May
19
2008
Opening up Education
Posted by: Zach in Semantic Web, interesting, tags: abstract, Education, ideas, interesting, Semantic Web, semanticsI just watched this talk by Richard Baraniuk (link if embed doesn’t work), about opening up access to educational text and information. One of the most amazing ideas from his talk and the project they’re working on (Connections) is open-sourced text books.
The idea is that collaborative text-books, published on-demand could answer more questions and provide a better, more tailored resource to students and teachers. If educational resources are produced with granularity (i.e. like ‘Lego’ blocks which can be reused at a small level) they can be used and reused in a variety of novel and unpredicted ways.
Have a look and let me know what you think!
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Zach,
Interesting that you just blogged about this. I just sent out an email this morning about utilizing open source resources. As you know, open source software has been around for quite awhile. On the other hand, open source resources and text is relatively new– and in my mind brilliant.
Textbooks are ridiculously expensive. The average for high school textbooks has got to be approaching $60 USD. Given it takes at least a couple of years to get a textbook out of production/testing and into students hands, and given that a textbook is used for 7 or more years on an average curriculum cycle, the paper textbook is over a decade old when finally retired. That means that the information in it is quite outdated. Think about what happens in Science or even Geography over a decade!
Open source text takes the whole idea of learning up to date and relevant material to a new level– it is updated as needed, production cost is much less expensive, and the ecological benefits go without saying.
MIT is leading the way with open source (OPENCOURSEWARE)– check it out at: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
California is looking at using open resources in their schools as well: http://www.opensourcetext.org
And, check out Open Educational Resources at http://www.oercommons.org. and http://www.curriki.org (an open source resource for teachers that combines open source with Wikis).
This could be a very good and advancing development for education!
Take care!
Jim
Thanks, Jim!
Talis is moving in the direction of opening-up education, and is interested in seeing the open-course type model explored. The Semantic Web could bring huge benefit, and software built using open principles and semantically-enriched data models could see a sea-change in the way education takes place. Imagine a course where a teacher is no longer seen as the ‘provider’ or ‘gateway’ to information; but, rather, takes on more of the role of a guide.
Students, thanks to the web, have had the opportunity to ‘Google’ any fact they question, and the Semantic Web is making this information easier to find and utilise. Combining the empowering possibilities of the Semantic Web with open-access education and more of a ‘commons’ approach (http://www.creativecommons.org) to information use and reuse could allow every school or university to have instant access to the best material in any subject.
I’d be very much interested in your perspective on this, as a head teacher (the UK equivalent of Principle). I’ll probably send you an email to see what you think…
Cheers again,
-Z