Open_Ed Course Fall 2007

The reports of weeks 2, 3 and 4 provide an overview of the current situation and future developments in open digital resources and the OER movement, even though from different viewpoints.

The report about OECD (week 2) deals with the most important OER projects in the universities with particular attention to the American landscape, the report about the OLCOS Roadmap (week 3) looks at the educational landscape especially in the primary and secondary schools in a European perspective; the scope of the report of week 4 (A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement) is to review the most important projects in the OER portfolio with particular emphasis on the Education Program of the Hewlett Foundation, considered as a leader institution in nurturing the OER movement initiatives.

The authors aim at contributing to a transformation in educational practices that brings learning processes and their outcomes closer to what individuals will need to participate successfully in a dynamic "knowledge society", where an "open" culture is opposed to the "canned" content of the "industrial" school (OLCOS Roadmap). Large communities of practice should share, use and re-use digital content where only some rights are reserved (Creative Commons, e.g. Share Alike). I very much appreciated the report of week 3 (OLCOS Roadmap) because it is congenial and close to my professional position as an Italian high-school teacher.

However, new approaches to learning are not easily made, evaluated, financed and implemented. As far as my profession as a teacher is concerned, it is recommended that, in order to achieve these aims, we should change our teaching method towards a constructivist approach, and a bottom-up learning style should be adopted. This goal is not at all easy to achieve in our schools: for example, as regards my experience with our educational institutions  that promote teaching training in cooperative e-learning environments (INDIRE for example), a real "collaboration of teachers, researchers and students with the common purpose of developing open, reusable learning assets" (Giving knowledge for free, page 88) is still far to reach. I also tried to experiment Second Life (defined in report of week 4 as another "thread of  activity that will empower the OPLI initiative") with the idea of using it in my teaching practice. I have to say that, as far as my limited personal experience is concerned, I did not find any experiential learning environments, but just the repetition of the traditional teacher-centred lesson where the teacher explains and the students listen and try to learn… The virtual class was an exact copy of a traditional frontal lesson, with the difference that we hided behind the masks of avatars.

Another critical aspect is the total lack of incentives or a reward system for the teachers who decide to engage in these new activities. In Italy, mobile phones are totally banned from all kinds of school and the use of the Internet and ICT is not taken into much consideration in the new indications for teaching in Italian infant and primary schools. Rather, a return to the past is encouraged. Furthermore, the levelling down of our professional positions and careers is not motivating for many teachers, no wonder that in the latest OCSE report about education in Europe ("Education at a glance 2007"), Italy is placed in a negative position.

There is also the financial aspect to consider carefully: even if I agree on the idea that education should be open and free, it must be highlighted that this cannot mean that it should be always with no charge. I have always noted that if a course is free of charge from the students, their final achievements are worse than when they have to pay for some fees. Only if a learner is highly motivated by a possible reward in terms of professional career or future financial gains will he  be motivated even if he has nothing to pay for the course he wants to attend. Lessig is very clear on this point, but this issue will be discussed in the future assignments.

And here is the last and most important problem, the one of quality. In this ocean of educational materials offered here and there, I always choose the ones from the institutions I trust, for example a well known university. I would never learn from others without this trust because I do not feel self-confident enough to understand what is not good and what is better for me by myself.

Finally, the readings of these weeks have taught me or reinforced these key ideas that I’ll summarise in the following points:

1.      from cooperation does growth spring

2.      the way of learning has deeply changed with the advent of the ICT

3.      the way of making and producing culture has profoundly changed with the birth of the Internet, particularly with the web 2.0.

Should the educational institutions and teachers be blind and deaf to new stimuli offered by these new characteristics of the 21^st century society? I don’t think it would be a wise idea …