7.1 Floss, oer, equality and digital inclusion  (Page 8/10)

Re: the virtuous cycle you described:

The chain might well work. It reminds me of what sounded to me like an empassioned plea from Larry Lessig at Wikimania last year: to demonstrate the benefits ofcbpp, sharing of knowledge and a read-write Internet to society in areas beyond Wikipedia. Efforts in the education space (such as Wikieducator, LeMill, Connexions, Wikiversity,Educommons, OCW, etc.) may turn out to be particiularly significant in this regard.

Some education systems are moving in compatible directions. In South Africa there has been a move towards “outcomes-based education (andtraining)” - OBE(T). (External Link)&menu=docspol

One would assume that once the required outcomes are defined, there is some freedom permitted in the approach to achieving those objectives. The materials producedin this process are released to the public domain. However, the process seems bogged down in bureaucracy and the complexities of gaining approval from SAQA. It has also proved difficultto convince educators to change their ways towards becoming facilitators of technology assisted learning (rather than fountains of knowledge).

The Thutong portal (External Link) is becoming “freedom-friendly” by including a meta-data field for the license of learning objects along with a host of others toenable effective search. It is not a wiki environment however, and cbpp is not yet accommodated within the portal itself.

The (world-wide) challenge is to go ahead and create learning resources which embed cbpp among the learning activities, encourage wide use of the resources and theapproach, to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness. In a Wiki environment (e.g. Wikieducator, Wikiversity, etc.) this is likely to be almost automatic.

Another question that arises is “How do we integrate software development into this process?”

Not everyone can or desires to develop software. I recall learning a lot about ecological processes through modelling. At the time, we mostly used spreadsheets and theprogrammers in the class were happy to share their knowledge in exchange for ecological insights. Together we produced models which seemed plausible. Although these models were notcapable of quantitative prediction, they did illustrate the effects of variables on the systems under investigation, and helped us understand the processes. The key to this is eitherdeskilling software development, or collaboration across disciplines. Raise awareness among FLOSS developers of the needs in education and encourage them to work with educators andlearners. This is a good way to demonstrate the value of shared knowledge in problem solving.

[A project I encountered some time ago intended to do something similar for non-profit organisations, though it seems more general now: (External Link) ]

One of the take-home messages from the modelling exercise above was that the real value of modelling is in the learning and insight gained through the modellingprocess (i.e. as opposed to the models produced or their qualitative predictions).