On the link between Open Education and the Open Web
I’m currently moderating a discussion as part of Open Education Week on behalf of Mozilla. In today’s discussion prompt I asked:
What do you see as the link between Open Education and the Open Web? Does the former depend on the latter?
It’s a question that depends on several things, not least your definition of the two terms under consideration. Yesterday, in answer to the first discussion prompt, I used Mozilla Thimble to make this:
The above would be my current (brief) definition of Open Education. But what about the Open Web? Here I’m going to lean on Mark Surman’s definition from 2010:
Open web = freedom, participation, decentralization and generativity.
That last word, ‘generativity’ is an interesting one. Here’s part of the definition from Wikipedia:
Generativity in essence describes a self-contained system from which its user draws an independent ability to create, generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input from the system’s original creators.
As an educator, I believe that the role of teachers is to make themselves progressively redundant. That is to say, the learner should take on more and more responsibility for their own learning. Both teachers and learners can work together within an Open Educational Ecosystem (OEE) that is more than the sum of its parts.
The more I think about it, this is how the Open Web is similar to Open Education. Both are trying to participate in a generative ecosystem benefitting humankind. It’s about busting silos. It’s about collaborating and sharing.
Does Open Education depend upon the Open Web? No, I wouldn’t say it that strongly. Open Education can happen without technology; you can share ideas and resources without the web. However, the Open Web significantly accelerates the kind of sharing and collaboration that can happen within an OEE. In other words, the Open Web serves as a significant catalyst for Open Education.
What do you think? What’s the relationship between Open Education and the Open Web?
