ctw2007: Open Education(al Technology)

James Boyle uses descriptions of the internet, Wikipedia, and open-source software (ie., Linux) to demonstrate how we are usually conservative and need to take more risks, especially in engaging with “open” movements.

Campus Technology Winter 2007
Technology Leadership in Practice

Closing Keynote
The Openness Aversion: Managing Bias in IT Leadership
James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law, Duke University

What stories do our networks tell? Or…every network tells a story! It embodies certain norms (anonymity, control, etc.)-written on our network by our choices. You are the prisoner of decisions made by people before your time who you don’t know and probably disagree with. We only have brief moments to impact the network; therefore, we need to have a vision and plan so we are prepared for these moments.

Three premises:

• Errors are inevitable,
• Particularly so when planning about technological change; however,
• Errors are not random.

Focusing on “errors are not random.” We are systematically likely to undervalue the benefits and overvalue the risk of open technologies. This is not a manifesto that “openness is always right;” any system will have a balance between open and close. His thesis is we privilege closed, He discusses three examples of proposals in the 1990s for:

• internet/web vs. closed computer networks
• Wikipedia vs. electronic Encyclopedia Britannica
• open source software vs. commercially developed software

We would have voted “hell no” on all three of these as scary, crazy proposals; however, they are what succeeded. Ultimately Boyle claims we need to be designing our systems for content that can be dynamically organized and used by the users, even if we don’t know who they are.

In 1990 which would you have expected to happen first: Wikipedia or open teaching resources/open education? Obviously you would think the second because:

1. teachers HAVE to develop this material as a part of their job, and
2. teachers love to share.

First generation of teachers born digital will becoming out of the graduate school soon. They will not be satisfied with static knowledge bases, not customized for there needs and presented on dead trees.

Boyle says he’s saved his internet romanticism and that the golden years of educational technology are in the immediate future. We haven’t begun to see the transformations and we can’t predict where they will emerge.

December 14 2007 | Posted in Campus Technology