This week, we looked at open education and the culture of sharing. I have always thought of myself as a teacher that would share my content and will eagerly share the resources that I use and create with others that are looking for ideas, support, or a place to start. I will even admit when what I have is awful but at least a starting point for content (cue that one year I taught Science 5 for 2 months at the beginning of my career…I do not recommend ANYONE using what I created then!).

I have played with putting my course material online, I made a few flipped lessons last year, and I believe in using the internet to help support our students in their learning but, I realized as I was watching the videos assigned to us this week that I was more-so paying lip service to the idea of sharing openly than actually actively working toward contributing to open education. I felt a little bit guilty of feeling like I was contributing when I was still very much secluded in my own little world.

Larry Lessig and his work on copyright and copyleft is something that I was aware of as I have previously taken a course from Alec, however, I was very intrigued by his idea that the internet is reviving creativity and the read-write culture. I resonated with his reference to how children and adolescents today are engaging in (re)creativity and how he is pushing for a change in how products are default licensed. To put this in a personal context, I would be a full supporter of copyleft, I encourage those I share my resources with to rework and adapt to their situation or to use “as-is”, whatever they choose. I encourage them to share with the next person down the line as well.

Oh, the possibilities that Ze Frank discussed in his TED talk, My Web Playroom! I think that when I decided to blog with my Social 9 class for my Learning Project, I was envisioning a final outcome that resembled some of the projects that he discusses but, after a few classes, I am not sure we will quite get there. (Maybe if I work with them on this until they graduate, we could make something really unique). The simple requests that he makes to the internet remind of the Post Secret project that was created by Frank Warren (maybe it has something to do with a common name…). Warren encouraged strangers to send him anonymous postcards and posts them on his website. He has published several books of secrets I have always been intrigued by Post Secret and see it fitting into Lessig’s definition of (re)creativity. The community around the project is very supportive (for the most part, darn trolls) and work together to decipher secrets that are submitted in other languages or in codes. I get the feeling of being a part of something bigger when I look at this project, connected to others around the world.

RIP: A Remixer’s Manifesto was a great watch, with some great music. In it, Brett Gaylor challenges the current definition and laws around copyright, gives a history of the intent of copyright and patents (which I was surprised to find out was created to encourage more production of ideas, not to monetize ideas), and there is even a hint that there the cure for many diseases may be just around the corner, but due to a patent, researchers’ hands are tied. He demonstrated that many songs by big musicians are already a remix of something they have heard elsewhere and that the songs his favourite artist, Girl Talk, creates are individual in their own rights.

So how does remixing play into our everyday lives as teachers? I think that Roberta summed it up in the most accurate manner: we ask our students to remix every day and we call it learning. Reading this caused me to pause and think about all of the assignments I give my students, and I couldn’t agree more. Teachers share information with students and, to ensure that their students comprehend, ask them to repeat, retell, and apply the knowledge to other situations. In fact, when looking at Bloom’s Taxonomy, the entire section labelled Synthesis could be renamed “Remix”.

This has left me with a lot to think about, much like Sapna, I like that online and open education supports learning as it tends to be accessible, affordable and flexible. I want to contribute but I need to stop just saying I am contributing and actually do something to help. Maybe that will be my next project….