1. Yochaibenkler’sthe Wealth of networksHow Social Production Transforms markets & Freedom&charles m. vest’sopen contentand the emerging global meta-university
2. A Super Quick View of “WoN” A Revolutionary Undertaking that focuses on the Human Welfare of an “Networked Information Economy” (from soil to bits) Challenges us to think about not free but Freedom: Individual Political Cultural Is a Warning to that we must pay attention and participate in the laws that are being created today that will affect how we co-exist in an “Networked Information Economy” tomorrow
3. The “Open” Path for Education “Information Wants to be Free.” – Chris Anderson “Literacy and Education are Central to Individual Growth, to Democratic Self-Governance, and to Economic Capabilities.” YochaiBenkler “…the open courseware movement, will give teachers and learners everywhere the ability to access and share teaching materials,…scientific works in progress, tele-operation of experiments and worldwide collaborations, thereby achieving economic efficiencies and raising the quality of education through a noble and global endeavor.” Charles M. Vest
4. OpenCourseWare (OCW) MIT OCW Sofia (Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets) CORE (China Open Resources for Education) COSL (Center for Open and Sustainable Learning PLoS (Public Library of Science) Each now has a broad global reach that has the potential to provide poor economies and/or communities with access to Information not previously available
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6. An Amazing Path – with challenges The 4 Challenges Quality Control Bandwidth Cost Intellectual Property Rights Intellectual Property (IP) Rights Willingness of authors to make their materials available for free Conservative Nature of Institutions Book Publishers – copyright fees Government’s ability to impose stringent copyright law
7. Discussion Questions Directly from Charles M. Vest: Will the Internet fundamentally reshape higher education? (and should it?) Are residential colleges and universities dinosaurs or the wave of the future? What will be the nature of globalization of higher education?
Editor's Notes
Individual Freedom:Increases the range and diversity of things that individuals can do for themselves (vs. an industrial information economy)Provides non-proprietary alternative sources of communication capacity and informationIncreases the range and diversity of informationPolitical Freedom: With the decline of Mass Media, i.e. one way communication, comes a greater opportunity for members of society to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern. Was it Shirky or Anderson who used the example of the girl who mostly blogged about shopping then became a quick star as she blogged about political unrest in her country?Cultural Freedom: Webster: the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” According to Benkler the NIE makes it possible to reshape both the who and the how of cultural production relative to cultural production of the 20th century.There are many other chapters to this book including one on Justice and Development, of which education, my topic are a part. But each of them lead back to the core of Human Welfare and how we interact as a result of the NIE.
We start school as young as the age of two – if we go to college, that means that we’ve spent 19 years in an educational system. So culturally, education plays a huge role in how we are shaped as individuals and how we in turn shape our culture. Consequently I was curious about the progress of universities and how they’re adapting to the Networked Information Economy vs. and Industrial Information Economy.
OCW – Educational Content that is available on the WWW for free.MIT – 1999 formed committee of faculty, students and a pro bono consultant to consider how MIT should position itself in the use of educational technology and distance learning. Recommendation – “Give Away All our course materials by putting them on the web.” And so was born the MIT OCW program that has evolved in to a web based publishing venture offering materials for teachers and learners not degrees or credits.I think this is key to the open movement of education: it’s not about replacing the class room, it’s about sharing knowledge. Underground University of 1000 students who are a repressed minority in their culture and not allowed to attend collegeUniversia – a consortium of 840 institutions in the spanish speaking world translate MIT OCW into spanish and makes them availableCommunity Colleges with smaller budgets have accessCORE is translating OCW into MandarinAll of these are in line with Benkler’s thinking: Informed cultures can self-govern and grow their own economies.
"William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, a country plagued by AIDS and poverty. Like most people in his village, his family subsisted on the meager crops they could grow, living without the luxuries—consider necessities in the West—of electricity or running water. Already living on the edge, the situation became dire when, in 2002, Malawi experienced the worst famine in 50 years. Struggling to survive, 14-year-old William was forced to drop out of school because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition.Though he was not in a classroom, William continued to think, learn—and dream. Armed with curiosity, determination, and a library book he discovered in a nearby library, he embarked on a daring plan—to build a windmill that could bring his family the electricity only two percent of Malawians could afford. Using scrap metal, tractor parts, and blue-gum trees, William forged a crude yet working windmill, an unlikely hand-built contraption that would successfully power four light bulbs and two radios in his family’s compound. Soon, news of his invention spread, attracting interest and offers of help from around the world. Not only did William return to school but he and was offered the opportunity to visit wind farms in the United States, much like the ones he hopes to build across Africa”From his website.. http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/williamkamkwamba/2009/04/my-book-the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind.html
Benkler also cites the above challenges, minus the bandwith. I believe QC will work itself out, though more difficult than wikipedia. Benkler sites the issues textbooks have with meeting individual state standards. And focuses primarily on the sharing of scientific journalsBandwidth – yes it’s an issue, but one that evolves at a rapid pace– thank you Mr. MooreCost – there’s not doubt that the cost of this free work is underwritten by philanthropic institutions like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation who has underwritten a number of OCW projects, the authors who have been paid for their works in other publications, university memberships, Google is building partnerships with libraries, IBM is a sponsor – so it’s an issue, but not one that’s stopping growth…yet.Copyright however, can stop everything in its tracks.
