Cory Doctorow on open education

I recently wrote a few questions for Cory Doctorow, for a video message for the European Schoolnet International Symposium for ICT in Education Networks. Take a look!

Open education: the US got there first!

Publicly-funded institutions "that expend more than $10,000,000 in a fiscal year on scientific education and outreach shall use at least 2 percent of such funds for the collaboration on the development and implementation of open source materials as an educational outreach effort" reports David Wiley (via Stephen Downes).

This is really fantastic news: in fact, it was one of the recommendations resulting from the run of the UNESCO/OECD Open Educational Resources discussion that I moderated some time ago.

So why doesn't the EU do the same? It would be so easy to make that part of the 7th Framework Programme research funding or the Lifelong Learning Programme, by including it in the contractual requirements, or at the very least in the award criteria for selecting projects for funding. It's unfortunate that the EU research programme - although funding research in this area - doesn't grab the issue by the horns.

On the other hand, they have recognised that the web is an equivalent 'right' to schooling, which is quite a victory.

Image credit: mag3737

LeMill - European community of learning resources growing

Via FLOSSE Posse I heard that LeMill, the European community of learning resources has now reached 2,000 members.

Interestingly, Teemu states 'The growth is not created by the citizens of the wealthy "old Europe" (France, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, etc.) but by the new Europe: the Baltic countries and the Eastern European countries."

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Hans’ and Tarmo’s LeMill presentation for Czech teachers in Brno, Czech Republic on February 7th 2008.

Teemu's statement mirrors what I observe in educational projects run by European Schoolnet. Teachers from the new member states are keen to try new approaches and get involved in international learning communities. The 'old' member states seem much more limited to monolinguist online communities - i.e. communities of German-speaking, English-speaking or French-speaking educators.

Open Educational Resources: new eBook from OECD

OECD has just published a new book, called "Giving Knowledge Away for Free", and has made it available as a free eBook. OECD wrote "Learning resources are often considered key intellectual property in a competitive higher education world. However, more and more institutions and individuals are sharing their digital learning resources over the Internet, openly and for free, as Open Educational Resources (OER). This study, building on previous OECD work on e-learning, asks why this is happening, who is involved and what the most important implications of this development are."

You can download the free PDF or buy the print version from the OECD bookshop.