free software in less than a week or two.

Believe me Donald, you couldn't, for all the reasons I've mentioned above.

Moodle is famously free, but dwell on the fact that the OU have spent a cool million in development time for this ONE implementation. Perhaps the most expensive free lunch on record.

Here he is confusing the spend on adapting, implementing and improving Moodle as the OU's central VLE, ie for use on our courses, and not for the openlearn project, which is just a side project. Is it just me or is there some anti-open source sentiment underlying this?

As I sampled many of the courses it struck me how weak much of the content was in terms of academic credibility. Like many course notes written from within an institution, rather than published text, it has the feel of being cobbled together by good experts, but not the best.

Here we are coming from different backgrounds. The material was written for independent studiers, who are isolated and at a distance. It may not be exciting, but it does work academically. This is why people study rather than just reading airport business books.

Interestingly, not a single lecture online.

Here he is showing his ignorance of the OU. We don't do lectures. We're a distance education university.

It’s only 5% of the OU output but the course choices do seem a little odd.

The choices have been made in order to give a coverage across all subject areas, and sometimes expediency has won out - e.g. which courses can be converted quickly. Much of the project has been about establishing a set of systems so that future content can be delivered.

The levels of interaction are abysmal and there’s no real assessment

The aim of openlearn was always to take existing OU material and make it freely available, NOT to develop new material specifically for the project. But this is where I begin to agree with him, interaction is low and informal assessment could be better.

I still love the OU and all it stands for, even if it is dragged down by the desire of its academics to mimic every other university.

I simply don't understand this catty comment. In what way are OU academics trying to mimic every other university?

Seb Schmoller takes a more reasoned response:

The impression you get is that there was internal pressure from those saying "but we depend on people to pay for our courses, we cannot risk putting some of the 'top sellers' into Open Learn".

I was involved in the initial phase of openlearn, and why I can understand Seb saying this, it isn't actually the case. We were quite keen to explore the business implications and not make it just a 'taster' site. I think the choices have been driven more by which academics have come forward with courses, what are available, what can be converted, etc.

I think that if the OU does not use OpenLearn to showcase its best stuff, the OpenLearn initiative risks being judged as some rather pedestrian content sitting in a (possibly) innovative environment. That would be a major missed opportunity.

I think there is something in this, openlearn is worthy, and useful, but it could be more. The team have focused hard on getting some of the boring stuff done which isn't sexy, but does set the framework for a sustainable model of opening up content. Now the challenge is to do more with it. In case he is too modest to do it I would point to the work Tony Hirst has done in taking openlearn content and mashing it around as a good model.

I think overall openlearn has been guilty of veering into a traditional, university type model (top down, quality assured, proper processes, etc) rather than a more radical 2.0 approach, but in both content and intent it represents a huge step forward for both the OU and UK Higher education. After all, I don't see Epic releasing all their courses for free.

Downes vs Wiley - Cato and Cicero revisited

The official launch of the Cape Town Declaration getting a good bit of attention. I'm not going to critique the declaration specifically, but rather come at it from the perspective of the debate between two main protagonists, namely Stephen Downes and David Wiley. I hope neither takes offence as I like and admire both of them, but I think there is a means of understanding the issues around the declaration by exploring their differences over this. And I'm going to do this by revisiting a previous analogy, namely that of Roman senators Cato and Cicero.

For the purposes of this post, Cato = Stephen and Cicero = Wiley. Cato and Cicero both believed passionately in the same higher level goal, ie the establishment of the Roman Republic. Yet they frequently clashed about what was the best way to achieve it. In the same way I think Stephen and David both believe passionately in the overall aim of open education, but have differing views as to how it should be realised.

Cato was the purist, unbending and uncompromising. Cicero was the pragmatist, willing to compromise and work with a range of people to advance the republic. Cato often thought Cicero compromised too much, thus rendering his beliefs invalid. Cicero was often infuriated that Cato wouldn't compromise and through this played in to the hands of the anti-republicans. Taking our modern day counterparts, it seems to me that most of Stephen's objection comes down to the inclusion of commercial entities in the CTD, e.g. from this post

"And goodness, the internet is already awash with really vile and intrusive commercial activity, do we have to export it too? We have the opportunity to do something really special in the world; why do we have to carve into every declaration of principle a paean to Things As They Are (and Those Who Profit From Them)?"

It is not just the presence of commercial entities in the declaration that is at stake here, but the question of whether any educational services can be charged for. David Wiley makes the distinction between nonrivalrous goods (content basically) and rivalrous ones (support). For open education to be sustainable he sees that monetising the latter is probably essential:

If you believe that rivalrous services are a critical part of learning and of education, then you have two choices: (1) either welcome those who are willing to create sustainable ways of providing these services into our community, or (2) continue to try to drive the evil companies away, simultaneously guaranteeing that a critical part of the support infrastructure never comes into being.

His option 1) is pure Cicero, and 2) pure Cicero criticism of Cato. Now, a lot of learning can be done informally, peer supported, community based, as seen for example when we analyse the type of learning that takes place in open source communities. But Wiley argues that this can't be all of it, and if you want teachers, experts, or maybe even accreditation and tech support, then in a capitalist world someone there need to be models of sustaining this.

So, if we take our Cato and Cicero model, let's look at the options:

1. You don't believe in the republic anyway
2. You'd like to believe in it, but don't think it will ever happen (there will always be a Caesar who comes along)
3. You believe in it and are willing to work within the existing structures to achieve it
4. You believe in it but think the existing structures need a revolutionary change

Most publishers and related companies sit at 1) A lot of institutions reside at 2). Wiley is at 3) and Downes at 4).

Me? I'm actually interested in the business models that arise from a disaggregated education system, I don't have any problem working with commercial entities and I compromise at the drop of a hat, so I'm a 3) kinda guy, although I always have an admiration for those who stick to their principles around 4).

The Cape Town declaration - some thoughts and suggestions

A group of experts, charities, commercial organisations and interested parties got together in Cape Town to look at the issue of openness in education. The output is this declaration. Before coming on to criticism of it, here are some of the key points:

Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.

We could argue that, but they're right to bring attention to the growing OER movement.

They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.

Hooray! Good to see pedagogy get a mention, ie it's not all content. Indeed you could argue that all of the OER effort has been a bit disappointing thus far in its impact on higher education. Maybe that's because the pedagogy angle isn't there.

It then goes a bit content-centric again:

These resources include openly licensed course materials, lesson plans, textbooks, games, software and other materials that support teaching and learning.

But you feel some on the committee argued strongly for the next point:

However, open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning.

This is at least as, if not more, important than the content. Having technologies that shape the way we communicate and collaborate will have an influence back into education. And as for assessment and accreditation - these are absolutely key to changes in educational practice.

They then propose three strategies:

1. Educators and learners - get involved, so a bottom up drive.
2. Open educational resources - individuals and institutions to release their content. I'm all for this, but again it's a bit content-centric for my liking - 'release the content and they will come' hasn't been shown to be a particularly effective strategy.
3. Open educational policy - governments, school boards etc should make open education a high priority, so the top down balance to 1)

I wouldn't argue with any of these necessarily, although I would have worded the declaration differently. In a thoughtful piece Stephen Downes is very critical. His main point is that it is a closed document, rather foisted on the rest of us from a group of experts. This is hardly in keeping with the spirit of the venture. He puts it thus:

I find myself at odds with the declaration written by a group of mostly American academics and advocates invited by a foundation to a private meeting in South Africa to author a "fixed and final" declaration on open educational resources...

I do not believe that a panel of hand-picked representatives representating overwhelmingly a certain commercial perspective is qualified or able to speak on behalf of the rest of us. The very people they name - "learners, educators, trainers, authors, schools, colleges, universities, publishers, unions, professional societies, policymakers, governments, foundations and others" - are mostly nowhere present in these deliberations.

As he says, why not put it in a wiki?

He also goes on to argue that it is rooted in the education system, and there is little about empowering self-learning, or peer learning. I'd agree with him here. I'm not sure that was their intention, they mention collaborative learning, so maybe they'd argue it is implicit in their statement. But I would have foregrounded it more, something along the lines of

New technologies, open content and an opening up of opportunities to participate means that radically new models of learning are now possible. These can be based around rich content discovery, social networks, informal learning, commons based peer production, loosely coupled systems, democratic communities and a long tail of interests. Addressing these challenges will require new models of pedagogy, accreditation, guidance, support, licensing and content production.

So will I sign up for it? Yes, there are more people aligned against open education than behind it, so the last thing we need to do is factionalise within our own camp. But, next time, let's eat our own dog food eh?