5.1 Wikieducator: memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic  (Page 8/21)

I hope you will help us.

Comments

1. ken udas - april 5th, 2007 at 4:53 am

Wayne, WOW this is such an interesting posting that I hardly know where to start. As I read through your reflections and assertions dozens of questions rose to the surface. This being the case, I am going to start with a very general observation and question, but I also want to invite others to respond to Wayne’s posting and to the comments (like this one) that are also posted.

Observation: Clearly, as I read your posting I see a strong relationship developing between Open Source Software (OSS) and Open Educational Resources (OER). I believe that as this series progresses some of those relationships and connections will be reinforced, refined, and challenged. I am actually very happy to see OSS and OER being treated together, but feel then that it is important that we understand the relationships and, as importantly, what impact they have on education.

Question: I have the sneaking suspicion that the really important touchstones between OSS and OER are not so much with the code or content, but more with the nature of the rules around distribution – that is the level of “Freedom” that is conferred to individuals and organizations that can potentially use and benefit from the assets (physical assets as well as the development of community). So, what do you think are the characteristics that allow us to talk about OSS and OER at the same time, what can the OSS and OER communities learn from each other, and how do both OS and OER impact on education?

I know that these questions are large, but perhaps the responses do not need to be.

2. richardwyles - april 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am

Fantastic read thank-you Wayne. I’m not going to pick up the cudgels (too much ;-) on any of it really but will offer some personal observations as we’ve known of our respective efforts well these past few years. I’ll restrict my comments to wikis and LMSs as application technologies.

I remember many a conversation on the limitations of LMS and it’s something that Ken and I used to discuss a lot in the earlier days of NZOSVLE. I’ve always simplified the construct of an LMS to being analogous to a classroom environment. We wanted to include spaces for informal learning analogous to social learning on a campus. Early efforts were with trying to create this space (we called it a learning portal) with a system called TikiWiki that would have single-sign-on. This was in early 2005 but it seems ages ago. In short, we failed - too few resources and really we were grappling with trying to mash together disparate systems that were like apples and oranges. Changing direction, we developed MyMoodle and the ability for a learner to set up a community space within the LMS. But this is still under the umbrella notion of an institutional LMS though which I agree tends to reflect the focus on administration and was an unsatisfactory answer. Hence Mahara which is a first stage attempt at a PLE. This thinking is also a driver behind Moodle Networks and the Web Services API we’ve recently developed.