The Education Bazaar

Last summer I wrote a blog post that looked at many of the Open Content projects aimed at K-12 consumers and participants, and at the larger question of how those resources might fit into K-12 classrooms and curriculum.I learned quite a bit in the process of writing that rather long entry, and although much has happened since then, the essential points I made at the time are quite relevant in light of recent developments.

Is K-12 Ready for Open Content Textbooks?
http://teachers4schools.com/open/?p=10#more-10

One of the things I talked about in the post was the need to better characterize Open Content. This post uses a couple of newer projects to clarify my thinking on the need for way to better describe projects.

My morning news feed yesterday picked up a small article in the Miami Herald that talked about the Curriki project. The piece by Bridget Carey is pretty representative of the interviews and releases Scott McNealy has been making recently as he works at getting exposure for Curriki. I’ve followed this all winter, and it got me thinking again about the need for characterization of Open Content projects, and about their future.

Curriki.org Fuels Communities, Bridges Digital Divide
http://www.miamiherald.com/154/story/141532.html

So our biggest challenge right now is raising money to get all of the resources we need to go put all of this stuff together in a way that makes the website just stunningly attractive. I think if we do that we won’t need to advertise, but raising the money is probably the biggest time consumer and the biggest challenge we have.

Open Content initiatives of various flavors are springing up all over the place, and I think there are two basic approaches. Taken to their logical extremes, one is primarily associated with traditional ideas about expert vetting and control of knowledge, and the other is mainly linked to user-driven content prodcution and quality control.

At the current time the popular media, and to some degree the blogosphere, tends to lump these together. As the use of collaborative tools in education expands, I think that there is a need to distinguish between projects. When I hear Scott talk about the need for money being their biggest hurdle with Curriki I almost feel like I know what type of Open Content project it is – one that is focused more on expert vetted knowledge than user production and collaboration.

Perhaps each type has a place, but in most regards I would say that the highly vetted and controlled sites are not that much different than the current process used to create textbooks, and online subscription databases for education like Encyclopedia Brittanica Online.

For teachers truly interested in collabortive production and consumption of Open Content resources, limited communities of practice will offer little promise, and will not leverage the Web 2.0 technologies that allow us to really change the way teachers teach and students learn.

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