This document provides a brief history of education and the rise of open educational resources (OER). It discusses how children traditionally educated themselves through play but schooling turned learning into work. It then outlines the development of distance learning through MOOCs, DIY resources like Khan Academy, and the role of Wikipedia and Creative Commons in open education. The document advocates for promoting universal education to achieve prosperity and stresses the importance of learning, growing, and sharing knowledge in today's globalized world.

1. The Promise of OER
Open Educational Resources and the Future

2. Purpose
We will ever strive for the ideals and sacred things of
the city, both alone and with many; We will
unceasingly seek to quicken the sense of public
duty; We will revere and obey the city’s laws; We will
transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better
and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.
-found in the foyer of the Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs

3. A Brief History of Education
In the beginning, for hundreds of thousands of
years, children educated themselves through
self-directed play and exploration.
With the rise of agriculture, and later of
industry, children became forced laborers. Play
and exploration were suppressed.
Willfulness, which had been a virtue, became a
vice that had to be beaten out of children.

4. A Brief History Cont.
For various reasons, some religious and some
secular, the idea of universal, compulsory
education arose and gradually spread. Education
was understood as inculcation.
With the rise of schooling, people began to think
of learning as children's work. The same power-
assertive methods that had been used to make
children work in fields and factories were quite
naturally transferred to the classroom.
A Brief History of Education – Peter Grey

5. The Purpose of Learning
“To be proficient in knowledge is not enough. A new
society of genuine democracy requires active
learning and autonomous motivation. It requires a
missionary spirit without fanaticism. The joys of
culture are to be universalized, the benefits of
freedom are to be shared, the citadels of ignorance
and regression are to be conquered, the deserts of
physical and spiritual poverty are to be
transformed.”
Frederick Mayer

6. DIYLearning
Kahn Academy Salman Khan
Code Academy

7. MOOCs
What is a MOOC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_
embedded&v=eW3gMGqcZQc
Top 10 University MOOCs

8. MOOC Lists
MOOC List
Class Central

9. Wikipedia
Wikipedia is now the primary information source.
Something like truth.
Wikipedia Entry on MOOCs
Open Education Resources Wikipedia

10. OER & Creative Commons
OER Commons
OER on Creative Commons
101 Open Education Resources - Slideshare

11. Wisdom
The primary, the most urgent requirement is the
promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any
nation should achieve prosperity and success unless
this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried
forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall
of people is ignorance.”
Abdu’l-Bahá in the Secret of Divine Civilization

12. Today
Our nation, our city is the world; it is our
sacred duty to grow, to learn, to share.

13. Contact
Donal Little
dmlittle@syr.edu
Learning Aesthetics
http://www.sightwork.org/la/
Sightwork Live
http://www.sightwork.org/live/
Sightwork
http://www.sightwork.org/home/