open | Frances Bell

Personal is Political – a frame for thinking about Open Educational Practice

The OER17 Call for Contributions is about to be released but we already know something the theme of the 2017 conference, entitled The Politics of Open, chaired by Josie Fraser and Alek Tarkowski. OER16 was my first OER conference and I loved its friendly atmosphere, and of course I learned a lot too. The theme…

#OER16 Can we imagine tech Infrastructure as an Open Educational Resource? Or, Clouds, Containers, and APIs, Oh My!

Jim Groom kicked off his keynote by saying that he intended not to talk about DS106 but then acknowledged it was his life. His next confession was that he didn’t do any OER and felt alienated from American model of using Open to lower costs of textbooks, meanwhile diverting funding away from public education. Jim…

#OER16 Open Education Special Interest Group OESIG

ALT host the OESIG #openedsig (but you don’t have to be a member of ALT to join). Viv Rolfe @vivienrolfe opened up the discussion. It was suggested that OESIG join forces with #OERHub and collate and curate existing resources; and promote http://wikieducator.org/GoOPEN for use and development. Archivist advised use of open software that allowed for…

Web Today, Gone Tomorrow: How can we ensure continuing access to OERs? #OER16

This panel from Vivien Rolfe, David Kernohan, Lorna Campbell, Pat Lockley, Simon Thompson and Leo Havemann explored in different ways how OERs can be sustained. The panel kicked off with a video from Pat Lockley @patlockley, in character as Alex from Clockwork Orange moving on to the decline of OER production, access and use as…

If ‘open’ is the answer, what is the question? #OER16

Catherine Cronin’s keynote was the first session at the OER16 conference and was live streamed with a video recording here in case you missed it, and an audio recording here, if you like to multi-task. Catherine started a conversation around the subject of the keynote more than a month before at her blog and #OER16…

Cycling between private and public in researching Rhizo14

Our first paper Rhizo14: A Rhizomatic Learning cMOOC in Sunlight and in Shade from the research we conducted at Rhizo14 was published last week at Open Praxis. We would love you to read it and respond. One of the themes that has engaged us in the research process is the delicate dance between the private…

Ethics and soft boundaries between Facebook groups and other web services

As part of a MOOC on rhizomatic learning that performs itself in many different spaces (Facebook, P2PU, G+, Twitter and others), I am a member of an ‘open’ Facebook group. It is endlessly fascinating, and has given me a lot of scope for reflection about back channels and the exchange of information between open and…

Open Access is a piece for cake for Research in Learning Technology

Research in Learning Technology , the journal for the Association for Learning Technology, is going Open Access from January 2012 (with Rhona Sharpe, I am co-editor of the journal). ALT’s plans for Open Access publishing have developed over several years, and we are very keen that this move can extend the impact of the journal…

What can’t we say? What don’t we say?

At our ALT-C 2011 Symposium tomorrow The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Josie Fraser, Helen Keegan Richard Hall and I will speak briefly about different aspects of openness and online in relation to education and learning, in order to open up discussion amongst participants. We are also keen to extend dialogue beyond the conference…