Discussion thread: Why OERs?

Instructions

Please read and answer the questions that follow.
Make sure that you have an account on WikiEducator and that you are currently logged in. (Your WikiEducator username will appear as a link on the top right-hand area of your browser window.
Click on the edit tab (towards the top of your browser screen) and sign your edit by clicking on the or typing four tildes (~~~~) then click on the save button below your screen. You may also see help page on signatures.
Click back to the Wiki Discussions Menu here or on "Wiki Discussions" link located in navigation template above for the rest of the discussion forums.

Please read the OER Handbook Version 1.0

Why "share" expertise & resources in these times?

Well, my thought on this question is to respond with another question: "What better time to share?". A great deal of discussion is going on in the larger online world right now about a movement toward paid content. The brick-and-mortar world has been based on paid content.

It appears to me that the Wiki movement, and especially Wikieducator, is trying to establish the ground between these two extremes. Market drivers may actually take this choice out of our hands, but I would be saddened to see that. In the same way Paulo Freire created a vision of education not as a method of control, but as a source of liberation, I believe Wikieducators can build on and go beyond Freire's dream. John E. Smith 01:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

John, thank you for the link to Paulo Freire. There is a quote in the article that I think best summerizes his thinking. I think that he would have very much appreciated the power and freedon of wikis. The quote is: "There is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."—Jane Thompson, drawing on Paulo Freire, [2]--Rae Roberts 22:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Jane - thanks for the response and the quote - it's a good one. I must confess, while I am familiar with Freire, I have not delved into his work in much depth. Reading those words motivates me to do so. John E. Smith 02:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)