Carolina, who is sponsored by the Open Society Institute, has written a Green Paper as part of the Brazilian Project on Open Educational Resources, which she will present at the opening of the conference. Once it is published,  I will link  it here. Download pdf file here:  PaperOEROSI080909 and check some photos of the event here.

I hope there is a wifi connection and that the conference will be streamed / tweeted for those who will not be able to attend f2f and want to make comments or questions. You can always use the comment area below for pre-conference questions you want to field.

Invitation OER

]]> http://beespace.net/open-education-and-open-educational-resources-challenges-and-perspectives/feed/ 1 http://beespace.net/opened-2009-crossing-the-chasm/ http://beespace.net/opened-2009-crossing-the-chasm/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:49:48 +0000 Barbara Dieu http://beespace.net/?p=917 I have just come across the June 15th post on the Open Education Conference  2009 site and realized that I am one day late for the travel scholarship offered for the event. Although the deadline was yesterday, June 30th, I am writing this post in the hope the date will be postponed and that this application will be valid.

The title of the OpenEd conference 2009: Crossing the Chasm is very appropriate. First, because as an enthusiastic early adopter of innovation, my work with new technologies and Open Education has been mostly on the fringes of the secondary school system I work for,  without any institutional, logistic or financial support to pursue my work /projects in this field. But then, I suppose that in secondary schools, the established idea is that teachers are not supposed to care about this because others will for them.  Secondly, because as I have almost come to the end of my tether,  I have not written a single post since April. The prospect of seeing some light at the end of the tunnel (thank you, Leigh) has somehow energized me and made me cross at least the blogging chasm…one step at a time.

I have been working openly and sharing my resources on the web over these past 12 years.  I have joined several communities of open-minded people and various networks both locally and internationally, with whom I have collaborated and cooperated in participatory projects presentially and online – voluntarily in my free time. Among these, I can highlight:

1. co-creation and co-management of dekita.org,  a project which advocates participatory uses of Web applications in EFL/ESL teaching, favoring open approaches to language learning in which students get to engage the public Web instead of being locked into narrowly circumscribed online spaces;

2. co-development and co-moderation of three 6-week online workshops for teacher professional development in participatory media:

• Using Weblogs in ESL/EFL Classes: New Developments, Uses, and Challenges
• Webpublishing  in Open and Participatory Environments
• Social Media in ELT

3. publications and presentations in English, French and Portuguese

4. contributions to Wikieducator  and this year’s NMC Horizon Report

5. participation  in open projects to divulge the open culture in Portuguese;

• Para Entender a Internet (collective book)
• Adote um Parágrafo (collective translation from English to Portuguese)

6. participation in the FLNW unconferences, the Unesco and Brazilian OER list and growing involvement with different local actors , events and educational networks so as to establish OER and CC awareness among educators to foster an open culture in education in Brazil.

So to the questions:

What you would “bring” to the conference? What can you contribute, be it a willingness to volunteer to moderate a session, some special expertise or project, an already accepted proposal…

At the OpenEd conference, I’m willing to contribute with what I know, talk with participants and organizers about possible projects/partnerships involving the networks I belong to (inside and outside formal educational institutions) and help divulge the conference and its themes– before, during and after through my personal learning spaces and networks.

What you see as the most critical issue facing you in  your efforts around Open Education, and how you think the conference can help you address it?

The fact that the Brazilian government officially embraced the open source movement and that our country’s culture is very much based on mix and remix does not mean the majority of educators and population understand how Open Ed  can be used and the benefits it can bring to them and the population as a whole.

The most pressing and critical issue for me around Open Education is to establish logistic, technical and financial support to start sustainable projects with actors who are willing to make them work.  Why is it so difficult to make this happen?  I believe this conference will help me understand and learn how to cross the chasm.

The report has been released under a Creative Commons license and can be  downloaded as a pdf file from the NMC website or the Horizon wiki, which also shows openly (no need to login) the methodology and various phases of the research process.

The mega event,  sponsored by Futura Networks and Telefonica, was first launched in Spain and  is now yearly organized in Brazil, Colombia and Ibero-America. It covers  12 different areas:  Astronomy, Blog, Games, Modding, Robotics, Simulation, Design, Photography, Music, Video, Development e Open Source. Last year’s creativity session was split up into Design, Photography and Video, so as to better mark the event as a cultural happening.

Like last year, I will also be part of the blogging area. I was invited to participate in a round table on “Blogs in the Classroom” together with Eric Messa (FAAP), Luiz Biajoni (Instituto Macuco), Claudir Segura (PUC-SP)  on Wednesday 21st at 16:35.  The panel will be moderated by Bob Wollheim (Sixpix Content). Rafael Bucco (editor of Results On magazine)

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web and Pau Garcia-Milà (eyeOS) are some of invited stars and you bet I will be tweeting, photographing and reporting on the event.

After an explanation of the work conducted at the Open Society Institute and a brief outline of the history of the Open Education movement and initiatives,  Melissa pointed to The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, which is

at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy and a statement of commitment… meant to spark dialogue, to inspire action and to help the open education movement grow.

1741 individuals (1742 now that I have added my name) and 177 organizations have signed the declaration. Pilot countries comprise Poland, Australia and Brazil.

Some open repositories (which do not require a subscription fee) : Arxiv, DOAJ, Dspace, PubMedCentral, OpenDoar, Eprints Soton, Scielo Brazil, Hindawi, Public Library of Science, Springer Open Choice, Bioline International.

While Connexions founder Richard Baraniuk was discussing OER at the Berlin Online Educa,  Joel Thierstein, Cnx’S executive director, showed us (here in São Paulo) how their open source platform allows professors and teachers to  “Create Globally, Educate Locally” by giving them the possibility to create, collaborate, build/share custom collections. Users and authors can find content on a page by page basis through an interconnected repository (400+ textbooks, 7000+ lego modules from students, teachers, professionals  worldwide) and remix it for their needs. Authors retain copyright and license it via open access licence to share, copy and transmit the content. Hard cover copies of personalised textbooks created by mashups of different content were passed around.

Differently from the States and other developed countries, in Brazil, information and expertise are still scarce, which reinforces the educational gap between the haves and have-nots. Ironically, state funded  and  free higher-ed ( like the University of São Paulo) cater for the higher middle-class who paid for their studies in private secondary schools and preparatory courses to succeed in the university entrance exam. The federal campuses are usual far from the city centre and transport difficult for those without a car. As a result of this, the most needy have to pay high tuition for overcrowded “one size fits it all” night classes at private commercial institutions, many of which of doubtful standard. In formal or vocational education, there is no recognition of prior and experiential learning, which further restricts the entry of qualified people to help out as facilitators, guides or curators.

OERs and open education should be more than “a blip on the educational radar”.  It is important to have access not only to broadband and resources but also peers and experts who help learners filter, discuss, re-mix, create and make this content personally and contextually meaningful.

I hope these first steps will allow Brazilian educators from all extractions find a way to collaborate and partner in networks beyond their schools and universities – across the river in the city of knowledge as Gilson Schwartz  put it and share instead of just “planning to share” so that more people and initiatives follow to open access to meaningful and dynamic education in our country.

• the reports have been translated into Spanish and Catalan by the Universidad Oberta de Catalunya;
• the Australian chapter of the project was launched in Melbourne last July;
• I am the first member from Latin America (hopefully more will follow as it is a darn responsibility and a bit too lonely to represent a whole continent)

It has been enlightening to contribute to and participate in this carefully constructed process (totally online and open). The experience , as Larry puts it,

is like a crash course in emerging technology, with the class made up entirely of very knowledgeable experts and futurists.

I also echo Scott Leslie’s words in his post “The Value of Openness – creating the Horizon Project, out in the open.

while I hope you do find the report useful when it comes out in late January 2009, you too can derive much the same benefit as I simply because the process to advise on the Report takes place ‘out in the open’ on this wiki. Indeed, I honestly find the raw materials gathered in the Research Questions (as well as the ongoing hz09 tag in delicious) to be ultimately the most valuable part of the process; inevitably, in order to create a ‘unified’ picture that can be summed up in a printed report certain details are lost, smushed together, improved upon, etc. But all of the raw materials are there for anyone who cares to dig.

Since my exposure to the Future of Learning in a Networked World series of unconferences and during this sabbatical year, I have taken advantage to open myself up to different local communities, participate in various national educational and cultural initiatives and meet the actors. This roaming exposure  (one is usually confined to a professional track, idea or a classroom) and free (but expensive) time has allowed me to observe, compare and reflect on the mores and cultural traits of the different groups locally and internationally.

Participating in the Brazilian Práxis community this year has been one of many such instructive insights. It introduced me to fellow colleagues in different institutions in São Paulo, who are in some way or another involved in the use of new technologies. Like the NMC,  Práxis aims at convening people around ideas and practice, catalyze dialogue, discussion and contributions to the field in the form of cases, papers, demonstrations and other related projects.

However, differently from NMC, an NGO which relies on paid membership and whose open initiative projects happen mostly online to include perspectives, discussions and research from organizations all over the US and abroad, the Práxis community activities are basically local and presential (São Paulo city) and supported/directed by the Bradesco Institute of Technology, which is in turn funded by the Bradesco Foundation.

In 2004,  a small group of K12 ICT coordinators and CIOs from the private school sector in São Paulo gathered at the occasion of an e-learning event to exchange ideas, practice and better get to know each other. In 2008, although most community members still represent these elite institutions, membership has opened up to encompass a variety of new people (who are selected through personal nomination), including technical schools, colleges, universities, edtech, e-learning businesses and big corporations. Membership is renewed annually by a public acceptance to follow at least 70% of the face to face  monthly meetings, during which practice/experience or products (100% proprietary until now) are demonstrated. The Moodle environment serves as a communication distributor, information archive and occasional discussion forum.

I have noticed there is a striking difference between the way innovation is envisaged and practiced. Is it this a result of a national or an organizational culture? Is it local, global or both?

Last night, during our last meeting of the year, Alexandre Zapparoli, from Gartner (Brasil) and Yang Sik Pak, from Daul Soft Brasil made their presentations.

Gartner Hype Cycle 2008

Now, although Gartner partners and networks with institutions and consultants to track breakthrough ideas and how they become established and part of general practice, it targets basically the corporate world business leaders in th etechnology/communications industry.  Its research process and methods are totally closed and the advice reports are delivered for a high fee.

I noticed that the data collected and the trends openly suggested by educators for the 2009 Horizon Report did not differ significantly from the ones presented in the graphic above. The focus and objective are a bit different, though.

Gartner recommends an open and free form adaptive structure, open to participation and modification, visible work in progress and create_organize_find_interact flow instead of rigid schemes, access rights, templates and costly infrequent change. Organization should reflect current use and needs and natural group formation should be based on activities and interests. Links, tags, ratings and usage are to determine importance and quality. One should find content through people links and people through content links. Interaction records reinforce personal and group identity, reputation and memory.

As for Daul’s authoring tool combo (TeachingMate and LectureMaker) , although it evidences progress over the ready-made one-size-fits-all software, it still operates in the closed environment model, centred on  transmission mode, which does not help transform the educational practice but perpetuates the sage on the stage, closed silos and expensive walled gardens.

Education, IMHO,  is much more complex than a linear series of events, a politician’s discourse /short-term policy or a measurable and defined pre-packaged product. Learning is a process of reactions and layers which lasts a life-time.

The age of information and knowledge has led education into the media and big business spotlight and  schools/colleges and universities have fallen into the vicious circle of student /teacher bashing. Will educational institutions and businesses ever understand that transplanting a foreign model, installing an LMS system, revamping a classroom with a whiteboard, or submitting and enforcing the use of new technologies will not automatically lead to change?  Focus on people rather than technology, enable and support processes and weave in connections and possibilities for empowerment.

Update (video)

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

I am also taking part of the II ABCiber Symposium (Brazilian Association of Cyberculture Researchers) at PUCSP, covering a variety of related themes, studies and propositions on how these new technologies are impacting our daily lives, uses, best practices and threats.

Though severe brainfry has set in after listening to so many people speaking, I am also having some difficulty in following the tempo of this generation C – (connected, creative and click).  So, I have forced myself to sit down this morning, set some time aside, concentrate and focus on some of the common traits I have noticed during these events:

• the possibility to join the debate, witness knowledge being constructed openly and being shared (from many and with many) through social tools and platforms like mobiles, Twitter (+ all mashups), Flickr, blogs, livestreaming, tagging;
• a tendency of academia and traditional journalists to monopolize the conversation, engage in a navel gazing monologue instead of encouraging and partaking a dialogic relation with the guest speaker and audience.
• a contradiction between innovative theoretical discourse and conventional institutional practice;
• a difficulty in bridging the gap between hope and happening, structure and agency, the material and the ideational;

As Jimbo mentioned at some point, the challenge does not really come from the technology itself, which is continuously being improved to facilitate connections, networking and working together. The real obstacles to an open culture of collaboration are deeply imbued economic/social/educational processes, practices and the need to control,  which hamper these conversations and the possibility of exchange and sharing.

Off to one more afternoon and evening at ABCiber and tomorrow a whole day with Práxis members at BIT (Bradesco Institute of Technology) in Campinas for a meeting and lunch with Mitchel Resnick, from  the MIT Media Lab,  with whom Bradesco partners.

The whole setup in the studio consists of a mobile unit : a laptop connected to the Internet, a mini DV video camera, a tripod, a photo camera. Live transmission is done through streaming using Mogulus (video), Cover it Live (multimídia chat), Flickr (photo storage), YouTube (video storage) and Twitter (live coverage). The crewman follows what happens to the guests and journalists from the moment they arrive until they leave.

Bel confided she was happy to have been given this opening and space for action. I accepted as I was eager to check not only the environment but also the efforts that are being made in this very traditional broadcasting mode to incorporate new technologies and make it interactive – the same challenge we are facing in education. Not all schools accept experimentation and going beyond the fixed walls of their “studios”.

The interviewee for this event was Jana Bennett, CEO of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world – the BBC. I read about her a bit before going to bed and, as I decided to tweet in English for an international audience, I sent word through the various lists and communities I belong to around the world.

A chauffeur came to fetch me, Lucia Freitas and Bel early this morning and off we went across town to Fundação Padre Anchieta, where TV Cultura is housed. On arrival, we met Aloisio Milani, our fellow twitterer ; the other journalists who were going to interview Jana: Lilian Witte Fibe, Carmen Amorim, Patricia Kogut, Eugenio Bucci, Lucia Araujo, Nelson Hoineff and Paulo Caruso, a live cartoonist. After a scrumptious breakfast in the best Brazilian style (orange juice, coffee, pao de queijo, sandwiches, fruit and cake), we were led to the make-up room (no shiny noses or disheveled look permitted) and then to the studio .

update - Lucia Freitas has just sent me the cartoon Paulo Caruso made of us

Lucia, Aloisio and I sat on the perch at the top, overlooking the scene.

It was fun but more like quick note-taking for me, as I had little audience – Vance connected but I missed him on the scrolling page and Dennis (from the Webheads) made a number of comments. I must confess I found it difficult to multi-task on so many levels: pay attention to new faces and context, what people were doing in the studio,  what journalists were asking/what Jana was answering, reporting/commenting and paying attention to what was streaming from outside and responding . I guess that like all in life,  it’s a matter of getting used to it and practicing. I would have definitely adopted another strategy had I had an audience watching the stream and asking questions or making comments, which is what happened in Portuguese. My own tweets (in English) can be found on a filtered Tweetscan (reverse chronological order), everyone else’s both on Twitter search (keyword rodaviva) and Twemes.

Good marketing for TV Cultura and Roda Viva program – an attempt to make a TV program interactive and showing all backstage live one week before the recorded program goes on air. Twittering also provides a written record of what went on from different perspectives – which finally converged in spite of the different languages. Some blogging will divulge the event and maybe bring on more people to watch it next Monday.

I found that many of the questions (fortunately with some good exceptions) were navel gazing, asking for advice or models for a cultural and societal context which is entirely different from the UK. Most did not really probe or unveil anything that you cannot already find on Google about Jana or the BBC annual reports.

Jana Bennett was very much herself and emphasized the importance the BBC gives to quality programs, international partnerships, catering for the different needs/ages/tastes and how new technology is being used to interact with the audience and integrate user-generated content whenever possible. Also important – the absence of political/commercial pressure when producing and broadcasting. According to Jana, quality depends on money (95% from license fees paid by viewers who trust and endorse quality), time alloted to production, independence and autonomy for program producers who (unlike in Brazil) are free from political, commercial (and economic) pressure. A Trust Committee, with different members chosen according to their expertise (not affiliation), regulates what goes on by reflecting and discussing the choice of controversial programs AFTER they are broadcast. Differently from the American or Brazilian TV, whose use by a younger generation is declining (for lack of quality content), Jana mentions that in the UK teens enjoy TV to cool off, relax and choose their programs according to their mood and time of the day as they are made relevant to them. She gave an example of an educational “reality show” which brought together teens interested in fashion – they were taken to different production areas both in England and India, exposed to quality work and sweatshops and asked to reflect upon this experience. The American PBS series follows a similar concept (Merchants of Cool).

It was interesting to participate in this – wondering now how we can mobilize our schools to follow a similar path, discarding the mouldy, senseless layers of bureaucracy which seem to have gripped the system and frozen it. How can we converge by giving value both to what is past and present quality and inviting young people to pave the future by contributing, innovating and creating new channels for expression and interaction . Although education and culture evolve in a slower tempo than art, fashion and commerce, once the infrastructure and governance are laid out, we should feel the change- slow but powerful. As an ancient proverb says “the journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step”. Have you taken yours?