Scott Leslie On Open Content
2 min read
For those of you interested in open content, Scott Leslie has a great series of posts on the subject.
Set aside a few hours, read these posts, and follow the links. Scott has assembled some incredibly useful resources and insights.
Your Favourite Open Textbook Examples?
- this post has some great links to resources that have been collected on open content.
A Day in the life of an “OER Librarianâ€
Still, what it is showing me is the possibilities of some hybrids; I can foresee a dynamic approach, supported by any number of systems (a wiki might work well) in which, say, a course description and basic outline is first shared, and various content found at that level by someone with some search expertise, and then both the course units and corresponding searches iterated by instructor/subject matter expert and “oer librarian.†If done in something that allowed for easy “clipping†and republishing of collected work into a new textbook, this iterated approach could go a long way to the creation of a new text that worked at all the levels of granularity it needed to.
The Moving Target of Open “Textbooksâ€
as important as cost is as a motivator, we frame the discussion about openness and open textbooks as being primarily or solely about cost savings at our peril. Free beer is of little solace when it’s served to those who’ve lost the actual freedoms they’ve struggled to win.
Open Textbook Authoring Tools Part 1 – Mediawiki
- a review of Mediawiki, extended as used in WikiEducator.
So I’m left thinking there is some real potential here that I want to pursue. I know there is technical work still to do. The bigger challenge, one that I’m not sure is surmountable, is the cultural chasm between the cult of authority in higher ed and the messy give and take that is a vibrant, collaborative wiki. It may well be that this is an approach that anticipates future potential benefits too highly over current realities of practice.
