Open Educational Content/Top10Reasons

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.

Top 10 Reasons to Use Open Educational Content (DRAFT)

(Note: this will develop out of my conversations with my peers in my Master's program, regarding a possible Master's Project Topic on Educational Content Use (--Randy Fisher 20:48, 15 November 2007 (CET))

• You can't take it with you (mortality)
  • as people get older, they evolve in their thinking and behaviour
• Knowledge is a sustainable resource - "Knowledge will not suffer the tragedy of the Commons"
• No single person can dominate the world (greed)
• Collaborative authoring saves time and money - and distributes the risk
• The opportunity to truly bridge distance, cultures and communities
  • Strengthens positive social patterns and human interaction
• It's about 'values' ~ believing in:
  • Access to AND learning - as a fundamental human right
  • open source values
• ...can stand side-by-side with monetization of learning content - even create case for value-added services
• Some things in life should still be free (today i found out that the Arial font is proprietary!...hard to believe)
• Learning materials can be 'frozen' and copied off the wiki at any point in time.
• Open content authoring can help institutions decrease the cost of producing materials - future competitive advantage will come from increasing learner support resources / systems and quality
• Content is NOT tied to one particular device - it can be used by anyone across any platform.

More to come...