8th July 2006

Open content, MIT and our university system

posted in digitalstorytelling, intellectualproperty, literacy |

I am an advocate for open content, especially in the academic realm. I’ve addressed this previously in posts titled “Universally available research,” “Accessibility supports relevancy,” and “Free ideas & Pedagogy.”

Today I discovered MIT World, described as:

a free and open site that provides on-demand video of significant public events at MIT.

This is a GREAT site and an educational paradigm I think all our institutions of higher learning should embrace, not just MIT. This philosophy turns a basic tenet of “the academy” on its head I think, since universities have traditionally seen (like old media folks) that the value of ideas is greatest when they are carefully controlled with limited access. In the past, you had to PHYSICALLY COME TO THE UNIVERSITY to learn from the professors there. Now with the tools of the telecosm at our disposal, that no longer has to be the case. The Scholar’s Copyright project will hopefully convince more in academia to publish their work on the public internet. The byline of the project is:

Providing standard, responsible copyright agreements ensuring the right of scholars to archive their work on the public Internet.

Looking for some great professional development? Check out MIT World. Like those supporting the Science Commons, the proponents of MIT World recognize that we shouldn’t be in the educational enterprise if we don’t want to share our ideas with others. That’s an assumption which should be basic to the ethos of every teacher at every level.

MIT World is free, as long as you have a computer and a reasonably fast connection to the Internet. The price is right, what are you waiting for?! :-)

On this day..

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 at 11:35 am and is filed under digitalstorytelling, intellectualproperty, literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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