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Just me 10 years ago

Activity 23 : Mapping Visitors and Residents

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Did you find this a useful way of considering technologies and how you engage with them?

For those who knows a bit of Spanish, they know that our verb "to be" is actually two verbs that operate in different levels of the being "Ser" y "Estar"

"Ser" belongs to the permanent or timeless properties of the being, it has an inward direction. I am a man, I am old, I am skinny... I am digitally native or immigrant

"Estar" belongs to the temporal realm of the being, it has an outward  direction or external nature and it is relational to other things or beings,  its action.

From this Spanish linguistic perspective Visitors and Residents Its built in metaphor for spanish speakers that happens literally as we speak, its grammatical...this V6R example maybe is one way to teach to an native English speaker, the difference between the verbs Ser y Estar in Spanish.

Were your maps similar to other people's?

Here is where I find that this idea is over simplistic.

If we are to take the concept of a digital footprint, I differ and argue with this post that we only leave that digital footprint when we are on the resident side of the column, as visitor there is also a digital footprint in the shape of cookies, click-throughs, surveys or interactions the only difference between a resident and a visitor is his will of engagement on control the data or digital footprint they leave behind.

There is also another detail that is not being taken into consideration, the possibility of one single person to build different personas, in several different media. I remember from the H800, the recommendation of building different twitter accounts for different lines of research to keep the twitter feed on topic and not to lose relevance (If I recall correctly this was on the digital scholar of Martin Weller the same person who designed this module). This practice is no new, I recall in the mid 19th century the great Soren Kierkegaard used to publish with pseudonyms in order to have a different platform for different philosophical ideas and I am sure there are plenty more.

Hence to answer the question "Were your maps similar to other people's?" if the answer is yes, I am not doing a good job, as I am different to other people.

Were there difficulties in mapping some technologies?

Difficult, should not be... useful, depends on why am I mapping this…?


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Just me 10 years ago

Activity 19: Implementing connectivism, really?

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This so-called “theory” does not work with the basic principle of “people are the ones who learn” furthermore we can see the results of such learnings flowing in a day to day life. Some of these learning results may leave some record of it and since the invention of writing this ability to store expanded exponentially to texts images sounds etc. in different formats and available to those who can decode those records.

Thus Learning is only human and may NOT reside in non-human appliances.



Diversity of opinions may enhance or expand the learning of a given learner and data is its manifestation. But most importantly wider access to the diversity of opinions or the data generated and stored, expand the reach of the learning process.

This process generates nodes/points of contact between learners and opinions and 

nurturing and keeping connections (between nodes and data) is needed to facilitate continual learning, and also is good manners.



In a world with an immense capacity of recording the variety of opinions, the ability to see connections between fields ideas and concepts becomes a core skill.


Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of the learner's reality. Where the right answer is understood (cognitivism), constructed (constructivism) acted (behaviourism) dialogued (Freire) through all the nodes and mediums that are at the disposal of the learner.



The rights or wrongs of this learning process goes beyond the scope of the process, because right or wrong lies in the eye of the beholder and escapes any learning theory.



Trying to develop a course from these principles gives a strong position on the study of technology and their interactions, a need of understanding contexts of where these interactions may happen is a must as it is not the same to teach performing arts, maths, or biological sciences.


whether you found connectivism useful




Only partially to have a framework where to organize data driven information from strong theoretical hypothesis to research.

Whether connectivism was in conflict with the traditional concept of a course.



Connectivism is a tool useful to analyze. as “theory” however is not much more than constructivism with machine aid. Is the machine aid powerful? Very much. Enough to upgrade this capacity to ontology. No, propper learning theories need to be applied.

What it would be like to study or teach a course based around connectivism.



The attempt made by the design of this very module in Open University proved to me to be chaotic at best and frustrating as a norm.


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Just me 10 years ago

Big or Small?

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Find a “niche" and make it big.

In my experience, any idea worth doing is always overwhelmed by the feeling of impossibility, only money or time can help me to get there… This way of thinking of who is worth millions to big companies/institutions is the challenge for a person who works for big players and has big ideas and then wants to do its own way.

Today’s big problem is, as technology develops more people working in collaboration than ever before, Et al is the most quoted author of this decade!, pride is hurting and the torture tool of choice is anonymity.

So we have in one hand, big OERs: Royalty, with reach, glamour, glitter, an even quality (not always)… gather the masses of big players in a movement that empowers education, teaches education, define education in its own view, there is no surprise that we read names like MIT, OU, Harvard, Stanford and its own Coursera… It's tempting, it's good, its marketing… It’s free.

It does not provide a voice, it does not harness change, its too focus on finances that forgets the purpose of their function, it’s made for the masses, for the anonymous, for all the Et als of the academic world, its free as long as we let “them” be there. This is simply to prove, if you ask 100 people how many know which university Darwin went? Furthermore It's impersonal, it's AI, it's unequal and strategic.(De Certeau)

On the other hand, small OER belongs to the workers who work for the big, the most anonymous, they have uneven knowledge, they dissent, some has quality others not, empowers knowledge, it dialogue among peers and others, it covers more ground, it's not only focused in money, has passion for what it teaches, explores to teach things that are not formally taught, or consider cohorts that they did not have a chance to have education and now they are handicapped with the digital literacy.

Small OER has great disadvantages too, is not coherent, its interests are so wide that can’t be homogeneous, its messy and unorganized, it’s loud and yet it’s human, it’s fallible, it’s aesthetically challenged, its underpaid or not paid, it has a variable IQ, its tactical (De Certeau) it does not have an approach.


The hope of a small OER is by chance or ability reach the Uber/Fbk/ status, and grow


There are plenty of examples that I will leave for further posts or even my tma’s if needed.


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Just me 10 years ago

Activity 7: Key issues in OER.

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After careful reading of the OER Research Hub evidence report and its 11 OER evidence hypothesis I was trying to understand what they were talking about, mostly because it seems to me that OER definition by UKOER* is a very vague at best and very wide to say the least.

So before jumping on the issues in hand, I had to come to terms with a few things:

First is a report that is based on a lot of assumptions of what education is by a community of practice so diverse that it is difficult to see a clear line of research even less agree in what is evidence in a field charged by different pedagogies, epistemologies, objectives and purposes.

For example, is not clear form an analytic post of view the relationships between, an OER or an Open Educational Tool, Or is  a MOOC, or is it Formal or Informal, is it use to provide a paid degree or just for fun, where are the ethical debates if it is used for marketing or does subject areas like literature, maths or arts have the same impact or way to analyze it, just to name a few.

Most importantly, there is no epistemological approach on how to address assumptions on the scope of education, what education is or what it should be, thus the first key issue at hand with this research is epistemological, to have a clear understanding of all stakeholders, all interactions and each one at a relevant category, the right framework and tools needed to do efficient research.

So, the best I can do is to do this exercise from my own experience, which is not in the educational sector, I have no experience as a teacher, I am not from an anglo speaking country which means that most of my observations will be not understood at best or misunderstood at worst.

In this line and to make this research of a wider reach, the 11th hypothesis should be analyzed or developed within frameworks that allow to make better use of the gathered information and even formulate more precise questions.

I would propose to work in 4 frameworks that could use the different hypothesis.

OER Conceptual Framework is at the crux of this research it is important to define what it means to be OER within different contexts as well debates about different approaches to OER, for hypothesis B, C, G, H, J, K

A Technical Framework would differ from environment to environment, OER as understood could be use in many circumstances and contexts for which hypothesis C, G, J could be a good start.

A Financial Framework is almost obligatory to be used in different contexts, many of the assumptions and problems of OER, for example is clear in this report that higher education runs under the assumption that it has to be paid, models such as public school on higher levels seems to be ignored or not acceptable, in order to do good research this assumptions needs to be stated if not there is a bias in the research as it can be seen in hypothesis D, F, G, H, I, J

An Educational or Pedagogical framework that covers students approaches to study or teaching strategies for teachers, or the differences between subject areas (sciences different to arts) or simply the purpose of the study has to be address, in this particular framework can be drawn from most of the hypothesis in this report A, B, C, E, F, G, H, I, K


* The following broad definition of OER from OER Commons seems to be generally accepted by the community:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world


** []

  • Hypothesis A Performance
  • Hypothesis B Openness
  • Hypothesis C Access
  • Hypothesis D Retention
  • Hypothesis E Reflection
  • Hypothesis F Finance
  • Hypothesis G Indicators
  • Hypothesis H Support
  • Hypothesis I Transition
  • Hypothesis J Policy
  • Hypothesis K Assessment


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Just me 10 years ago

Openness in education readings… Week 7

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This particular activity happened to be very interesting for me.

Not because of the readings in itself which provide a range of views on the subject, nor was the problem of being fairly dated readings a problem that I see more often than desired on the course design, but the tone and nature of the papers provided an eureka moment connecting an old idea I had when I did my postgraduate degree in philosophy and religion.


In those days we were studying christian ethics and more specifically issues like abortion, euthanasia. In one of the modules we came across the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, who basically argued that most problems in Ethics lie in our belief that life is "sacred"... If you lift the sacred status to the way we value life, many of these problems will be seen differently.


I felt outraged at the time for what I thought the argument was a slippery slope to a society without values, however with time I saw what he did, by uncovering the unmovable sacred principle and devoid it of value, the problems that lie beneath take a different perspective. In a way for argument sake seeing this value as an obstacle and removing its sacred status provided freedom to see the problem differently…


When I realized this, I immediately thought, but that is not the only sacred value in our society…
Private property is another, and if we remove the importance of that value altogether we will see the problem of Private Property / and its prodigal son Copyright differently…


And in a way the Creative Commons License did that for the digital world, not as its main intention but as a way to overcome a stumbling block in fast software and content development…


Then a series of Post titles came to mind:


  • 

Is the copyright dilemma a moral dilemma?

  • What are the key values at stake?

  • Can the oversight on copyright issues provided by the blanket of creative commons enough to free us completely and see pedagogy from a different perspective?

  • What do we mean when we say free education?
Should education be free?
If we argue that education has a cost, who picks up the tab?



Not sure if I will write any of this, but the inspiration came...


The readings:


Cormier (2013), What do you mean… open?

Is good to see how the term was coined and a bit of history. It also transpires a bit of cynicism when it shows the road to the term open.


CNN-1333 Open Course (2012), The extended argument for openness in education.

More technical than inspiring this text helps to clarify a few discrepancies on the term open.


Gourlay (2015), Open education as a ‘heterotopia of desire’.

This is a good paper to read, and seems to be written by a person who feels threatened by the new technology!
 Full of platitudes and excuses, is difficult to read because I have the suspicion that the author misquote many great thinkers


Weller, Jordan, DeVries, & Rolfe (2018), Mapping the open education landscape: citation network analysis of historical open and distance education research

This is an excellent approach to the history of what today means open, which by large is not a clear definition.


Tait (2018), Open Universities: the next phase.

I have to read this but next week is looming onto us and may have a pass on this one, only to probably discover later that it is a key paper to read! Time will tell.


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Just me 10 years ago

Activity 3: Representing open education - part 2

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This is my view from the readings on what it means open...

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Just me 10 years ago

Nothing new under the sun

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I find that the practice of writing a journal as described by Park does not differ from the old stoicism practice from two thousands years ago where, as common practice for an old stoic was, to write every morning and every night his reflections of the day he will be facing or the day it has had or any other relevant experience or thought in his life.

I am not sure if Gibbs’ reflective cycle of experience is an attempt of putting a framework to a learning process or trying to copyright what any decent practitioner do and did on a daily basis for millenia. Sarcasm aside, the framework of learning from experience is a good base to articulate in a conscious way a learning process, however I think the process needs to be adapted to the discipline we are learning from as it is not the same writing collaborative academic or to do a photoshoot or dance tango or perform surgery.

"The meditations" of Marcus Aurelius or Seneca's "Moral letters to Lucilius" are great applied examples of both papers.


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