Activity 2.3 - Researching Openness

This activity asks us to research two areas of openness that are less familiar to us. It referred to a Wordle, which had mainly words that I've heard of and even know something about. So, the first topic, I picked because I wasn't sure what it was. The second, I picked because I'm thinking I might link my project to this area and therefore I figured I should find out more about it.

1. Media repository

I'd never heard this phrase before but once I Googled it, I realised it was pretty obvious. It's basically an online collection of 'stuff'. It can be photos, journals, blogs... practically any kind of data that can be stored, searched, uploaded, downloaded and so on. There are some well known media repositories, such as Flickr and various online libraries. Having got that far, I came to an abrupt halt. I tried to find out who's doing research in this area but it was really difficult to find anything useful. As it's not an area I'm particularly excited about, I stopped there.

2. Innovation

Going from something quite specific, I then picked a topic that is huge! As I've been thinking about ideas for my project, I'm drawn to this as the theme. Innovation is a word that is banded around quite a lot. All teachers who want to become someone, aspire to be innovative. ICT teachers, especially, leap after the latest innovations. But what really is it?

When I was brainstorming ideas in Activity 1.5, I looked up a Google definition of innovation and it was all about new ways of doing established tasks. Again, it was difficult to find definitive information about the big names in innovation through a Google search. Maybe this is too big a topic. I mean there must be hundreds of top researchers, researching innovation!

Narrowing down slightly, I focussed on openness and innovation. I'm interested in where these two areas overlap. In doing this, I found out about the Agency for Open Culture. It's an agency that centres in on humanitarian issues and post-conflict problem solving. Their mantra is "open knowledge for open societies", which sent my thoughts back to that Veletsianos article and the first assumption about Open Scholarship.

There are several big annual conferences which bring together openness and innovation. My personal favourite is the BETT show, which I try to get to most years. Although openness at BETT is variable, there are a lot of speakers, exhibitors and visitors who are really into open education and the whole sharing of resources idea. Another one, that I hadn't heard of is LINQ, (Learning Innovations and Learning Quality). The motto for this year's conference was "The need for change in education: openness as default?"

I also looked for some academic works on this topic and found articles by:

• Norm Friesen & Judith Murray
• George Veletsianos
• Andy Lane & KJ Vandorp
• R John Robertson (JISC)

I don't think the area of innovation/openness in education is something that is particular to a specific time or place. It could be argued that it is new to this generation but I think that is a slightly arrogant view. In one way or another, educators have been coming up with new ideas and sharing them with other teachers since the beginning of time. It's just that now it's all happening online and technology is making it easier and wider-reaching.

Activity 2.2 - Openness

Consider your own stance on openness on the following statements, giving a reason for each.

1. I will only publish in open access journals.

At this stage, I'm not even thinking about having my work published in any kind of official capacity. I enjoy blogging and agree with Weller (2012) that "we are all broadcasters now." One of the great things about Web 2.0 technologies is that anybody can publish anything online, without it first having to be sent to a publisher, reviewed and critiqued and rejected many times.

Looking forward, if I did decide to try to get any of my work published in journals, it would probably be open access but it would depend on the situation.

2. I will share all learning material that I create and own openly online.

In general, yes, but I wouldn't say 'all'. I already share some things but only where I think others might find it useful. When I was teaching, a lot of my materials were made specifically for my group or class. It might have their names and/or photos in it, so it wouldn't have been appropriate to share. I know I could have adapted it and removed the confidential stuff but honestly, that would have taken too long. At that stage, I was working 60 - 70 hours a week and needed to sleep occasionally.

3. I will maintain an online social media identity as a core part of my professional identity.

If I was purely giving my own view on this, then yes, absolutely. However, the local authority that I work for has a very strict social media policy and it really limits what we are allowed to share on social media. I tend to use Facebook mainly for personal, family and friends - keeping up with my personal network, which is spread all around the world. Twitter is my professional identity, where I follow other professionals, although I'm not 100% strict about it. I do occasionally dip into a hashtag conversation, particularly when watching certain TV programmes, although that is rare.

4. I take a pragmatic approach and release some resources openly if it's not too much extra work.

Absolutely - I think this one sums up my approach!

5. I have concerns about intellectual property and releasing my content openly. 

I don't worry about others using my work. I tend to think that if God has given me a talent of any kind, then I have a responsibility to share that for the benefit of others. My only worry about releasing content openly is that you sometimes get people being overly critical (often when they have misunderstood the purpose of a resource) or random strangers starting political arguments in comments threads. For that reason, I usually set up so that I can moderate comments, where that is an option.

6. I will share all material that I create and own openly online, as soon as I create it.

No, probably not. Again, it goes back to the word 'all'. I'll share some, depending on whether it creates extra work for me and whether I think it might be useful. I don't always share 'as soon as' either, sometimes because I'm busy and sometimes because I want to test it first. The thing with learning resources is, you've got two different types of teachers who look for resources online. The first looks for a resource, then checks it through, adapts it for his/her situation and then gets a lot out of it. The second is maybe a bit lazy... or needs educating in digital citizenship. They take a resource and the first time they look at it, is when they use it with their class. Then they complain that it wasn't very good.

Summary

I'll use social media as a tool for communicating and sharing resources, split into Facebook for personal purposes and Twitter for professional. Having said that, I share this blog on both. I basically hold to the principal of sharing resources and allowing others to use and adapt them, though it's nice to be acknowledged when people use my resources.