Comments on: Open as in Closed http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/ Trying to find useful things to do with emerging technologies in open education Sat, 18 May 2013 11:27:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Laura Dewis (@lauradee) http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30108 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:55:33 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30108 They are useful for repository interoperability. Not wanting to persuade you to look, just mentioning in case that was useful in your world.

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30061 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:37:55 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30061 Hi Laura – thanks for letting me know… what I’m actually interested in are really simple markups that expose practically useful semantics, which is why OU XML is a handy starting point. I haven’t really looked at other packaging formats, partly because I’m more interested in seeing what we can do with what authors create, and what value add we can automatically generate as “positive externalities” from that, to pick up on a recent Doctorow post ( http://delicious.com/redirect?url=http%3A//www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/08/why-charge-everything-kill-creativity ). If you can point to a brief explaining what advantages LOM, IRE, ILOX might offer to a scruffy hacker, you might be able to persuade me they’re worth looking at… ;-)

]]> By: Laura Dewis (@lauradee) http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30050 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:15:42 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30050 Hi Tony… not sure if this will be of interest but we’re also about to start work to extend the existing Drupal OAI-PMH plug-in for Views to support LOM, LRE and ILOX and have just received notification from the module owner that they are willing to accept our contributions to the code. We’re committed to open, but it’s a case of the “Back soon” sign being up at the moment.

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30035 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:33:55 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30035 Hi Lorna – I think that “open” is now pretty much lost, as a word, to marketing hype, and it now means: “Open” as in “we are happy for you to give us something in exchange for this before we let you see it”…

]]> By: Lorna M. Campbell http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30031 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:42:39 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30031 Hi Tony, really interesting and thought provoking post. Good to see from Guy’s comment above that some of the missing functionality will return to OpenLearn. However I think you’re right that we run the risk of seeing more and more “open” sites closing down. The number of moocs that restrict access to their content is perhaps indicative of this trend and the funding squeeze isn’t going to help. I suspect the battle for openness is far from over.

Btw thanks for the pointer to Lorcan’s blog too, more food for thought.

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30011 Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:57:45 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30011 @Guy Thanks for the update on this. I wasn’t meaning to have a dig at OpenLearn particularly, though it did provide a handy hook for the post….;-)
FWIW, I also notice that a lot of searches still point to the old domain and clicked through links don’t necessarily resolve properly. Time for OU search folk to flush some of the indexes… I also noticed that course/module codes appear to have disappeared (I guess in line with OU more generally making it really hard to find any specific module level info on public web pages at least, in a drive to get people just looking at quali sign up pages? Great shame that – course code identifiers are a great hook [eg http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blogarchive/010591.html ], and the granularity of modules far more useful for discovery than degree programmes.

]]> By: Tony Hirst http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30010 Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:50:16 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30010 @Judith So how about “not-open” as opposed to closed?;-)

]]> By: Guy http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30009 Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:30:56 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30009 Unfortunately technical difficulties meant we haven’t been able to launch the full functionality in one go in December. By the end of January we will have most of the usual features back and some new ones.

- breadcrumb
- unit summaries, learning outcomes on every page
- ‘search this unit’ functionality
- custom printing
- unit reviews
- RSS feeds, XML and alternative formats (all ePubs will come in a little later)
- links to related content
- tags
- comments

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/frequently-asked-questions/looking-learningspace

Guy
Lead tech developer for Openlearn – Study Units.

]]> By: jtownend http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/01/07/open-as-in-closed/#comment-30008 Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:07:51 +0000 http://blog.ouseful.info/?p=9439#comment-30008 ‘Open as in closed’ – yes! I have a paper pending on the ‘closed’ approach to legal data, at odds with the government’s push for ‘open data’. However, I was struggling with the terminology: is ‘closed’ too strong, when – as you identify – the lack of access may not result from a deliberate decision and the rationale unclear. Often, the data is incidentally closed, but it is closed nontheless.

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