I just watched the presentation Brian Lamb (University of British Columbia) gave at the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange yesterday at Utah Valley University. t was title The Urgency of Open Education. You can view the actual presentation here, and you can view the presentation outline here. I wanted to write a few notes on my blog today about that presentation. Brian talks a bit about the "social media" environment that we all find ourselves in today. It seems that everyone I read or follow is trying to come to terms with what it all means, and how it can best be used. Everyone seems to indicate that social media is a big deal, and I agree, but no one seems to know exactly where it is going. I suppose that is one of the things that makes it so exciting. Anyway, Brian talks in his presentation about how, at a base level, social media boils down to participation. He shows the Obama in Berlin photograph, and asks the question "Why is everyone taking a picture?" His point was this. Did everyone really NEED to take a picture? Were they afraid that the moment would not be adequately captured on film? No. People want theirs. Taking a photo says "It's Mine. I did it. I was there." Brian also said something that I found interesting. He said that the photgraph taking was almost a greeting or a social welcoming of Obama. If it was a welcoming I don't think it was conscious on the part of the crowd. They obviously wanted to capture the moment for themselves, and they were obviously excited, so I guess in that way it was positive and flattering. It wasn't a negative from Obama's perspective. It was, in fact positive in that regard, so I guess it was welcoming afterall. I liked what Brian said about the big positive of the web. He said that he, Chris Lott, and Scott Leslie were talking about all the negtives of the web - at times vulgar, reinforces short attention spans, hard to find fact or truth - however one thing it is not is passive. It promotes participation, and in that way it may be taking us back to something that we lost in the 20th Century. He called back to a time before movie theatres, radio and television when people participated more in their culture. The example he chose was music - If a person wanted music pre-twentieth century then that person had to learn how to play or know people that could play. The act of enjoying music was social and participatory. Lamb referred to an Aldous Huxley quote about passive entertainment . Huxley is quoted as saying:
"In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.”
The web may be in the process of returning the ability to easily participate and contribute back to the masses - valid point, I think. From the perspective of an educator I can say this. We are constantly trying to get students to create meaning rather than memorize and regurgitate. Participation and contribution are key to that effort.
I liked what Lamb said about New Media Literacy and Traditional Literacy. He said that Traditional Literacy is not obsolete. It is a foundation upon which New Media Literacy is built. I would add that it is impossible to build new media literacies without traditional literacy. In my observation I have noticed that when students don't possess basic literacy skills the web just turns into a fancy television. At that level the user is still no more than a conumer.
Brian referred to a personal story where he was invited to Barcelona to help with a project. Once he was involved it was apparent to him that he was in over his head from a technical perspective, and seemed to panic a bit. Afterall the folks in Barcelona had invested quite a bit of time and money into his participation. What did he do? He turned to his network. He began blogging about his dilemma, and his readers began making suggestions, and pointing him in the right direction. I can imagine that this was a humbling yet wonderful experience. He was able to reach out to a community of people that he has been serving in a way and ask them for help, and what happened? They came to his aid. I loved what he said about not having to be the smartest guy in the room on your blog. He said that the posts that have been most valuable to him were those where he explores areas that he doesn't know well. He posts what he does know and then lists the questions that he has. It sparks discussion among his readers and everyone learns together.
In his conclusion he talks Bruce Sterling's comment that "Broadband eats everything." What is it eating right now - music industry, newspapers, tv and film making. Lamb argues that it is coming to education. These other industries were relatively slow to embrace the new business models of the web, and they are suffering. He lists examples of how it is already affecting education - textbooks on Pirate Bay or BitTorrent. He says it's only a matter of time before we see pirates textbooks on the Kindle or other eReaders.
Toward the end of the presentation Lamb began to tie things together and explain why educators should urgently embrace open models. Lamb said, "When copies become super-abundant they become worthless. When copies become super-abundant then things that can't be copied become scarce and valuable." This caused me to think about Michael Wesch at Kansas Sate University and the types of experiences he helps create for his Anthropology students. Click here to see a presentation by Wesch. The types of things he does cannot be copied like a text can be copied. The type of experience for students that he provides will continue to be valuable in an Open Education environment. Lamb ended by saying that universities and colleges were created at a time when information was scarce, and those institutions should discontinue practices baed on information scarcity.
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