Opened, week 7

Preamble: (skip it if you don’t have much time or don’t want to read something not closely related to the course)

Well, a long time ago (three years ago more or less) I decided to jump in the great adventure of technologies for didactic purposes, thus I begun to search the internet and more to find out the instruments (yeah, instruments) that could help me in making my teaching methods improve in quality considering the main aim: to make lessons and school projects where students are more effectively involved, where they really create – where they do instead of only listening and repeating (in whatever way you may mean this).

Thus I decided to buy some server & database space paying it by myself.
I considered it a sort of professional engagement and development.
What I thought, and still think, is that whatever the “free” or “open” platform is, it might always happen that, some day, sooner or later, it won’t be anymore totally free, that the owners’ might charge me with some costs. Or, and this would be even worse, that the platform is considered as no more useful by the owner, and closed.
Imagine all the problems with the file/data transfer, and all the consequences…

The course, the questions:

Then, a lot after the preamble, came the course on openeducation and the OER and OCW and so on…
And then, week 7, the questions, the problems…
Well, I acknowledge that the first reaction was “yet another week of technicalities” about copy-right-left-something else.
So far so good, I begun to read and view – I also added some videos in italian language to the syllabus, so to help the italians’ group… and myself.
But couldn’t yet grasp the problem behind the questions given for the week.
Now, thanks to the rss feeder, I found that someone else (STIAN:
http://reganmian.net/blog/2007/10/08/opened-week-7/) had already “done the homeworks”.
His article was really interesting to me, helped me to re-read some passages. Peculiarly I focussed my attention

“As far as I understand, the reason to use CC NC is not primarily to prevent people from making money off material, but rather to avoid that open material is “re-appropriated” by commercial entities. In this case, I believe SA does provide sufficient “protection” by making sure that all “value added” is returned to the community.”

My dog and I
After all, I went out with my dog for a walk in the countryside (you know Tuscany is gorgeous in this season…).
Walking along a river, we arrived at a point where another small one departed, thus I decided to follow it, my dog preceding me.
We were in the full of a wonderful country-field, in the coming sunset, walking all quiet and away from computers, ©, CC and so on…
Then, in the distance, I saw that the path was leading directly into one house’s property. My dog and I decided to go on, and after a few meters we were in the middle of a private backyard, which wasn’t divided from the countryside from… NOTHING.
No signs that we were entering a private backyard, except for some human voices and an old garage.
I said “hello” to the men in the garage and went straight on to the opposite side of the property, exiting it.

The trespassing
While my dog and I were trespassing the chain at the opposite side and gained a public road, I wondered:
– Well, they would have been in their full rights, they could have told me to go back, or even… shot me in the worst case.
But they let me go through and beyond.
After all, I didn’t diminish their property by passing by.
And I could enjoy my walk in the warm sunset.

CC, SA, BY, bye bye…
I don’t have a clear answer for the questions we have been given this week.
Is this license maybe an answer? : “>http://learn.creativecommons.org/

My perception
The site I talked about in the preamble was based on moodle, which is open source. What’s better than open source?
But even open source can be used as closed software.
Digging in the page of moodle sites, I tried to access as many as possible in order to see what other people (mainly teachers) are doing with their pupils through moodle.
Well, what’s the result? The very most part of sites are “public” in the homepage, but when you try to access a single course, you are required a subscription (usual and maybe correct) and even a password, or you’re not allowed not even to see the material and lessons and so on.
I can understand that a company trying to make money can need to protect some courses – after all they’re living or trying to from it.
But a school? Or a college? To me, it sounds more or like if during my walk with the dog, the men had told us “ok, you can see the path but you need to tell us the password to go through… or go simply back your way home”.

see also the discussion about the topic in LTEver

oltre l’elearning: prima, decisamente prima….

Oltre l’elearning (era il nome del provocatorio, a ragione, blog di Gianni Marconato) mi ha spinto a girare nella rete cercando confronti e stimoli utili per la base della mia professione. Quello che ho trovato oggi (il nesso causale non è diretto, perchè ci sono arrivato dopo mesi di girovagazioni e quindi molto indirettamente) è un articolo di Ewan Mcintosh, che seguo da diverse settimane, ma oggi pubblica un suo riassunto di una conferenza tenuta via skype con docenti da diverse parti del mondo.
Ciò che mi colpisce, e che approfondirò, è la considerazione sui saperi (sarà il termine giusto?) che secondo lui/loro occorrono prima di mettersi a utilizzare, o anche solo discettare, di wiki, blog, podcasting eccetera (prima di usare il web 2.0.
Trovo (non nuovi) ma decisamente interessanti (non riesco a trovare un altro aggettivo mannaggia) i concetti che riprende in questa parte dell’articolo:

It’s easy to assume that all teachers have an equal understanding of educational jargon; we don’t. Blogs, wikis and podcasts might be unsavoury vocabulary for many educators, used as a way to escape having to learn new skills. What about assessment for learning, assessment as learning, inquiry skills, rich tasks, cooperative learning… For many educators these still remain meaningless jargon, but arguably are even more worthy of attention than blogs, wikis and podcasts. At least with the former, the latter begin to make sense.

e la triste considerazione che per gli educatori questi concetti rimangono un gergo senza senso….
mi riprometto di leggere a fondo i link indicati da Ewan, e di tradurre in italiano l’articolo per chi mastica poco l’inglese.

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/10/woman-of-web-20.html