Issues lurking behind the open door

On the surface, the principle of open learning resources sounds attractive.  It supports the notions of personal and collective development, open communal ownership etc.
However before I jump on the suspicious sociologist part of me wants to start asking the 'but why' questions that are lurking behind the door.

• Who benefits and who looses in an OLR environment?
• Is the notion of 'ownership' simply being hidden behind a new disguise?
• Will this really assist development in under developed nations?
• Is this a western social construct that needs to be examined and pulled apart from an alternative cultural construct which does not give and receive value on the same basis
• Who determines the value of the principle

So I am cautiously excited at the new ideas while still being suspicious about identifying the traps.

I appreciate and value the collective blogs which open up the critical debate to stimulate both myn and others thinking.

First reflection

I am new to elearning.  I found it really confusing to get everything organised including a blog site, a twitter account and to navigate around the course dashboard.  The fear was based on losing my way and not being able to find my way back.  Thank goodness for the go back button which made things slow and laborious but helped with the familiarisation and practice issues.

I am over 60 and have done lots of study and formal learning so that’s 50 years of writing in margins, highlighting, making coded notations ect.  All hardcopy, durable, tracking and memory prompts that leave me in my control.  

E learning is scary because you have to let go and change your tried and true learning methods.  Transferring  learning skills and methods into a computer via a screen where you are not sure you can find stuff again is unnerving.  As I sit here I look at the key notes I have still written down beside me.  Things that I want to think through, web addresses for the course, blog, twitter ect, to say nothing of my humungeous list of user names and passwords. 

And all this without even confronting how little I know of the jargon, concepts, definitions and meanings of things like public domain, creative commons licenses and copyright.

The great thing about seeing other peoples comments is that I am not alone.  This gives me courage, so thanks to all those honest people who are happy to share their fears.

Copyright case study

#OCL4Ed

My head was swimming with new information when I got to the case study and I got lots of questions wrong the first time through.  The process of learning i.ee being able to open all the options as I went and think through the responses given was a positive one.   

Some of the questions posed, that resulted in a ‘depends’ style a  frustrated me. They were framed as correct or incorrect questions, but aside from that it was a good formative assessment process.  I found that when I went back to the case study questions a few hours later, having done some reflection and discussion with others, I got most of them right. (this may, of course be because I simply remembered the correct answers ??)

The case study question covered lots of relevant access/use issues educators face on a daily basis.

 I have discovered how little I know about copyright and licensing and was able to identify and confront lots of the myths I held regarding both. It appears complicated because it’s new ( jargon and terminology) however once the concepts are understood I think I can identify some of the underlying questions and issues, especially the ethical ones of ownership, access, rights etc which emerged in a healthy debate in the office today.

One of the new learnings was regarding the use of images, photos etc.  I hadn’t thought about who owns the rights and at what point, and I still find it intriguing.   The ethical issues of justice vs law emerged in our office debate.

So the case study was great, well thought out with lots of complexity. Loved the fact that I could redo the questions to confirm my improved understanding.

Nervously waiting

I'm up and ready to start the course' Open content licensing for educators'.  I only hope I have got the registration and blog creation right.  I guess if I don't hear anything in the next 12 hours I'll know theres a problem with what I've done.