Open Course in Education Futures

I am enjoying this course very much. I think courses should be like this, at least courses for people (probably not children) who are clear about what they are seeking in a course like this. When I enrolled in this course, I had my expectations, which are being fully accomplished.

I think that one of the most important features of this course is that you have to go here and there on the Internet to find new contents, discussions and different perspectives about similar issues. This helps you develop a critical perspective based on your own experience. The other advantage I have found is that nothing of what people say here has been censored, which is extremely important for creative thinking. Even more importantant is the fact that David and George are making us the co-creators of the course. This is the idea behind the open-participatory curriculum building. I think they are doing it perfectly.

Being part of a discussion where many people with different points of view talk about education and technology is very important to me. The problem here is how much of the relevance I give to what I learn, can effectively be evaluated by the facilitator. As a teacher, I know there must be an observable result; as a student however, things are more difficult than we think. Probably that feeling of being lost that some people have, is that they have not clearly figured out what is expected from them at the end of the course. I think it will not be completely clear until we have finished, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately). But, that´s just my opinion.

I have not opened a blog or a wiki...yet. I have participated in some of the forums giving my opinion and maybe provoking some kind of reaction (probably failed on that though). However, although I do not expect accreditation, I feel motivated to remain in the course and participate as much as my poor English lets me.

my colleague Sian Bayne and I designed and ran a course from September-December 2009 called "E-learning and Digital Cultures" (http://www.digitalculture-ed.net/) - all in public. There was a clearly defined curriculum, cohort and schedule, but the model was one of fragmentation - students used lifestreams to aggregate their content from across the web (and we assessed the lifestreams). It was a tremendous experience. No particular comment re the gender issue - we found having our teaching and course design exposed to be quite nervewracking at times, but it put us in the same boat with our students in this case. I think all of us, male and female, had to grapple with how we were constructing and displaying our identities as students and teachers in ways we hadn't in other, 'walled-garden' courses.

I'm really new to this concept of an open course - this being my first ever. But I'm wondering if it might end up looking like a parallel processing model where multiple CPUs or processor cores are executing multiple computational threads? (operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently).

Hypothetically, if people do start branching off and organizing their thoughts in other mediums (their blog for example) ... does that create a new CPU? and do parallel threads/conversations take place all at once? I'm excited to see how these conversations can be modeled!

What you are talking about with decentralized discussions/courses is something we have been conceptualizing at EduGeek Journal. We have been calling our idea a Social Learning Environment. Of course, we came up with that term before the word "social" became an overused cliche. Time for a new term, I guess :). But the thought is that the technology exists to aggregate PLE/Ns in a way to make it simple to follow open courses without trapping them in an LMS. We need to start using technology to aggregate with is being created and constructed, rather than go on this endless quest to re-create tools inside the walled garden. This can cut down on the dis-orientation considerably.

Any ways, you can read about our ideas (which are similar to the Open Learning Environment proposed by Jon Mott and the Bava's work at UMW Blogs) in our Social Learning Environment Manifesto:

http://www.edugeekjournal.com/2010/03/18/social-learning-environment-man...

We have been presenting these ideas at few conferences lately, and it has been fun to see many gasket's blowing in many people's minds.

This is by far NOT a complete idea - we realize many gaps exist in our logic. but we welcome comments and input and criticisms.

I have a cheeky and a practical response to your question about women facilitating open courses.

My cheeky response is "this is the way we live." We don't need no stinking label to describe how we network, learn and nurture learning in each other. Think about parenting circles, about email lists for women interested in all kinds of things. We do it. We don't wait for the "course."

My practical response is look at the work of Sarah Steward in New Zealand and Australia, the work of Bronwyn Stucky with Quest Atlantis teachers, the lives of any ongoing community of practice, the social media "courses" offered by the http://www.cgiar.org and http://www.fao.org (yup, I facilitated).