Whose Lives Are Changed by Crowdsourcing?

Jerry, I've this on my to-do list for far too long now: write up a backgrounder and assignment list on crowdsourced education projects. Want to help me out with it?

If you're game, here's what Wikipedia has on open source education, just to get you started (you can find the links here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source):

Within the academic community, there is discussion about expanding what could be called the "intellectual commons" (analogous to the creative commons). Proponents of this view have hailed the Connexions Project at Rice University, OpenCourseWare project at MIT, Eugene Thacker's article on "Open Source DNA", the "Open Source Cultural Database", openwebschool, and Wikipedia as examples of applying open source outside the realm of computer software.

Open source curricula are instructional resources whose digital source can be freely used, distributed and modified.

Another strand to the academic community is in the area of research. Many funded research projects produce software as part of their work. There is an increasing interest in making the outputs of such projects available under an open source license. In the UK the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has developed a policy on open source software. JISC also funds a development service called OSS Watch which acts as an advisory service for higher and further education institutions wishing to use, contribute to and develop open source software.

It would be great if that worked and this is what I really hope. The next duck to be shot, then, is a paradigm: most teachers see themselves as experts (and this brings all the discussion about it again). It's not an easy task to change their mind on that matter. The system used in Brazil (sorry about putting the geographic aspect again, but that's good to give you guys a different point of view) has little efficiecy, specially on children education. It's abandoned and little has been done to change that. It's hard to believe the authorities will accept such a paradigm shift, which is the way I see this change.
When it comes to Universities, opennes is more acceptable, because they're more democratic and have more autonomy, and in my point of view it's a good place to start the (r)evolution in education.

I'm enjoying reading how we think the world around us is changing and what causes it. Revolution? somewhat, Evolution? difinitely. I think of the show with William Shatner "How Star Trek changed the World". While it was campy and amusing it made a point, in that, Television changed how society viewed the World. It allowed several generations to gradually glimpse other parts of the planet, to dream of how we would change our World, and as it became more available to the rest of the World allowed other cultures to see beyond propaganda.

In the past TV was fraught with rules, restrictions and biased programming admittedly, but we have progressed a bit through determination. Satellite radio is expanding the "open-source" possibilities with fewer restrictions, but the Internet remains the largest means with which to gather information, data, opinions and to communicate, and again we are struggling to keep it free from government restrictions and censorship.
The Internet is Great! You have choices. You can converse in real time, or have discussions in email, blogs, and articles with people in your own area or across the sea. To me, Dialogue is the mother of Revolution; the ideas and talk from a diverse population coming together and then action being taken to change what they don't like. Evolution is how those changes affect our lives.

As more and more smaller countries gain access to information and the internet, they become fascinated with what it can do for them. While there will always be violence, in general the hope is that this will bring people together and end war. As Techonology races forward, hopefully more outdated, prejudiced ways of thinking (and behaving) will fall to the wayside in a puff of smoke. Not to squash those diverse people's moral and ethical beliefs necessarily, but to change how they act upon misinformation and allow them to form their own opinions on other cultures rather than an overall government view. It will allow us all to find our place and live in the emerging new world.

So what did we learn from Star Trek? That different cultures can live together (for the most part) and contribute to overall society without losing their uniqeness. It gave us a glimpse of what the World can be like if we choose to "make it so". Crowdsourcing will allow more people to have a part in fiction becoming reality.

~Tina Stephens

...the radical drop in the means of creative production (I'm not just talking about digital camcorders here--anyone seen Google's new Sketch-Up software? The makers of CAD software should be very, very afraid)

I picked up SketchUp on a whim last summer, and it's an incredible piece of software. I could go on for pages about the brilliant ways that they speed up the 3d modeling process and about how amazing it is, but you really need to try it out for yourself. The tools that I have at my fingertips today would have been worth millions but a decade or so ago. But over this short period of time they've become dirt cheap and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Thing change very quickly these days.

-Chris

Typoid Mary