Dolors (@dreig) is brilliant – a psychology teacher by trade, she is in to communities, e-learning, web 2.0, web 3.0 – and she is a pioneer for open education and this is what she has come to talk to us about at Podcamp BCN.

First up – a little recommended reading; she talks about ‘Free – the future of a radical price’ and ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ (Eric Raymond).

Like many others Dolors believes that our education system is not working; there’s a lot of talk in the media about this but what I like about Dolors is that she actually has some ‘solutions’ to change and she’s positive about it. She isn’t standing here ranting about what’s wrong without putting it right. Refreshing.

She says in order to learn, self-motivation is key, along with attention and relevance. In the world of business it’s all about rights and ownership whereas in the education sector we are geared towards learning: so why don’t we have a more open style of learning? When you realise how much you can learn on the basis of other’s recommendations… information is power!

Dolors talks a little about the ‘university of the people’ (UoPeople) which is ‘the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education’. The educational model embraces the internet and reduces technology costs to bring university level studies within reach of people across the world. It has the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries. Obama says it’s a good alternative for those who are not ready for university. Low cost education for all. “By 2020 these universities will be abundant”.

Dolors talks about 2 models for the future:

The MOOC model (a mixed education model: Massive Open Online Course). It’s a free and open ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’ course.

Then followed CCK09 – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge by George Siemens. Content and conversations are open so participants can take the course in any direction that they find useful.

Dolors tells us about an open education conference in Barcelona next year, a meeting point of HE professionals. They all work with the internet and believe that an open social learning is very important. (Good start! Back to Barcelona again then…).

As was brought up in Stefaan’s discussion: it is no longer about software or hardware now – it’s about crossing the chasm. We need a change of mindset.

E learning is not just digitising the existing resources and getting them onto pdf with no interaction – that is not e-learning at its best.

So… does Google make us stupid? Quite the opposite, she says. The abundance of content makes knowing the right content to choose the most important. (The difficulty I suppose is teaching young people how to check the quality of their sources?).

Education should be open: no more ‘sign up’ communities. I suppose much of the hesitancy in teachers and academics is concern over making mistakes so publicly – but @dreig believes this is the key to learning. Making mistakes is OK.

So – what can we do to make small changes now? How can we make the most of what we have? Dolors suggests using blogs on which to publish learners’ work, using PLNs (personal learning networks ). These could also be used as professional networks. Everyone should be teachers and learners: we can comment on each other’s work, build knowledge collaboratively. Social skills and learning as a community is so important, as is trust and transparency, and authenticity. “Transparency is the new objectivity”! We don’t need to be total experts as long as we’re not claiming to be… (phew!). It may sound Utopian but it is the main goal she has in her quest to open up education. Get free of copyright based models - open course web; start freeing up content, publishing it on the web, working in class with a wiki – it all makes a difference.

Other things that educators can consider in improving education in the here are now, is simply to remember that customised, personalised, contextualised education will help people excel.

Centralising tools of dissemination, collective distribution throughout communities can help and there are already a number of tools available such as real time web (Twitter etc).

http://www.dreig.eu/caparazon/