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  • Thoughts on electronic aspects of emancipatory teaching.
  • These ideas revolve around practical components of free culture (in the context of education).
  • Feel free to comment.
  • See also: Open academia

The 4 pillars of free and open teaching are:

  1. Free software
  2. Open formats
  3. Open access
  4. Open licensing


Figure. Four principles of emancipatory teaching in a 21st century electronic age

See also

4 Comments

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  1. Mar 13, 2008

    Anonymous

    James

    generally in agreement but ......... while industry is still wedded to 'commercial' software and proprietory formats our students will have problems if we only expose them to "other" software:  they will be less employable.  Many times I have had employers make comments on the 'work ready' state of UC graduates (my experience is limited to graduates of ISE courses).  I'd assume multi-media / graphics students who didn't have exposure to Apple would be at a similar disadvantage.

    Also, having worked in industry on equipment / software that was not part of the dominant domain (i.e. working on Apple in a 'straight' Wintel commercial world), there was much gnashing of teeth from staff until, after 8 years of Apple, we switched to Wintel and:

    * gained access to a greatly increased variety of software (not necessarily better ...);

    * gained access to a larger pool of people able to support the equipment and software (not many Apple help desk staff around); and

    * most importantly, became compatible with the many organisations with which we interacted e.g revision-marked documents could be sent and received via email without any conversion required.

    regards

    Neil 

    1. Mar 30, 2008

      James.Neill

      Thanks for your thoughts, Neil. I think it is possible to mount a feasible counterargument. Many currently popular proprietary formats may well become obsolete, and thus learning how to use ODFs would provide a wiser long-term investment in our students' skills. Using ODFs means that students are working with file formats which can be opened by both proprietary and free software, instead of just proprietary software. Hence, an ODF-skilled student has greater flexibility in being able to move across operating system platforms and software systems (IMHO).

  2. Mar 14, 2008

    Peter.Donnan

     Hi James,

     Interesting development:

    MIT, Elsevier offer free content from more than 2,000 journals http://url.edna.edu.au/syD4

    In a move to encourage open education, MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Elsevier have agreed to make available figures and text selections from any of Elsevier's more than 2,000 journal titles for use on OCW. As a result of this landmark agreement, select Elsevier content can now be included within the open access OCW course materials - to be freely downloaded, used and shared under a Creative Commons license.
    OCWC, March 2008

    Peter Donnan

    CELTS 

    1. Mar 31, 2008

      James.Neill

      This is interesting, and promising. A shift in the direction of free culture.