Hiding in the Open #OER17 Keynote
Maha Bali describes herself as “open and connected educator, learnaholic and writeaholic” and you can find her on Twitter and at her blog.
Maha has modelled openness in the development of her keynote by blogging for ideas, sharing her slides in advance and adopting an inclusive approach through the process.
Josie Fraser introduced Maha as an open educator who models and personifies open educational practice.
Maha started by asking the audience to share how many OERs they had produced – quite a variety.
She then asked a series of questions that highlighted (without being too explicit) how openness might benefit, followed by a ‘meet your neighbour’ activity.
Maha used the Little Miss Helpful book to highlight the nature of ‘helping’ and how the helped relate to it – does the person on crutches want you to open the door for them? and does the beggar with no teeth appreciate the apple she is given. Maha and a member of the audience discussed the nature of intentions – whether we nurture our intentions properly, whether they include those we engage with.
Maha went on to discuss Education funding as ‘foreign aid’, an interesting analogy.
You try to ‘fix the shirt but spoil the trousers’. Your intentions are good but what you help spoils something else. Maha included stories shared by others.
Christian Friedrich shared his stories about trying to help refugees and the unanticipated problems that arose.
Aleks Tarkowski talked about Creative Commons Licenses and the complexity and legal nature created mini-copyright police.
Maha then went on to talk about curriculum and how the hidden curriculum and the power relations that lie behind open relations in Egyptian HE.
People with less privilege may have a different experience (and fears) of using CC0 compared with the more powerful.
Maha looked at curriculum as content , using example of SOAS students who challenged a white privileged curriculum.
SHe also gave the example of the 2 versions of the 6 Day war in 1973 on English and Arabic wikipedia – same ‘facts’, different interpretation.
She compared cMOOCs and xMOOCs , usually in English, with Edraak a MOOC written in Arabic.
Maha went on to speak about Virtually Connecting that includes people who can’t be at the conference and to encourage face to face delegates to take away some of their experiences for the benefit of those who weren’t there.
You can watch the recording of the keynote here.
[I promised to live blog the keynotes for OER17 as I had for OER16 but my method depended on pictures from my phone being pulled through to flickr. The wifi at the venue wasn’t up to this so the post is a combination of live and edited.]
