Bitácora de abordo

OpenEd: Week 6 Background Readings in Copyright and the Public Domain

2007-10-17T14:53:00.000+02:00

Understanding the importance and value of the public domain, how much (what percentage) of this value would you estimate is realized when works are licensed with a Creative Commons or GFDL license? To what degree would the open educational resources movement (and therefore the world) be additionally benefited if OERs were simply placed in the public domain? Please explain.

I think taht we can only measure the percentage of these licenses seeing how many rights we get about a work because a work which is in the public domain means that it’s free for use and re-use by anyone and there aren’t any restrictions upon the use of work and nobody can get rights over it. Therefore, the percentages in CC are variable because we can configure them in many forms: Attribution, Attribution - No Derivate Works, Attribution - No Derivate Works - Non commercial, Attribution - Non commercial, Attribution - Non commercial - Share alike, Attribution - Share alike. The GDFL license is criticized because it has invariable text which doesn’t modify or remove. Both licenses have rights about works and therefore they can’t obtain the 100% of value of public domain.

In conclusion, we can see a line with two extremes, Copyright and public domain, and in my opinion about the value of the public domain using theses licenses is positive, around 80-90 % but not 100% because get rights.

The issue about the additional benefit if OERs were simply placed in public domain, I think, Whole it would be an error because movement promotes the use and reuse the resources, and all this would be infringed because anyone could make extra works that could have been created with a ‘private’ public domain, extending copyright and inhibit those who seek to build upon and reuse the works of the past.

OpenEd: Week 5 Example Open Education Projects

2007-09-30T17:54:00.000+02:00

These projects have in common that they share a big number of online courses to anyone with free use. Inside each site we can find many type materials like lectures notes, videos, demonstrations, etc and are classified by matters. Each one is supported by organizations and partners; the most referenced is The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. I think that all sites have a collaborative content production, between users, between teachers, and others, for example the MIT OCW has a workflow where some people modified the resource and other sites also have options to reuse their items to create a new item. Also all sites make a reference about free licenses like Creative Commons License and others. In addition, we can observe that the English language is the native language.

The things that differentiate them are:

The topics of courses.
The MIT translate their courses to other languages like Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.
The people who develop and publish the courses are different. For example, the final users from OpenLearn in LabSpace and Connexions can develop and publish a resource, but in the MIT the course or resources are developed by teachers and publish by core team (Production manager, Publication Manager, specialist, liaison).
The Sustainability model. For example, the OpenLearn and MIT accept donations and others accept funds of sponsors, organizations and foundations (foundation, donation or endowment model), but other sites also uses segmentation model like NROC Network.

The “quality” could define in wide manner like how much a resource is good and correct. In the current time a debate exists about the quality of a resource because many people produce contents and publish them like teacher or alums, and others, now isn’t limited by only experts, therefore some contents could be erroneous. Some people say that the quality evaluation absence is a challenge for a wide acceptation in the future. For me, the quality is an important question for the open education projects survive, what happens whether doesn’t exist a quality minimums, how do we recognize a good and correct resource, all that would be very difficult. There are many projects witch experiment with different strategies to evaluate the quality, for example, the Wikipedia sometimes only permits the entry modification who are registered with a minimum of four days.

To finalize, I think that the “quality” makes the difference between “learning” resource (non-formal and informal learning) and “educational” resource (formal learning).

See this other weblog for more ideas, especially in “quality” definition. In Spain “quality” word has two words: “Calidad” y “Cualidad”

I do reference to “Calidad”, the high value of a resource and Emanuela Zibordi do reference to “Cualidad”, the characteristics of a good resource.

“Calidad”: Is the value of something.

“Cualidad”: Is the characteristics of something.

OpenEd: Week 2,3,4 Background Readings in Open Education

2007-09-23T19:42:00.001+02:00

QUESTIONS: What do these overviews of the field have in common? What do they emphasize differently? What are the aims of the authors of each report? Do you see a bias toward or against any ideas, organizations, or approaches in any of the reports? Which report spoke the most clearly to you, and why do you think it did? Based on where the field is now, and these initial ideas about where it might go, what part of the open education movement is most interesting to you? Why?

The common matter in theses overviews is the OER movement what it is developing in current time, studying about their enablers and inhibitors. (See attributes to be an OER)

The OER (Open Educational Resources) movement is very recent and arise the needed to address all initiatives of different institutions and foundations about it.

The first overviews define some concepts, who are involved, enablers and inhibitors of the movement and treat the situation with general view point enumerating the different projects existents, organizations and the financial needs to support this work. In this overview, Giving Knowledge for Free, the OECD emphasize in the economic point, sustainability of OER projects with the cooperation between organizations. Also so many costs and revenue models are mentioned here, for example, the replacement model, the foundation, donation or endowment model, the segmentation model, the conversion model, the voluntary support model, the contributor pays model.(See mass collaboration model)

The second overview developed by OLCOS organization, Open Educational Practices and Resources, speak about a roadmap, five years hence, on 2012. They purpose some objectives in different matters like rights, educational practices (social software), use of ICT for lifelong learning needs and others. This roadmap has been carried out to inform and support a transformation in new educational practices (See a claim from Elisa Spadavecchia).

The third overview speaks about the role of Flora Hewlett Foundation like leadership of this movement in the future. They speak about their capability to carry out this role with their OPLI initiative. Also speak about the need of join with other movements as e-science and CI (cyberinfrastructure) to benefit from them.

In my opinion, this seem well that somebody tries to analyze this movement and look for the barriers and opportunities, but I am against of a leadership that dictate the steps to follow, I think that the organizations must cooperate between them.

All reports speak clearly for me; all make references and put examples, figures and hyperlinks for improvement the knowledge.

The two first overviews are very interesting for me. Both speak about the enablers and inhibitors, but in concrete term, the first overview like me when talk the economic sustainability of different project, and the second when speak about new educational practices and the use of social software to make a collaborative practices. See how the Wiki and Weblog software are used to carry out a course, is more interesting and make me think about the possibility of integration between social software (wiki, weblog, messenger, etc..) and LMS(open; warning, Blackboard patents the concept of an LMS), CMS(open) and others tools more specific, oriented to educational area.

OpenEd: Week 1 Why Open Education?

2007-09-07T12:53:00.000+02:00

QUESTIONS: In your opinion, is the "right to education" a basic human right? Why or why not? In your opinion, is open *access* to free, high-quality educational opportunity sufficient, or is it necessary to *mandate* education through a certain age or level?

In my opinion the "right to education" is a basic human right. One reason for me is that without education couldn’t access to a worthy employment in labour market (first article, Tomaševski, page 9), therefore, they can’t have a normal life, for example, buy food, clothes, etc... And this is a basic human right:

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Like a simile, I can say that such the minds as the stomach need to be fed. They are two different kinds of famine, but both help to develop to the human beings, one develops the personality and qualities, and the other develops the body.

The poverty education generates ignorance, illiterate and other evils which must be resolved quickly. I can’t imagine a world where the ignorance directs it, thus the education is necessary, in particular, the objective education where isn’t manipulate the reality, neither violate other rights. Used to happen sometimes, in war time or repression time, that the educative system is corrupted, teaching to the children to have hate to what is different, other ethnic groups or impose a religious belief... all that is a culture medium and is a possible future bomb, only watching the world news about human bombs whom are created by Islamism.

Like I say above, in my opinion, the education is a right and is logic that mustn’t pay it; the money can’t be able to steal a right, therefore the governments that adopt and ratify this international treaty, must create strategic plans to face the costs that the basic education generate. The governments must carry out a budget to be able to pay teachers whom are fundamental part in the education (first article, Tomaševski, page 40). The new technologies allow us to be in somewhere (mobile, D. Wiley, page 4), thus can build less schools and thus cheapen costs. Studying these technologies, the governments could cheapen the costs. A curious example about to take advantage of these new technologies, it is what happen in Cuba, where the children learn through the TV in a determinate hours. It is sure that the process isn’t the best since isn’t communication between teacher and learner, but allows the children who are living in rural areas have to access to the information and helping them by their parents, this information could become education.

http://www.granma.cu/espanol/mayo03/sabado24/sue%C3%B1os.html

The education at least must be compulsory in primary and secondary education to resolve the problems commented above, but it doesn’t became an agony or problem for the children (first article, Tomaševski, page 35). Therefore we must put resources to prevent it, must talk with them to try learning and can improve the educative system for each country, many times doesn’t take them into account (first article, Tomaševski, page 36-37).

Some countries that ratify this treaty in theory, they don’t carry out it in practice. It happens because the country can’t accomplish the treaty. The countries ought to be able and willing to secure it (second article, Tomaševski, page 15), but that is questioned.

To take control of this situation, the governments and foundations should make strategies and statistics but there is no internationally collected data on access to education by race, ethnicity or religion. All those things do impossible to monitor the progress and retrogression (second article, Tomaševski, page 29) and make impossible to accomplish the compulsory education.

Mi Blog

2007-08-31T09:39:00.000+02:00

¡Hola a todos!

Me he agregado a la comunidad de bloggers :-), ya somos unos más.

Espero ir actualizando el Blog de vez en cuando.

¡Un saludo!