0.1 Kim tucker - floss, oer, equality and digital inclusion  (Page 9/10)

Here is a useful set of models for learning physics I discovered some time ago: (External Link)

Would it make sense to construct learning activities with incomplete versions of such software – students could then develop the programs (e.g. defineformulae) their own way as part of the learning. The complete source code would represent a solution to the exercise?

In a wiki environment, I can imagine pages on specific needs for a piece of software, describing new use cases which software developers might like to implement incollaboration with the learners etc. as part of their software engineering programmes.

In terms of content development, I recently heard of a project using collaborative video production as a means of “crossing culturalborders”.

The great thing about software development and video co-production, is that they are sufficiently complex to require some co-planning, role and design negotiation,critical thinking and technical skill. Here is a project which emphasises a general ability which all learners should acquire through school: “… the skill ofanalysis. … the ability to break a complex problem into pieces, identify familiar patterns in the pieces, solve them using existing tools, and synthesize the results into aview or answer.” (External Link)

“We want to ensure that learners graduate with this ability, making them effective, successful, productive and fulfilled members of society.”

It might be useful to extend some of the ideas here into other levels of education and introduce social constructionist learning and cbpp in the development of thetool

For content production, see also (External Link) as an example of an open movie built with FLOSS (www.blender.org) and with production files freely available.

Much of the above type of activity is happening already (links welcome), we are not short of ideas and encouraging such activities can only help - even if it is donein low/no connectivity environments, and is seen as nurturing the existing culture of collaboration and sharing in readiness for cbpp when access for all becomes a reality.

I think we agree that the people in Africa are likely to take to cbpp quite naturally on account of the traditional cultures, and by being less affected by theartificial barriers.

In summary, embedding cbpp across curricular is recommended, and generating a culture of collaborative learning is a good idea, though the impact may bedelayed and less pronounced in places where access is limited. FLOSS and collaborative free/libre/open content development may serve as good vehicles to promote cbpp, though therequired culture of sharing may be nurtured even without the Internet.

Speaking of peer production, it might be useful to share:

• links to sites and papers of relevance to this discussion.
• research questions
• software – FLOSS for Education.

4. Kim Tucker - May 7th, 2007 at 7:49 am

Response to Wayne:

It is great to see so much happening around libre and open resources for education.