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H818: A History of Openness

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 09:21

We're considering the nature of 'openness' in education as part of this new Master of Arts in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) module.

This is increasingly about ease of access to information, all of it, uncensored.

Often for ease of access and to gain a qualification with a marketable value, information that is packaged in books, journals and lectures, though increasingly in 'sexier' interactive and multimedia forms with the related 'scaffolding' that comes with learning design and planning. The natural tendency is to consider the hectic last decade of the Internet at the expense of the history of openness in access to information and an education over the last century.

A hundred years ago all but the most privileged were in the dark: leaving school after an elementary education, with reliance on biased newspapers, magazines and part works. Libraries, BBC radio and affordable paperbacks, secondary then tertiary education, cinema and TV have each had a role to play, as has the Open University.

Does enlightenment come with access?

What does it say of power of information and ideas where access is controlled, as in China? Does connectedness within openness lead to even greater coalescing of likeminds in cliques, reinforcing stereotypical biases rather than exposing them to valid alternative views?

Nothing is straightforward when it comes to people - heterogenous by design, homogenous by inclination.

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Radio rocks a century on from its invention : h807, B822

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Isn't it ironic that so many decades later the OU can be so successful with radio and iTunes, for example 'The Bottom Line' on Radio 4 is a BBC and OU Business Scool co-production with additional content after the transmission online and available to include in learning modules while the global success of The History of English in Ten Minutes' is a resource for all manner of 'e-tivities' (a Gilly Salmon term you will come to love, loathe or use). I've brought my late grandfather back to life in a podcast based on a recording madein 1992 wheen he was 96. I've been inteerviewing my father-in-law too for the same reasons.
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H800: 41 WK5 Activity 2. The Medium is the message

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 10 Feb 2013, 17:07

I struggle with McLuhan's point of view  because it can be argued in many ways: is he saying that the message is controlled by the affordances of the medium or by the people running the shows? Or both? And in plenty of country's the medium was/is state controlled. While in the US it is controlled by the advertisers. TV lends itself to a certain form of expression; historically there have been and are producers who create TV magic and get the format right, though there are plenty of experiments too that kick against what is possible and an audience will tolerate.

A shift to YouTube is fascinating. I watched the Japanese Disaster's play out live, first on BBC 24hr News, then CNN, then best of all Japanese TV with English voice over NHK all on Freeview. I thought, having sat through IRA bombs and 9/11 that these feeds were the best source ... the closes to being there. My son was getting this on YouTube diretly from people's SmartPhones 'on the ground'. For the Libyan crisis I am taking Twitter Feeds and watching Al Jexera.

The point I feel is that each medium offers different possibilities: print, radio, TV and now online. Everyone is their own producer/director if uploading from a Flip camera or SmartPhone. However, artists will come through. Within the communities that we become a part of there will be someone who is more informed, better at expressing themselves or exploiting the platform. Watching a documentary on Japan my son curses the amateur video producers for not keeping the camera still as vast quantities of water smash into buildings and boats. Not meaning to be flippant but he's probably learning why locked off shots, from a tripod, work better.

From a learning point of view we are 'there,' the internet to a greater degree than print, radio or TV 'puts us on the spot. Is this not closer to reality, to being physically present, which is how historically (35,000 of human kind) we have learnt? By observation, participation and collaboration? Through mistakes and successes?

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H800:11 WK1 Activity 3 How we perceive and write about innovations as they hit

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Jan 2013, 05:47

Every innovation is perceived as siesmic, like a Tsunami it washes over everything. I like the digital ocean metaphor ...

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In relation to H800 and the Week 1 activities the introduction and final chapter of Stephen Lax's book covers the communications innovations of the last century + enough to inform.

 

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And whilst this is the topic for H807 'Innovations in E-learning' I recommend this. I like him so much I bought copies to give to friends; I don't know if they were grateful.

Is it available on Kindle?

 

 

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New blog post

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 11 Aug 2010, 13:56

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‘The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters, meetings, introductions which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a great amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.

Nin (1946)

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My obsession of the last decade has been my life on-line. My life in words. My life with people I have never met and will never meet.

I found the above in a journal entry I wrote in 1992; I am regurgitating it on-line, in bite-size form, elsewhere - the 2,000 words or more I would write not right for this on-line sheet of OU soft paper on a roll that tears about where people get bored with my say and want to get a word in edge ways.

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REFERENCE

Nin, A. (1946) Vol 4, Journals, May 1946.

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So here's the edge of the paper -

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