2nd learning reflection

This section has been interesting because I had never really considered the actual definition for open in Open Educational Resource.  If I found a resource I liked, I would present it in the classroom and possibly share it with other teachers and completely ignore whether what I was doing fell under any correct definition.  It did not matter to me so much if it was copyrighted or now.  As mentioned, the open web provides an ease in sharing and using knowledge and it is hard to restrict that only to the knowledge the original owner wants to share.  For example, I have downloaded the cartoon Caillou off youtube, shown it in class and shared it with other teachers, all at no profit to me but also without the approval of the producers of the show.  This cartoon is not created solely for education but it is great for students who have very limited English.  Should it be considered a learning material?  Should I be allowed to use it for my Sub Saharan African students who would not have access to any high quality material if it was not free?

But the majority of this section dealt with resources released under an open license or in the public domain to be used and revised by others.  Very few materials actually fall under this definition.  The course is suggesting that all education materials should be free and provides many benefits and gains to prove it is ideal for both the student and the creator.  The majority of them talk about cost effectiveness and being cheaper.  But I’d argue that most universities and other educational institutions do not want something to be cheaper or cost effective for them and reduce the costs for learners.  They are happy to pass the cost onto the student and only become concerned with students’ costs when enrollment drops.  Perhaps I sound very jaded, but that has been my perception at a large public institution. 

So I think it will be extremely difficult to convince more creation of open materials.  It is naïve to think professionals will work hard to create high quality work when there is little motivation for them to do so and many motivating factors for them to copyright and sell the material.  There is too much money and reputation at stake for universities, educators and publishers and not enough sensitivity toward the needs of the students.  It will be some time before learning can be set free.

Considering I’m taking two MOOCs at the same time right now while also trying to compile a library of OERs for use in Rwanda, this concept is very dear to my heart and I’m excited to learn more!  From here I look forward to learning about the laws surrounding copyrights and what can be used or not if it is not under an open license or in the public domain.  I’d also love to learn the most common types of OERs, how they are used and where they are found.  

1st learning reflection

I think my perception of the issue of OERs has changed in the past few months.  I can definitely see the statistic that 66% of the children in Sub-Saharan Africa did not have the privilege of attending secondary school.”  But even past that, many of those children who do get that ‘privilege’ have a subpar experience, particularly with resources they (and their teachers) have access to.  My school in Rwanda is better funded than the majority of the schools in the country.  And yet, the students don’t have textbooks for many of their classes.  And the books they do get can be extremely low quality or outdated because of the price.  The most notable example is the computer book, which was published in 2009.  That isn’t very long ago, even by technology standards, but it includes references to VERY outdated concepts, such as floppy disks, so it clearly was written much before that.

In my own American university experience, I remember trying to buy textbooks and being required to get the newest edition of a text, despite the fact it had minimal difference, or to get the book with an unused product key for the technology supplement, thus requiring you to buy a new one.  When I could get away with it, I would buy used or international editions.  Most of that information could be found online anyways and I sometimes only opened the book a few times that semester.

I think people are becoming more and more aware of these issues.  For example, the state of California has made their newest STEM textbooks open content that anyone can access.  I talked about RACHEL in my last post, and that is an amazing resource that I think will change education in the developing world because it requires no internet or even computer. To move forward, I truly believe we all need to work together to create more and more content in competition with the hegemonic publishers. 

Very few people go into education or research simply for the money.  However, the course seems to be advocating a complete lack of copyright restrictions on knowledge and I do not think that is right or fair.  There will be little motivation to create quality material if money is no longer a possibility and even less if they are set to lose money.  It can be expensive to create learnings materials. However, educators have a responsibility to consider students and their budgets in textbook decisions to and to create or provide high quality accessible (free) resources.  But we must not lose our legacy of acknowledging the original discoverers of knowledge, ideas and research.

Introduction

My motivation for taking this course

Hello! 

My name is Kristin and I moved to Rwanda earlier this year to work at a girls secondary school as a teaching fellow.  While I came to teach English, it quickly became clear that the biggest deficits in the education here was in ICT. Students rarely used the computer lab, had no time for independent research or internet time and did not associate technology with education outside of computer class.  However, just a few weeks ago, the school got a raspberry pi with RACHEL content on it.  If you don’t know what RACHEL is, I implore you to check it out here.  Since receiving it, I have been eager to create Rwanda specific content so it can be of even more use to the students and teachers here.  I knew the first place to start would be to learn more about open content and creativecommons, so here I am!

But this post is supposed to be a reflection on my experience of creating a blog.  I actually already maintain  blog (as linked above), so it was a piece of cake for me.  The hardest part was deciding a url.  My tip to anyone else to who may wish to do this is to click around and try everything.  Almost everything is reversible if you don’t like the change you just made (short of deleting it completely) and it is very hard to break it.  I have noticed the biggest thing that holds people back if they are not comfortable with technology is they are afraid they will terribly mess something up.  But that is very unlikely!