Tom's Two Cents

It seems every time I turn around a new consortium has popped up somewhere on the Open Education landscape. While I see the value of like-minded folks coming together to compare notes, discuss interoperability, etc, I have to wonder if many of them couldn’t operate just as well as chapters or SIGs of an existing consortium. This would offer many of the same advantages, including 501c3 US non-profit status, without all overhead of being a completely separate entity. If one of the reasons for forming a consortium is advocacy won’t fewer, larger consortia tend to wield a greater influence on legislators and policy makers? It might also allow for lower membership fees, if fees are necessary.

The question of membership fees is a tricky one. The Connexions Consortium and the OCW Consortium are still working on how to add value for members. Some newer members have suggested that discounts on consulting services would make membership fees worthwhile, and some even indicated being willing to pay 10x the current fee in this case.

Since non-members can attend the same conferences as members, what motivates newcomers to pay for joining a consortium? Voting rights? Bragging rights? It was different when it was free, but now there has to be something more. If we can’t think of a better way to attract paid consortium memberships, perhaps the membership fees should be required to attend conferences. This is standard practice for many academic conferences, but no one wants to alienate anyone in the Open Education space — a space defined by its openness, after all.

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Openness connexions, consortium, cxn2010, OCW

Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader runs Android! (gotta love the name… “Nook e-book” is every bit as good as the Wii for puns and jokes!) I’m not surprised to see that Nook is powered by Android, especially after running across a dual boot Android/XP netbook and a “dualbook” (part e-reader, part Android netbook) called the enTourage eDGe. The Android operating system is definitely designed for more than just cellphones. It’s an OS for mobile devices.

So while I understand there are limitations with the refresh rate of the E-Ink display, it’s hard not to get carried away thinking about the possibilities. I’ll be honest, I was not really interested in the Nook until I heard it will run Android. That changed everything. So while some complain that Nook would be great if it only had text-to-speech or a web browser, I don’t really care about the current features anymore. (Yes, their e-books are overpriced.) Someone is going to hack this thing, and that will be the point at which it becomes amazing and irresistible. Let me put it this way: 10-inch screen+wifi+micro-sd slot+color touchscreen+Android+root=Awesomeness!

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Android, Gadgets, Openness, Rants Android, e-book reader, e-reader, nook

Eight weeks after enrolling in a course at Peer2Peer University, I turned in my final assignment today and paused to reflect. For a first pass, I felt the organization of the Copyright for Educators course was very good. The content was interesting and to the point. Participants were organized into groups based on their location, something that makes sense when dealing with regional differences in copyright. And although I was placed in a group with North American colleagues, I was still exposed to enough international copyright concepts.

The structure of the CE course was fairly straightforward. Activities were spread out over six weeks, with readings and a case study for each week. Groups were responsible for self-organizing and responding to the case study each week, as well as grading and commenting on the work of the other groups. The final week consisted of creating a case study of our own, along with an answer to that case study. I subsequently found out that these will be adapted and used in future sections of the CE course. A very clever, sustainable course design, I must say!

Work was meant to be done in groups, and each group was given a wiki page to work out the case study and a blog to post their final answers. A course chat was also provided, but organizing a weekly chat didn’t work well for my group so we abandoned it after the first week. Instead we used long email threads to push ideas back and forth. (I think the course administrators expected to harvest some ideas and feedback from the chat logs, so I got permission from my group and sent them our email threads.) The number of emails seemed to annoy one of our group members, who quickly dropped out. Perhaps an asynchronous discussion board would be more useful in future courses, given the busy schedules most people keep and some people’s apparent aversion to receiving lots of email. (I get about a hundred a day… I helps me feel loved

While there wasn’t much interaction with the admins, I don’t really think that was the point. After all, I assume it was called Peer2Peer for a reason. The admins did a nice job of setting things in motion, clarifying topics, adjusting groups and deadlines, etc. Their response times varied, but generally I think they were on top of things. I assume they have just as many outside activities going on as the course participants — if not more.

One thing that took everyone by surprise was the attrition within groups. By the third week our 6-person group was down to three, and soon that became two. But two is enough to provide for interaction, and I worked with an excellent partner. I suppose 50% or higher attrition shouldn’t come as a surprise when you are dealing with busy professionals who are learning for the sake of learning. Reality tends to interfere with such pure motives. Well, almost pure. I was able to arrange independent study credit as part of my PhD program of study, so I had some additional motivation to keep going. Had I ended up alone in my group the experience would have been totally different, but with at least one person to consult the experience was quite satisfying.

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Openness, Reviews, eLearning

Photography has been a hobby of mine for a long time. From developing the old black and white photos in my basement darkroom to today’s tiny digital cameras. One of the things that is much easier with digital images is sharing. Uploading photos to a site like Flickr makes sharing photos with family and friends very easy. I used to email photos to friends, but now they can go to my Flickr page and view them whenever they want. It changes sharing from a “push” to a “pull” technology. People can set up notifications or use RSS if they want to know when new content becomes available. I also have it set up to put a little blurb on Facebook when I add new photos to Flickr.

I also like seeing the different ways my amateur photography gets reused by others. For example, one of my photos of the Crab Cooker restaurant in Newport Beach, CA was reused on Wikipedia. Two other images were used on a travel site called Schmap.com. But my favorite reuse photo is one showing a row of three identical houses, all for sale in my old neighborhood in Redlands, California. It really captures the essence of housing crisis, and it has been reused in at least five different places.

Reuse & Reputation: Can they be tracked?

They say the more you give the more you get. (They also say that all you need is love, but that’s another topic.) While my photo sharing isn’t likely to generate anything more than a simple satisfaction of being appreciated, it has implications for reuse in other areas as well. Openness can pave the way for increased reputation in your profession just as easily as in your hobbies. But how do you know if you are making progress? Tracking reuse can be fairly simple if you have a fairly unique username. I have set up a Google Alert to crawl the web and notify me anytime my Flickr username (caswell_tom) pops up somewhere. Of course, this won’t track reuse in print or on password protected web pages, but it’s a start. As my collection grows I keep track by adding a “reused” tag to each of the photos. I also add a comment on my image with the URL where the photo was reused. Flickr makes adding tags and comments to your photos very easy. Here is what I have so far.

Does greater openness = greater reuse?

I have learned that unique of obscure photos get reused far more than common ones. And while greater openness does not necessarily translate to greater reuse, I have noticed that people started reusing my photos around the same time I assigned an Attribution-only Creative Commons license to all my photos. It’s just anecdotal, but I didn’t not have any cases of reuse until I made the change from CC-BY-NC to CC-BY. It seems logical that a less restricted license would be more appealing to an online journal, magazine, or other site. Of course, adding metadata also helps. I usually add a few descriptive tags to my best photos. But just as important is my willingness to open up my CC license by only asking for attribution without adding a bunch of other conditions that make reusers nervous. The truth is, I really don’t care if people use my photos commercially. And the odds of them being used for something really offensive approaches zero.

I collect reuse like some people collect coins. I think it’s fun to see what happens with them. You never know where they might end up. If you have your own story of tracking reuse, please share!

UPDATE: I just found out that my friend, Julià Minguillón from Barcelona does the same thing! He posts all the places his photos have been reused to delicious, and he has over 160 cases of reuse. Wow!

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How To's, Openness, Web 2.0 copyright, Creative Commons, flickr, license, Openness, Reuse, tracking