This post is slowly evolving as I watch and re-watch Brian’s presentation and contemplate its meaning to me, so watch this space for updates.
I’m still pretty sick at the moment and seriously weak in my intellectual capacity, so I don’t have much to contribute today. Instead I’d like to offer the video embedded above, which captures Brian Lamb‘s “The Urgency of Open Education” from the 2009 Teaching w/ Technology Idea Exchange (TTIX).
What I love so much about this presentation is how central and core the themes of people and participation are in Brian’s talk. Everything that is referenced above and beyond this, all technologies and all real-world examples that come into play are all couched within the context of how they relate to people and participation. To me this is a really critical perspective in how we look at social media and how we approach discussions on its capacity to connect, support and empower. If we lose sight of people and participation, social media starts to become something different, and something less social.
Synthesis of Presentation:
The first portion of the talk is extremely effective in conveying the importance of participation to human sociology since antiquity, and what Brian describes as “a very powerful human need” to be involved. Citing a quote by Clay Shirky, who wrote “We will routinely prefer a sharable amateur source to a professional source that requires us to keep the content secret on pain of a lawsuit” – Brian then uses the contrasting examples of Wikipedia’s open model with Encyclopedia Britannica’s locked-down proprietary one to lead into a discussion of participatory digital culture. The transition was beautifully done I have to say, and very effective.
I have to say that the second half of Brian’s presentation was cause for even greater enthusiasm and inspiration than the first. His discussion of two real-world examples of use of new media in education revolved exclusively around the educational, community-driven, and participatory aspects of the experience and none on the technical aspects. I think these sorts of examples are really critical in driving the open education and social media movements forward, because they establish an immediate, tangible relevance for the exercises in terms of their value for learning.
He first cites the example of Latin American Studies at UBC (beginning at 18:45 minutes), where instead of term papers students were instructed to develop a series of scholarly, properly cited Wikipedia articles. A few of these articles existed previously, yet were of poor quality; the bulk them did not yet exist at all. Not only did this involve students exploring the same sorts of critical, scholarly exploration of subject matter that they would in traditional essays or papers, the fact the ultimate outcomes of the project were shared openly online inspired a sense of relevance that inspired the students to work harder.
During a student focus group, Brian indicates the students all complained about the workload, saying: “We’ve never had to work so hard in our lives….” However of the overall experience students said “…it’s one of the most important works we’ve ever done….we have the sense we’re doing something real.”
Further, their work directly benefited thousands of people, with El Senor Presidente projected to see 40,000 page views this year, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez expected to see 700,000 page views this year.
Of blogging he discussed a more personal example in which he used his blog to seek the assistance of his networks regarding a project he felt somewhat overwhelmed about. This example
“I wrote the problem down, I said what little I knew, I threw out a couple ideas out…, and I finished with a naked plea for help.”
The result was a virtually immediate response from a number of people offering suggestions on resources, processes, existing projects, and even prototypes. Ultimately he says: “That essentially saved my experience.”
He continues:
“This is something that’s really important….especially academics, you feel that it’s your job to be the smartest person in the room or the smartest person on that subject you’re writing about. In my experience the blog posts that are the most valuable to me is when I explore the areas I don’t know stuff.”
To be continued…
