Opening education

I’m taking David Wiley‘s Introduction to Open Education class at Utah State University this semester.

“But Gavin, didn’t you graduate?” Sure I did. But you’re never too old to learn, and when it comes to open education, I’ve got of learning to do. I could probably teach a class on, say, FOSS or open access, but I’ll admit I’d never heard of open education until the iCommons Summit this year. I’d heard of OpenCourseWare, and of course I’m familiar with many of the concepts, but there’s still much more I want to know.

Open education holds tremendous promise. It speaks to much of my platform when I was a candidate for Student Senate at the University of Florida. My vision of the university is an institution dedicated to creating and sharing knowledge, with a relentless drive to best fulfill that mission. Open education is squarely in line with that vision. But it’s more than that, too. I really don’t know much about what open education will mean for middle school students or for educators. I want to know, so I can help put that knowledge into action.

I’m not taking the class for credit, but by participating, I ensure that David Wiley reads my blog once a week (heh).

I look forward to interacting with the other students in the class, and look forward to a rewarding experience.

For my classmates: You can find my posts for the class here, or get the RSS feed if you prefer. (You are also more than welcome to visit the rest of my site, as well.)

P.S. I’m a week late joining the class, but I’ll start with this week’s assignment to be on schedule, and backtrack to Week 1 when I have time.