Open Content

It's Open Content week on Introduction to Open Education with David Wiley (well, it was Open Content week a while back, but I just got to it!) This week, at least compared to the previous two weeks, there was little reading and materials (perhaps this is a good week to work on the Research Badge, eh? ;-)  ) and, at least for me, I think I have come across these materials before in Change11 and perhaps CCK11. David talked a bit about Open Content during Change 11 Week 5.

It is a pretty interesting concept, his open content idea pre-dates creative commons, and I think he was glad someone took charge of the legalese and made the concept happen. It was also nice to have someone openly discuss the fact that they didn't so so well in their initial try.  Failure seems to have a negative connotation in our society, even if iteratively we end up working things out in the end.

One of the things that holds great promise, for me anyway, is the open textbook concept.  Small OERs are nice (and we will get to them in this course, eventually) but I do like the idea of an open textbook that you can use, contribute to, and edit as needed for your course; all of this without having to worry about costly "course packets." When I was still in classes, course packets would cost as much as books, just to get a chapter from here, a chapter from there, and a case from somewhere else.  At least with open textbooks quality, work can be available for free (both in the Beer and the Speech sense) if you just want an electronic version.




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