All posts by rrdaniel2

Open Participants, Syndicated

“Alas” and “Oh, well…” & what’s to come….

[736 words]

    Despite my best intentions, I was unable to get very far this year on the OpenLearning CMOOC/faculty collaborative. As interesting as it was, the activities began at a time when I was already committed to a number of other high-priority projects and duties, especially 1. completing my work teaching an online course (with a few students who has “incomplete” grades and needed extra attention from me, and time time to complete their work), 2. taking an online course where a major assignment was due at the end of March, and 3. presenting multiple papers at the NeMLA 2019 conference (program available by clicking the following URL: http://www.buffalo.edu/content/dam/www/nemla/NeMLA%202019/NeMLA%202019%20Convention%20Program.pdf) in the Washington DC area. It was way to much for me to handle. So, of course, the first thing to go was the least pressing, even if the most interesting, Gardner Campbell’s CMOOC. (I know that it was not, strictly speaking, “Gardner Campbell’s” but that’s how I think of it, since he is one of the originators of the professional development CMOOC course on open learning and inviting collective reflection on technology.)

    In spite of bailing out of the OpenLearning ’19 CMOOC, I continue to think about open learning, especially in the context of online education. What is more, I am as determined as ever to develop and run a free course on using target-language media resources in French to develop intercultural capability (or intercultural competence, if you prefer, or even intercultural communicative competence). Indeed, I think that this will be one of my major initiatives this year. I am also going to continue to explore openness as a general pedagogical concepts.

    That does not change a certain skepticism that I have relative to “open learning” in certain forms. One of the things that irks me is the existence of “openlearning.com,” which looks a bit like a commercial vehicle for monetizing online teaching expertise by encouraging instructors develop independent courses that the site will host for a fee while hinting at the possibility of financial returns for the teacher. Of course, what they do not say is that designing a course, publicizing it in a way that is likely to attract significant student interest, running it a way that will do more than simply satisfy one’s customers, but also give them skills and/or knowledge of very high value, so high, in fact, that it will motivate them to publicize your course, and to do all of this in a way that is sustainable and feasible… is an almost impossibly difficult task for a single person to manage on her or his own. So the intimation that it can be profitable is, in my view, an exploitation of some folks’ naïveté. Teachers with what might be a good idea for a course pay good money to buy a subscription so that they can develop and host their course using the OpenLearning infrastructure, possibly in the hopes of making money… even though in most cases, individuals are likely to fail to create a commercial winner that is also academically excellent. This scheme, of course, makes money almost exclusively for OpenLearning.

    Now, that said, I note that there are some institutions that seem to have invested significant and substantial resources in the develop of truly open learning resources, like Open University, MIT and Carnegie Mellon (their OpenCourseware and Open Learning Initiative sites) and, of course the big MOOCs (edX, Coursera, France Université Numérique/FUN, etc.). There are teachers, thinkers, pedagogues, leaders, and visionaries who are truly committed to the “Open” ethos and to CMOOCs and the like. So I’m not skeptical about everything. But when websites and Twitter-voices talk about Open, there is almost always some confusion about exactly what they mean. Open textbooks licensed through Creative Commons are one thing. Truly free open courses are something different. Disguised and seemingly free materials and courses are yet another kind of ostensibly “openness.” And folks are not always precise and forthcoming about which flavor or orientation of “Open” they mean.

    So part of what I intend to do in coming weeks is to reflect on Open and different kinds of “openness.” I’ll critique the ideas and I’ll point toward those dimensions and implementations that I think are the most valuable, ethical and productive. And, of course, I’ll label and discuss those items that are not so honest, are less than fully ethical, or otherwise seem problematic.

    So… stay tuned for some research into… and critical thinking about… “Open.”

    -RRD

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    Implementing an OER Site?

    [ 1023 words ]

    After spending many months away from blogging during a period of many demands on my time (reentry into teaching and shared governance meetings after a year-long sabbatical; a self-imposed obligation to co-edit a volume that has been more problematic, more time-consuming, and more rewarding than anticipated; an overcommitment to conferences and to collaborative projects; new course development), I return.

    This blog entry will address a project that I expect to pursue in the near future, perhaps in collaboration with my spouse. It is an OER site that will have two or three distinct functions. In essence, it will demonstrate the use of French television news for helping students develop language skills, critical thinking and increasing their intercultural understanding. Of course, the site will present open and free materials and modules that teachers of French can download and adapt for their own use. However, the site will also include demonstrations, guidelines and advice for those teachers, suggesting ways in which they might adapt the materials that we present as open and free resources, but also ways in which they might begin to develop their own activities, modules and materials based on readily available streams of news media.

    In short, we would offer ready-to-use materials (OERs), but we would also seek to help teachers use our instructional strategies and develop their own news-media-based lessons and activities (teacher-training OERs). It might make sense to split our project into two parts, setting up one site for making news-based lessons and modules readily available, and a distinct site devoted to professional development, training teachers to create such materials and employ the instructional strategies that we have been using in our own courses. Indeed, there might even be room for a third site with a more theoretical and research-oriented focus.

    Why am I only “considering” the project, rather than simply doing it? Why am I talking about it here, rather than actually implementing it elsewhere on the web? In part, it is because it the project is complicated and we are not sure how much time we can afford to invest. There are decisions to make that we do not feel fully capable of managing properly. We have not yet figured out the best way to arrange things or to present the material that we would like to make available.

    At this point, I believe my spouse is going to work with folks at her own university to format and upload materials to someone else’s OER site. She will then invite teachers and higher education faculty in French to view and use the materials, then ask for feedback. That will give her a sense for how to proceed.

    In my case, I expect to begin building the teacher-training site that will offer theoretical frameworks and other resources for helping teachers understand the implications and potential advantages and pitfalls to using the television-news-based approach to language learning. The site would also display demonstrations of the method and suggest ways in which the strategy might be adapted to a wider variety of levels and institutional circumstances.

    Finally, let me point our why, in our pedagogical area, we believe that using television news to teach students at the intermediate, intermediate-high and advanced levels in a second language (in this case, French) is a good idea. First, television news reports are authentic documents, intended for consumption by native speakers, not by language students. Authentic documents are very helpful for making progress in understanding and using authentic, native-level language. Secondly, by inviting students to note those aspects of news reports or the reporting/editing/presentation conventions that surprise them, one can help students become more aware of particular cultural differences. By reflecting on those differences, students can develop better understandings of target-culture attitudes and thinking modalities. One can focus also on differences in news conventions and engage in reflection on their significance. Third, many news reports directly provide cultural information. Fourth, news videos can provide a variety of accents, expressions and ways of talking about real events. Fifth, the news helps students establish connections to real-world events and to understand the contemporary French-speaking world.

    For this approach to work well, the new reports must be chosen well. For that reason, it is important to train teachers in how to discern the most appropriate and potentially productive streams of information and specific reports. Additionally, it is helpful to gives teachers a set of tools and strategies for transforming exposure to a news video into a meaningful experience for language learners. That is why we believe that it would be most helpful not only to provide Open Educational Resources in the form of well-chosen news videos and lessons or modules based on them, but also to help teachers discern for themselves those issues which arise when trying to capture and present to students portions of the news stream. Hence, the need for a second site that focuses on professional development around this instructional strategy.

    It is a not uncomplicated project that we have been considering. But I think that, at this juncture, we need to take the next step. My spouse will figure how to present specific lessons, modules and materials. I will begin creating a site, keyed to her OER contributions, that will explain how the approach works and why it is worth pursuing.

    We have our work cut out of us in the days and weeks to come. We are going to take the next step, partly to toot our own horns. (After all, we have been using television news quite successfully in the French language classroom for over a decade. Why not show off our approach and get some credit for it?) However, we are also doing it because we believe that this approach can be extremely helpful for developing critical thinking, cross-cultural understanding, intercultural communicative competence and global citizenship skills and predispositions. The world needs better, more open-minded, more “inter-culturally skilled” global citizens. Our project to create OER sites will be a modest contribution for moving toward those goals.

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    It seems like “Open” ought to be easy

    [808 words]

    …Yet, it’s neither easy, nor free-flowing nor natural. At least it does not seem so to me as I try to “open” my course development and scholarly work. I know that others have discussed the challenges, but I intend to walk through this on my own two feet (figuratively speaking) and lay things out as I see them from my naïve perspective.

    There are two fundamental problems from which a plethora of smaller practical obstacles derive. The first is what I’ll just call history. Or more like… the inertial impact of a long history. The private, for-profit (or, to a lesser extent, not-for-profit) publisher has been the norm for a long time. There is an entire academic culture that has sprung up around the industry of textbook adoption, the purchasing and distribution of software packages keyed to textbooks, the authoring and review of textbook manuscripts, etc. I know because I’ve taken part in it over my career. Entire courses are constructed on the intellectual platform of a particular textbook. And in some domains, certain textbooks have become the “gold standard” for the teaching of X, Y or Z. The is a culture of the textbook, of the publishing package, of the premade curriculum where books for a certain subject and level can be plugged into courses crafted to correspond not to learners’ interests or breaking news in the discipline, but to a tried-and-true preformatted cours in a particular subject area, at a particular level. Intro to Bio., Geometry I, French II, Spanish Conversation I, Advanced Grammer, Basics of Writing, etc., etc., etc.

    Now to say that all course planning across all of Academe fits this pattern would be an exaggeration. However, it tends to dominate. And it’s made all the more necessary by the “adjunctification” of higher education, where a majority of teachers at certain levels in certain disciplines are part-time teachers who also teach elsewhere and need to be able to show up, open “the book” to page X and begin teaching. Textbooks and preformatting, with software and ancillary materials keyed to the course text make it easy and predictable for teachers — and for students.

    The question might be asked, though, whether or not there is something better, a way to proceed that is more aligned with critical inquiry, with learner curiosity, with faculty interests, with what’s happening in the real world. The problem is that there is a long tradition and an entrenched culture of “the textbook.”

    The other problem, of course, is the entrenched power of money, of profit margin, of payment for services rendered, of contracting. By adopting the textbook, departments and faculty are buying a certain kind of quality. And publishers and service providers are maintaining their livelihood. There is a certain logic to the system, which includes a certain level of quality assurance in textbooks, software, online resources keyed to the textbook, etc. It is perfectly understandable that institutions and the people running them would prefer to maintain a system that had kept a certain staid ordered quality to the process of producing curricular materials of a certain quality.

    To jettison those guarantees, those assurances, in favor of the unknown might seem like a risky proposition. What if more, for individual faculty members, it would mean giving up the efficiency and ease of using predefined, pre-verified, familiar materials and to devote a lot more time investigating and assessing other materials in formats that may vary considerably, with a plethora of delivery options, divergent qualities, etc.  In a word, moving from order and familiarity to a chaotic and time-consuming option that may or may not offer high-quality materials that are well-adapted to the instructional needs of the teacher and the learning needs of students. Heck, students themselves often react badly to unfamiliar material that requires greater attention.

    So the two major issues are, on the one hand, culture (or history or tradition or inertia) and, on the other, institutional pressures, profit motives, vested interests, including faculty and student interest in safeguarding the familiar. From those two issues emerge a variety of difficulties. Uncertainty about quality. Increased time investment. Inefficiency because of unfamiliar forms or modalities. Discontent among adjuncts and tenure-track faculty because someone has upset the apple cart. In a word, there are lots of down sides.

    What are the up sides? Well… one might be that liberating oneself from a “textbook” gives one greater freedom to use authentic materials directly. one can gain in the timeliness of materials and information. Student self-directed learning has more space to grow when students are made responsible for pursing investigation and finding materials. In a word, intellectual freedom and critical inquiry can soar in this new space. Students can invest themselves more in the process of curriculum development and knowledge creation. It can contribute to active learning.

    So… I ask. What’s not to like about “Open”?

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    A few threads…

    My apologies for making a very brief post containing little more than placeholders and breadcrumbs. I’m pressed for time, but want to be sure to come back to these items. Someday….

    Ideas to pursue:

    • humans’ evolutionarily shaped propensity for learning
    • humans’ evolutionarily shaped propensity for cooperation and democracy

     

    Resources / sites / pages to take a closer look at:

     

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    Learning Communities, Learning Selves

    I realize that it has been months since I last posted to this blog. My scholarly work, my time-wasting, my disorganization and my shifted focus took me away from the Open Learning initiative that was at the origin of this blog. That does not mean that I have not been thinking about open learning or that I have any intention to abandon this blog. On the contrary.

    I recognize that I am not likely to have any readers. Still, I want to think systematically about open learning and about learning in my own life and how those two distinct foci overlap or intersect. I want to document and archive my thinking as I reflect on these realms. And, eventually, I want this record of work and reflection to be available publicly to potential collaborators.

    I have said this in a number of venues, but I want to record it here:  Human beings are nothing if not “biological learning machines.” That is, human beings — pretty much all samples of our species, Homo sapiens sapiens — have evolved to do primarily one thing: we are learners. Our primary motivation is to seek pleasure and one of the greatest pleasures for us is to seek novelty, to figure it out, to puzzle over it, to play with it, to discern patterns and to using that thinking to improve our performance relative to that puzzle or problem, then to move to a more advanced level. In some ways, I understand perfectly well by “gamification” is so effective in educational circles. It appeals to exactly this penchant in human nature.

    That said, I believe that another significant aspect of human nature is our desire to cooperate, reinforced by the “evolutionary rewards” that cooperation and social organization have wrought. (I use the term “evolutionary rewards” to designate those junctures in natural history where particular biologically/genetically programmed behaviors led to furtherance of our particular hominid species, many of which seem to be related to socialization, cooperation, transmitted information that confers survival, thriving and dominance advantages.)

    The title of this particular blog has its origins in this tension: individual propensity for individual learning, which can confer an individual/competitive advantage, and the collective propensity for collaboration, cooperation and group domination (as opposed to individual competitive advantage). [Pondering — as opposed to pandering — about the relationship between individual vs. collective learning.]

    I increasingly believe in the power of collective learning, which includes exchanges and development of discourse and ideas that may be uncomfortable for particular human beings, but that when put together with “the wisdom of the crowd” can be very powerful and forceful.

     

    In short, I think that there is a biological argument in favor of collaboration and democracy.

     

    More to come.

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    Associative Trails, Connectivity, Networks, Rhizomes, Learning

    [703 words]

    As is my wont, I’m throwing together a bunch of semantically charged bits, following an an only partially conscious, mostly intuitive process, a kind of ADHD fluttermind effect that arises from neural activity in my brain. To nail down some of these flighty connections and intuitions, it is my intent to explore it further here and, as much as possible, to make the gist of my “associative trail” meaningful for others.

    Part of the way that I’m thinking about this is old-school analogy. I know that brains work through a complex mechanism of dynamic networks. We still don’t know exactly how consciousness and thinking arise from large numbers of interconnected neurons stimulating each other in certain ways, but that seems to be how our brains — our mind-generators — work. Connections that are dynamically managed and networks that collectively produce a certain minimal cognitive functions, collaborating and connecting with other networks to produce more complex cognitive functions, iterated and reiterated dynamically, scaling up until we have those effects or results or entities that we identify as “thought,” “learning” and “mind.”

    Learning takes place by making new connections, by building networks of meaning, by noting and reiterating the way in which certain stimuli produce a kind of “pow!” that is impactful and meaningful. If, in my analogy, individual human beings function as if they were neurons, what they do, then, is respond to stimuli. Once a stimulus reaches a certain level, the person/neuron unit acts in a way that stimulate one or more others in network. Or perhaps nodes or concepts within that unit’s mind interact with other nodes or concepts or other bits and pieces. Over time, connections are forged, then strengthened or pruned, leading to a dynamic but reasonably stable set of learning.

    What I’m trying to suggest is that there may be ways in which learning is both individual, but also collective. There may be ways in which this whole process of associative trails build significant patterns over time, patterns that represent the dynamic but stable results of collaborative learning. Individual learning, intuitions and associative trails count. But they are all the more impactful when they connect to others. It is for this reason that tools that facilitate collaborative learning over time — from traditional scholarship, for example, to online learning communities and web-based annotation tools like Hypothe.is — have deep and resonant value. They help construct layers that may ultimately result in more complex, more meaningful, more impactful learning. I guess the question to ask is how one goes about pruning those associative trails or those connections that are not helpful or productive. How does one choose or discern? A difficult question.

    Another way to think of it is as a kind of learning ecosystem. Each part of that system can function individually, but the true beauty of the ecosystem is the way in which everything is interconnected in a kind of dynamic but generally stable system of interchange, mutual benefit, exchange, stimulus and reaction. I think of the vast mycorrhizal networks, loosely connected with tree root systems that help regulate forests, for example. (One suggestive video to watch on this topic is Susan Simard’s TED Talk on “How Trees Talk to Each Other.”) This way of thinking about it — seeing analogies and correspondences between neural networks, mycorrhizal networks, communication networks, networks of learners — resonates in significant ways with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s  Mille Plateaux (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980) [A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1987)].

    If we are growing complex, multilayered, interconnecting and interpenetrating ecosystems of thought, of learning, of mind, my earlier difficult question can be rephrased to wonder what mechanisms regulate the complex system? What dynamic will select the strong and meaningful connections for building resiliency? What processes will target the connections that are destined to be pruned because they do not contribute usefully to the long-term survival of the complex system?

    Is there, in fact, a way in which learning, technology and connection are weaving themselves together for the construction of some greater entity? (Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere?) Is this thread of thinking simply a delusion? The answer to those questions merit further thought. I’d be interested to hear other perspectives on these random musings.

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    Openness, Connection, Scholarship, Knowledge Development, Learning

    [1152 words]

    I’m still pondering the relationship between openness and connection. There are significant ways in which the two concepts align well with each other in the domain of learning, even if they do not overlap semantically. That is, open learning is generally going to be characterized by a relative ease of connection in many forms. Connecting new information or concepts to previous learning. Facility of connecting reflective insights to hard data, or old writing to new writing through easy access to stores of data or to the archive. Connections between learners in different regions or different time zones. Connection and collaboration over great distances.

    There are also significant ways in which one can also see some tension or opposition. One of those lies in the disciplinary rules for knowledge development and in the parameters and institutions that have evolved for verification and control of that intellectual work. Let me offer a brief historical sketch. As humanist intellectual traditions emerged from the Renaissance and evolved through the Enlightenment, the development of ideas, the formulation and verification of models was a relatively open process. Anyone who felt qualified and able to do so could contribute to the enterprise, which was constructed around sharing information, theories and arguments through print media, mostly books. Those media were “accessible” more widely than manuscripts and personal letters and notes had been. However, that “openness” was quite relative. Very few persons, almost exclusively men, could afford to make the steep climb toward access to that free exchange of ideas. One had to be literate and one had to have the resources to buy or borrow books, assemble a personal library or be in a position to access someone else’s personal library; additionally, one needed leisure time to read and reflect; finally, one needed a modicum of social-intellectual reputation to publish or the support and influence of an influential patron or a printer. Generally speaking, there was no such profession as “scholar” or “researcher.” One could, however, be an erudite writer, like Voltaire or Samuel Johnson and live by one’s pen and by one’s reputation. In the eighteenth century, writers often survived thanks to patronage, but increasingly over the course of the nineteenth century, writers were able to earn a living directly from their writing. That said, even with growing access in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to literacy, coupled with the power of publishing one’s thoughts, theories or research, only those with a certain education and a certain socio-economic standing had access to books and to the “connected” conversation of the erudite.

    In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, knowledge production, teaching and learning evolved significantly. The influence of religion in education (and as a moral authority) waned somewhat and secular education gained significant in infuence. At the same time, thinkers increasing channeled critical inquiry and publishing into disciplinary channels. Areas of knowledge that that had previously been pursued and developed by amateurs and by men of leisure and intellectual inclination came to be formalized as history, philosophy, mathematics, physics. Openness continued to exist in the form of a relatively accessible channels of publication and distribution, school and public libraries and through increasingly rapid personal communication. To assure the validity and reliability of information and conclusions developed within those increasingly well-defined areas of knowledge, persons (mostly men) who recognized each other as experts inthe domain applied rules and criteria to the relatively open discussion of hypotheses, methods, experiments, reflections and conclusions. Over time, scholars and arbiters of publication further clarified and formalized those rules and criteria. The authority of postsecondary institutions rose and the production of knowledge under their aegis came to be highly regularized. Disciplines and disciplinary academic publications (journals and presses) structured , validated and assured the quality of knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. By the late twentieth century, though, it seems to me that that pendulum had swung a bit far in the direction of verification and control (especially control). Disciplinary structure overshadowed much of learning and it influenced even the relative standing and level of power of sectors within universities.

    What is more, discipline-focused publication became an industry unto itself. The very profitability of that enterprise spurred the rise of aggressively for-profit institutions (publishers, disseminators), who took advantage of the publish-or-perish incentives of academia to harness both relatively inexpensive peer-review labor and large streams of unpaid-for content. Institutional dependence on peer-reviewed publication to evaluate scholars and academics’ need to appear in print (or to bolster their h-index or other metrics) as a demonstration of “productivity” undergird that economic model. Organizations like Elsevier (“Empowering Knowledge / Knowledge Uncovered“) depend on essentially free academic labor and content, on the one hand, and, on the other, scholars’ need to consult scholarly publication, some of which is available only in exchange for a costly (in some cases, exorbitant) subscription or per-use fee.

    There is a paradox here. On the one hand, intellectual work and the production of knowledge is far more democratic and more widely shared in the twenty-first century than it was in the 1750s. Additionally, modalities of communication have arisen that make the sharing of ideas and communication almost instantaneous. The internet has greatly facilitated connection and shared understandings among scholars. There is greater openness and greater communication. On the other hand, there has been a significant trend moving knowledge production in the direction of closure and restriction. The rise of disciplines and the enforcement of disciplinary standards in academic publishing has, in large measure, discouraged cognitive exchange and erected barriers to communication between disciplines. There are countertrends, of course, but the gist of the evolution has been toward ostensible “rigor” in the the genre and style of writing in peer-reviewed journals and a restrictive monodisciplinary focus of particular journals. Additionally, the economic model that makes access to journals extremely costly restricts functional openness.

    Reaction to copyright and DRM restrictions and constraints and high fees led to various openness or open access movements, statements or trends, like the BOAI, Creative Commons and SPARC and various open science initiatives. If there is a liberation in these efforts at openness, it is not only relief from high-cost access to scholarly work, but it is also in the way in which open online scholarship has rekindled connection across disciplinary lines. Digital humanities, for example, often blends over into statistics or information science or data visualization. The work of sociologists and literary theorists may appear in close contact, inviting comparison. Biologists, geologists and anthropologists may offer converging perspectives on issues like climate change in a single scholarly piece. There are ways in which “open” also invites “connection.”

    There will always be a tension between the insistence of some on disciplinary rigor and discipline-specific doctrine and the refusal of other scholars and learners to be contained within a single well-defined box. It is this latter, the pulling together of openness and connection in digitally mediated learning that gives me hope and motivation.

    #openlearning17

    -rrdaniel2

     

    Open Participants, Syndicated

    Openness?

    [644 words]

    Plunging into the content and the spirit of the cMOOC #openlearning17, I’m thinking at length about “openness” and its many resonances. And, to be quite honest, I’m posing some hard questions during my interior conversation, as I think about the future, the future of education in general and my own life years from now. (N.B. To some degree, there will be some overlap between this MOOC and another that I’m working on, “What Future for Education?” — taught by Clare Brooks and created by the University of London, UCL Institute of Education.) Another “life thread” that interjects itself into whatever I’m weaving here is deep distress about the Zeitgeist (triumphant extremist populism, nationalism, racism, disregard for truthfulness and ethics, factionalism).

    Let me start with the last element (concern), then move on from there. For obvious reasons, I’m worried. My country is entering into what promises to be a phase of extreme conflict, dissension, instability, strife and extreme disregard on the part of many poitical leaders and their followers for fellow human beings. While I’m concerned for the well-being of the vulnerable and marginalized in the U.S., while I’m taken aback by gag orders and by blatant lying, and while I despise the way in which leaders in power want to jettison environmental protections, reject climate-change treaties and ignore scientific evidence and muzzle conscientious scientists and public servants, I’m also very selfishly wondering about my own prosperity and my retirement portfolio. Will I be able to retire a bit early? Or will the economy melt down and diminish my retirement savings and force me to continue working for many more years to come? Will I never be able to retire? More importantly, will this horror lead to armed conflict or destruction of the social ecosystem that I know how to navigate?

    In this context (one that I recognize is far harsher for folks in other countries or regions), I find it a bit harder to commit to “openness” in the sense of devoting time and talent to the creation of resources for unfettered distribution, with little or no proprietary control or benefit. My fear and anxiety make it harder for me to feel generous. The dire threat of this social-political moment makes me wonder if I need to hold back and preserve the resources of my work and talent, to invest them in my own future good. Should I not seek maximum benefit, eventually, by selling my creations for top dollar? Of course, it is possible that I’m deluding myself about the value of my cognitive powers and my efforts in knowledge-creation, learning management, or the crafting of educational products. Still, I suspect that I may have a few good ideas, strategies and frameworks to offer. I may be able to help improve the quality of learning, both now and for the future.

    So, influenced by angst and concern for the social, economic and political future of my country and the world, I ask myself whether or not I should try to shape these potential contributions to a more commercial and self-serving purpose. Should I craft appealing products, market them, sell the heck out of them? (And to heck with openness!) Except that, in the end, that’s not really who I am. Despite it all, I am determined to continue to create high-quality frameworks, concepts and materials in collaboration and in dialogue with colleagues and fellow-travelers.  In some cases, I may make my stuff broadly available as OERs. Still, with my sympathetic nervous system constantly stimulated by what I see and hear daily, it’s hard to remain dilated, relaxed, generous, vulnerable and open — in the best senses of that last word — connecting freely and meshing with a process that draws me out of my self-centeredness. (Hmmm… I can’t help but wonder: Is “openness” functionally opposed to “self-centeredness”?)

    Sorry for the excessive length of this post.