From iCommons wiki

Session 1. Towards an Open Future for Education
Day 1 - 12.00 – 13.30
A starting point for participants in the open education track to gather together and explore vision and perspectives on our open education future, and to compare goals for our time together. Interactive exercises were employed to tease out the range of opinions on transforming the traditional educational content paradigm.
Also see Werner's article on this session here

--- Summary ---

The first session of the Open Education track had an exciting and energetic start. After introductions, Heather Ford of iCommons briefly presented the rationale behind this track. The main premise relates to the importance of education and its critical role in development. Heather also talked about iCommons’ iCurriculum project, which aims to act as a model of successful Open Education projects. The Open Education track in the iSummit aspires to improve understanding and awareness of who is working in this field in order to form a network of Open Education activists. Such a network may later be utilized to develop a movement for advocating and developing Open Education on a global level.

An obvious question followed about the meaning of Open Education. Participants’ answers, although differing in perspective, generally agreed that Open Education aims at enhancing the educational experience and making it more effective. Tools such as Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) and Creative Commons could be exploited to create highly dynamic learning environments. These environments will be flexible enough to cater for technological and social developments.

Energy level was then boosted through an interactive *barometer* exercise [See transcript of the "Spectogram" below]. In this exercise, a claim would be made by the facilitator (Allen Gun) and participants are asked to scatter along a line according to their level of agreement (or disagreement) with that claim. In the first round, the facilitator asked participants opinions of whether or not Open Education will revolutionize education. Apart from the fun of doing it, the exercise proved to be an excellent thought provoking experience. More participants agreed with the statement, while several others took middle stands. During their deliberations, participants gave many interesting and insightful comments and explanations of their views. Issues raised include quality of educational content, the reductionism in perceiving the educational experience (which is reducing the whole experience to materials and content, so in focusing on the trees, the forest is lost!) and the disruptive generational change in attitudes and expectations towards learning and education.

In the second round, participants expressed their opinions about another claim: “will Open Education ever gain the same level of respect of traditional educational approaches?”. Distribution on the line was very different this time, with the majority of participants agreeing that it is only a matter of time until we see Open Education as highly perceived as traditional, closer approaches. However, few participants agreed half-heartedly. Those explained their reasons of not totally agreeing because educational institutes are very traditional organizations, and achieving a radical mindset change requires considerable work and effort. The policy aspect was also emphasized as an important enabler in the pursuit of this goal.

Participants then engaged in a group brainstorming session to formulate any questions they have about Open Education. Nine groups were formed and participants were asked to write down their questions and post them on a wall where they will be thematically clustered. That concluded the session, leaving the discussion of questions to the second session.

SPECTOGRAM

Controversial statement: Open Curricula and Free Text will revolutionise education as we know it

Yes/Agree No/Disagree Middle

Y It will give more access to knowledge for everyone
N The way you have conceived the question, you consider teaching as a commodity, that's a wrong approach. We create open systems (in architecture) and that will revolutionise education, but not the content
Y Although I agree, what's important to understand is that these free licensed materials, allow people to modify and remix, which then enables the process - materials are an important part of empowering the process
N Saying that free textbooks will revolutionise the way we teach, wikipedia changed the way we accumulate and use knowledge, but not the knowledge itself - same with textbooks, however the OLPC project will change much more than the textbooks
M I think that open education that we are talking about is one that is mediated by the Internet, but I see the practices already in place in off-line communities, so it's not a total revolution, it's more about sharing more broadly (processes and content)
M It's not just free content itself, it's the way it is created and used that will revolutionise education
Y We have to start from something, so liberating content is important - there is a lot of political stress over the creation - to get rid of the top-down pressure on content, that already is a revolution
Y I think we should talk about open text as (I think we have more agreement between the two extremes in this spectogram) it is not the text itself, but the adaptability
N A couple of question to ask first, how many of us benefited from private education to get to this place, how many of us are scared of the word revolutionise
Y I think education has to be transformed to learning, or we should just give up now
N How much educational content is locked up, free textbooks are important, but we are lacking a lot of other materials that are needed to complement textbooks
N I am not sure how the materials will be developed when we speak about "free" - it's very easy for us to spend some of our time creating stuff, and donate it to the commons, but how about people who need to earn a living, and they don't earn enough, where the content creators don't earn enough - the model does not seem to accomodate all of us, if the model does not accomodate all of us, then we must ask how is it funded
Y There are a few assumptions in that statement. One is that creators are not being compensated for creation of free materials. For example, government departments are actually paying for the creation of a lot of free content.
N I agree with that, I am not making assumptions, I am just flagging it that some of the time this is a problem that should not be ignored
M I do not agree that there are no things being produced by people in poor countries. Every teacher has to create their own materials, regardless of how much they are paid. In Colombia I know the case of a 16 year old girl running a local school, she was not even paid for her work, but she was producing content and offering education.
N I think there needs to be a distinction between quantitity and quality. There is a huge amount of materials developed in the South, but if we think about quality, then we find some excellent high-quality materials that are produced by traditional publishers. If those materials are better than free options, then there is a problem with the free model.
M The state controls education in most countries, and the state is often resistant to change and not open to revolution.
N In America we are talking about open access, but try to use it in the classroom in the US - it is simply not possible, given a lot of regulations.
Y I think some of this discussion is more related to how we interpret the statement. But in a way education is a field where we are lagging behind - behind other areas where free and open business models are already emerging. There could be a new process taking place in education, similar to what we are seeing in entertainment.
M As a suggested consensus: content is a piece of the revolution, but not the whole piece.
M I am in the middle, because I would like to speak more about the how
N We don't just need new business models, but also now policy models, a few universities have jumped on this train of open courseware and open content - but we need new policy ideas to support this
N I would like to end on the question, "whose knowledge, from whom, and for what purpose?" - people come to us (in the South) and they say "you can have our knowledge" but the answers will be found in the communities rather than the content

Controversial statement: Open curricula will never enjoy the same respect as traditionally authored curricula

A-gree D-isagree

D Question the assumption that there is respect for the existing closed curricula
A I hope I am wrong, but I am in a university, and I know how the curricul is evaluated, and how teachers are evaluated - so to make me move to the other side, we have a loooot of work. Maybe in the future we will have more respect, but now I don't see that.
D One of the things I want to challenge is that universities have always been closed - historically, the model of the universities was not "all rights reserved" - it has not always been that way - we should look at the issue over a much longer time axis, and we will find that universities have been open
M I am in the middle because there is something wrong with the original statement. Contrasting openneness vs. traditionally authored is wrong. Content in the library of science is traditionally authored, but open.
M I have another concern about government. We have watched universities over the past two decades, closing themselves down as they are dingin ways to commercialise knowledge their academics are producing. So the very people you'd like to have supporting universities are actually encourating the change that we are seeing.
M I want to bring up the fact that in the open access research movement, governemnts are really stepping in to mandate open access to research that they fund. So, if we can bring that model to the open educational content field that would have significant impact.
A As long as knowledge is treated as a commodity and universities are able to make it scarce, it creates artificially higher prices - it's not in their interest to open it up
D Fifteen years ago people said video will never work on mobile phones, as soon as we get enough people on this side (this is good enough for our needs)
D The 15 and younger crowd are now learning in new and unheard of ways, once this group of children moves to be 20/25 the role of universities will have changed completely, and largely obsolete
A I would like to respond to that, the universities are actually looking at these kids, and trying to find ways to change the kids to make them fit into the existing structure
D I want to speak for the 7 year old - for me this is about trust and authorship / if the question is if we are ever going to trust things that are openly authored, i'd like to mention that my 7 year old is already going to wikipedia to find answers, and has a very different idea of what trust is than the people who control the universities today
D Access to open curricula is getting respect and is being accepted - one can see things changing as one watches it
D We need to distinguish between free and collaboratively-created - the two are not automatically the same. I am standing on this side, because I believe the logic behind free curriculum is in line with the philosophy of education. Educators will not allow anyone to change this very basic philosophy of what they are doing.
D I moved from the middle towards this side. I believe that the learner is able to judge the quality of educational content, and that's why free curricula will enjoy similar respect as proprietary curricula.
M/A Students in Macedonia want to learn in advance what they will learn. They fear the unknown. Change in the curricula causes confusion.
M From my experience working with teachers there are two types: either ready to change and engage, but there are also a lot of traditional teachers that want to keep things the way they are