5.1 Wikieducator: memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic

We’re living in exciting times! The free culture , mass collaboration , and self organisation are transforming traditional models of society and the economy in fundamental ways. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I’m confident that the convergence among these forces combined with the shifts from organisational hierarchy to the individual will help us find the answers together. Finding the answers, holds huge promise for radically advancing access to education and knowledge. I use radical in the original sense of the word referring to the radix or root of fundamental change as opposed to revolutionary change.

This is a post about freedom and how it can support education as a common good. If you suffer from hypertension best to read this post under parental guidance. Now that I’ve cleared the health warnings, I want to move onto the more important stuff.

‘’In education, if you give knowledge away freely - you will still have it for yourself to use.'’

This is why Sir John Daniel of the Commonwealth of Learning ( COL ) argues that education will not suffer the tragedy of the commons.

An overview

WikiEducator is working with others in the freedom culture to develop a free version of the entire education curriculum by 2015. It’s an ambitious target riddled with complexity, but the importance of our work is underscored by our vision to turn the digital divide into digital dividends using free content and open networks.

I want to set the context with a short history of WikiEducator and its growth over the last year. With particular reference to free cultural works , I will reflect on two academic myths associated with our industrial models of education, clear up a few misrepresentations where things I have said are sometimes used out of context, but more importantly try to capture some of the magic I have experienced being part of the WikiEducator free content community. This is the magic that will turn the divide into dividends — magic which is produced through self organisation and mass collaboration.

Rationale for the post

Ken’s invitation to post a contribution for the OSS series covering the impact of free software in education couldn’t have come at a better time. We’re preparing to celebrate the first birthday of WikiEducator . This OSS series is an appropriate forum to reflect on Wikieducator’s beginnings because we:

• use free software (in particular, Mediawiki , the same engine used for Wikipedia’s online encyclopedia);
• promote and advocate the use of free software in education; and
• our meaning of free content is derived from the experiences of the free software movement.

This post will reflect on some of my personal experiences in founding the site and its potential contribution to widening access to education in meaningful ways. If anything, I hope this reflection encourages constructive debate in building the value proposition for why we need to support free content production in preservation of the educational values that should underpin our knowledge practice.