Ba dum… Education for the Open Web Fellowship: Uncourse Edu

A couple of weeks ago, I started getting tweets and emails linking to a call for an Education for the Open Web Fellowship from the Mozilla and Shuttleworth Foundations.

The way I read the call was that the fellowship provides an opportunity for an advocate of open ed on the web to do their thing with the backing of a programme that sees value in that approach…

…and so, I’ve popped an (un)application in (though not helped with having spent the weekend in a sick bed… bleurrrgh… man flu ;-) It’s not as polished as it should be, and it could be argued that it’s unfinished, but that is, erm, part of the point… After all, my take on the Fellowship is that the funders are seeking to act as a patron to a person and helping them achieve as much as they can, howsoever they can, as much as it is supporting a very specific project? (And if I’m wrong, then it’s right that my application is wrong, right?!;-)

The proposal – Uncourse Edu – is just an extension of what it is I spend much of my time doing anyway, as well as an attempt to advocate the approach through living it: trying to see what some of the future consequences of emerging tech might be, and demonstrating them (albeit often in way that feels too technical to most) in a loosely educational context. As well as being my personal notebook, an intended spin-off of this blog is to try help drive down barriers to use of web technologies, or demonstrate how technologies that are currently only available to skilled developers are becoming more widely usable, and access to them as building blocks is being “democratised”. As to what the barriers to adoption are, I see them as being at least two-fold: one is ease of use (how easy the technology is to actually use); the second is attitude: many people just aren’t, or don’t feel they’re allowed to be, playful. This stops them innovating in the workplace, as well as learning for themselves. (So for example, I’m not an auto-didact, I’m a free player…;-)

The Fellowship applications are templated (loosely) and submitted via the Drumbeat project pitching platform. This platform allows folk to pitch projects and hopefully gather support around a project idea, as well as soliciting (small amounts of) funding to help run a project. (It’d be interesting if in any future rounds of JISC Rapid Innovation Funding, projects were solicited this way and one of the marking criterion was the amount of support a pitched proposal received?)

I’m not sure if my application is allowed to change, but if it doesn’t get locked by the Drumbeat platform it may well do so… (Hopefully I’ll get to do at least another iteration of the text today…) In particular, I really need to post my own video about the project (that was my undone weekend task:-(

Of course, if you want to help out producing the video, and maybe even helping shape the project description, then why not join the project? Here’s the link again: Uncourse Edu.

PS I think there’s a package on this week’s OU co-produced episode of Digital Planet on BBC World Service (see also: Digital Planet on open2) that includes an interview with Mark Shuttleworth and a discussion about some of the work the Shuttleworth Foundation gets up to… (first broadcast is tomorrow, with repeats throughout the week).

DISCLAIMER: I’m the OU academic contact for the Digital Planet.