Frances Bell’s Blog

Madonna - Voices

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I have been reading the discussion on openness with great interest, and I wanted to capture a few of the thoughts the discussion has triggered for me.

Meanings

There seems to be some reluctance to pin down the meaning of the word open, George Siemens seeing it a word whose meaning has become lost through abuse, Dave Cormier seeing openness as too Zen for definition whereas David Wiley argues for more precision of the context of use of the adjective open - content, software - to which I would add services and standards.

What I took from George’s post was a plea for ideology rather than pragmatism, so that the vision may be be preserved for longer. Reaching for my dictionary (and ignoring the reluctance to pin down terms), I judged that George’s view of ideology leant more to “speculation that is imaginary or visionary” rather than “body of ideas that reflects the beliefs of a nation, political system, class, etc.”  I can see that the visionary is an important landmark when pragmatism may be watering down the flavour of the change.  However, the term ideal (also mentioned by David Wiley) “pattern or model, esp. of ethical behaviour” seems to me to be a productive and unifying concept for this discussion.  Patterns of behaviour are a productive topic for discussion about education which is about what we do as well as what we share as reifications in texts, web sites, etc.

Actions

Technology-enabled change can/will happen in societies where education is more and less available.  In the former, I would like to see any change preserve the quality of educational experiences whilst extending its reach; and in the latter, I would like to see new models explored where developing countries can influence technology, the means of publication and contribute to knowledge from their unique perspective of growing their education systems in a new socio-technical environment  e.g. massive use of mobile phone access to Internet in Africa and using OER to support teachers not necessarily replace them

Jim Groom makes a good case for grass roots innovation, the delicious and immediate change that can happen when practitioners take control.

Open Minds and mouths

So what does this mean for the discussion about openness?

• Ideology can help to spice up the discussion about openness - the Stallmans and the Downes’s make us think and keep us on our toes as long as we don’t rely on them for life prescriptions
• Ideals can provide a common ground for dialogue and change - although we may not share underlying religious/ moral frameworks, we can share more general aspirations such as universal education
• The table for discussion about openness and change should remain available for long as possible, and we shouldn’t try to close down discussion whilst the most significant beneficiaries haven’t even seen the table.  We need to hear what they have to say - how do those deprived of education lend their voice to a dialogue of change?  Let them open their mouths whilst others open their minds.
• To me, ideology may be provocative but is too sure of itself - where’s the room for manoeuvre?
• Let’s think about modes of expression (including definitions perhaps) that promote inclusive dialogue and allow us to nudge change as it happens, since we are unlikely to get it right ahead of time.

I realised that I haven’t even mentioned commerce but I’ll have to leave that for another post, or you could read my Edupunk post to get a flavour of my views here

“I do think we need hard-nosed critique of commercialism around all areas of educational technology not just monopolistic providers of Virtual Learning Environments like Blackboard.  What Tom Woodward called Client Enslavement is also called Supplier lock-in, and that sacrifice of power can happen wherever monopolies prevail - with proprietary VLEs, with ‘free’ Web 2.0 services that are bought out in the game of Googlopoly, and even possibly with Open Source software.”

So to summarise, when we decide how to conduct the dialogue about openness, let’s think about how open our approach is:

• Who is taking part?
• Have we left the dialogue open?
• How open to change are we?

Definitions from Collins Concise Dictionary Plus.