Open

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Chatham House Sharing for OER
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2019/12/23
I always thought it was 'Charterhouse Rules', but I guess not (I say this after a Google search for the alternatives). The idea of the rules is that "you can report out anything said, but you can’t identify who said it." This is because, presumably, "people need to speak freely as they hash out things at a conference, and to do that they sometimes have to speak loosely in ways that don’t translate outside the conference." Of, as I interpret such rules, "they're able to lie with impunity either inside or outside the meeting. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web.Reducing Friction and Expanding Participation in the Continuous Improvement of OER
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2020/01/31
David Wiley writes (correctly) that when people find it hard to participate, they don't participate. So, for example, many improvements to open educational resources (OER) never get made, because they're too hard to suggest. So he describes a process where "There’s a new button at the bottom of every page of content. It says 'Improve this page.' When a student or teacher or other user from the public web clicks the button, they’re linked directly to a Google Doc which includes all the content from the page. The Google doc is shared publicly and has Track Changes turned on. So you can just begin typing or commenting immediately." Right. This is good. I've been using Google Docs to write papers recently, sharing my work as I go. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. GODAN Action Open Data Management in Agriculture and Nutrition Course
Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, 2020/01/15
This is nice. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) has published course materials from its Action Open Data Management MOOC as a gitbook (a gitbook is an open content authoring and versioning environment). The course "aims to strengthen the capacity of data producers and data consumers to manage and use open data in agriculture and nutrition (and) to raise awareness of different types of data formats and uses, and to highlight how important it is for data to be reliable, accessible and transparent". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Getting Started with Open Badges and Open Microcredentials
Kyle Clements, Richard E. West, Enoch Hunsaker, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2020/01/16
This is one of those articles that describes every possible step involved in the creation and issuing of badges and microcredentials while still leaving you not knowing how to do it. That's not to say this isn't a good article. It is. But there has been a disinclination in recent years to actually talk about technology in educational technology literature, leaving practitioners in a position where they have to figure out most of this stuff for themselves. Sure, I can see this article being a useful guide for a professor or administrator managing a technical team deploying a badge infrastructure. But they shouldn't walk away from it thinking that they understand how badges are developed and used. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Spirit of Open
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2020/01/10
David Wiley offers what appears at first to be a point of contact between his and my philosophy of open: "I am more interested in insuring that other people are able to do whatever they want or need to do with my content than I am concerned about making sure  they can only do what I want them to do with it." Yes, for me it has always been about enabling other people. The difference is that Wiley sees this as a relation between himself and the person reusing the content, while I see this as a relation between myself and all potential users of the content. I cannot give (say) one person the right to commercialize my content without harming everyone else who would use my content. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Contained, Open Source Environments Compatible With Everything? What Elearning Professionals Should Know About Docker
Cristian T. Duque, LMS Pulse, 2020/01/08
If you're just reading about Docker for the first time, this is a good article to start with. Here's the promise: "Install, configure and deploy your LMS or elearning platform once in Docker, now you can make copies by the snap of your finger." Sounds great but it isn't always that easy to do the first bit (I still don't have a Dockerized version of gRSShopper, though not for lack of effort). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. OER Commons Intros Authoring Tool
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2020/01/07
According to this short article, the OER Commons has launched a new authoring tool, Open Author. It "consolidates the functions of three other utilities from OER Commons: the Resource Builder, Lesson Builder and Module Builder," says the article. You have to log in to use it (or sign in with Clever, a single-signon for schools - a bit of marketing there, I think). I created a test resource on how to create a resource using the tool to see how it worked - it's very basic (the metada submission is the most complex piece). Watch out for licensing, which defaults to CC-by. Also, there's a non-standard 'educational use permitted' licensing option (whatever that means). What was missing. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The culture war at the heart of open source
Steve Klabnik, 2019/04/02
It's interesting to see that some of the issues we've had around open educational resources have also been at play in the world of free and open source software. Steve Klabnik authors two posts (first, second) on the subject. Here's the crux: people are concerned not just about the redistribution of software, but also (and mainly) about the production of software - that users of open source contribute to the community, fix bugs, include documentation, etc. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Emergence of Open-Source Software in North America
Good overview of the development of open source and open source projects in support of learning in North America (though I think there are many more projects than suggested by the table in the middle of the article). More articles from the current issue of IRRODL are now available online. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Open Educational Resources Declaration and Info
To judge from the email I received today from OER Commons, the focus for the Cape Town Declaration is marketing, not discussion. Yes, the push is on to collect signatures and (in my view) to preempt actual community-wide consultation. Meanwhile, Ignatia asks the organizers, "Where is the diversity? I was surprised that the initiative did not include more diversity in the platform of people?" And, "why not open up the declaration to learners around the world to add their remarks to make it stronger? The fact that feedback is possible is already great, it would be nice if this feedback would be open as a public discussion forum." Indeed, instead of the marketing push, why not back off the PR program for a bit and ask whether this is something the community actually wants. More...