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Philipp: Is there utter confusion in the chat room? No? Tech assistant: meta.mako@gmail, didn't we have that?

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Phillip: You've got to click hangout, you can also send them the url. Why don't you send them the url, just copy

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it from the other window. Copy the url, then send it to them on skype. Ok. Tech assistant: This will be nice if we can

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get them into the hangout then go. Philipp: I think I'm going to get started while you're adding them, we have

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about 5 minutes. I already started it, can you get the room video onto the stream please, if its not already?

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Is the room video on the livestream? Ok cool. Tech assistant: He says ok. Philipp: Just check that the live hangout is

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working please. Maybe tell the chatroom people to refresh. Ok, I think I'm going to get started here. Can you do

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this quietly on the side? So the theme for today is open learning and actually I'm very glad that the two people

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who are joining us have finally managed to join us. Its Audrey Watters and Benjamin Mako Hill. I'm not going

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to introduce them in a lot of detail, they're going to have a chance to speak about themselves a little bit and

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their work in a second. But I'm very pleased that they were able to join us because on one hand I found them

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to be incredibly insightful and interesting observers and practictioners of open learning. And they've been looking

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at the space for a long time, I think they understand the dynamics better than most other people in this space. And

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at the same time, they come at this with a very strong foundation of values and principles, which I think in the

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current, technology driven, open education discussion is sometimes something we're not paying enough attention

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to. Having these two join us today is great. And also I consider them friends so its nice to see you guys although

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you're not here with us. I was a little worried that having the three of us talking about open learning, we

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would agree too much and that would be boring. So I am going to try to play more of a facilitator, moderator role

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and maybe ask some of the questions that I normally wouldn't be asking or I'd rather be answering to try to keep

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the discussion interesting. And also my typical day job role of being open learnings biggest fan. So for the conversation

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I hope we can keep it kind of loose and free ranging and kind of go where your interests take us. Also take

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some questions from the room and the online community. And maybe focus specifically on concrete work

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that you've done or that you've studied or that you've looked at and find interesting. So there are a lot of big ideas

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in some of the readings and I think its always useful to tie it back to actual work that people are doing and I think

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that both of you have such a wealth of experience, that would be interesting. So before we start I'm just going

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to run through a couple of slides, I sent you guys the slides beforehand, its a little bit of housekeeping and looking

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at what happened last week and also connecting it back to the online community. In terms of logistics, you are

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here live in a room with about fifteen students who are taking the course at MIT and then we're streaming it live

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online and there are probably about 100, 150 people watching it live and then a few thousand people will watch

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the video over the next few days. So there is a much broader audience than just the people here. So these are

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the people who are joining us who can't be here today in person. I think its interesting that last week, I was wearing

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a suit and tie and I was at an event just across the hall and I was by far the edgiest person on the panel despite

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the fact that I wore a suit and tie. And today I'm wearing a sweater and jeans and I'm by far the least edgy

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person in this panel. So I think thats interesting that the open learning space kind of tends in that direction anyways.

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I'm not going to say much about open learning, I'm going to let them speak about it. I found this picture of Audrey

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at a conference and I had to use it because I think it demonstrates a few things. One is that the open learning

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people are not huge fans of the traditional classroom instruction and also that she has an incredibly, I think this

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is the iconic forced smile of the formal student that we all know so well sitting in a formal education environment.

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Audrey: In the back of the room. Philipp: Exactly, in the back of the room, and probably doing things on your laptop that

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have nothing to do with the session. So a quick rundown, a quick summary of what happened last week.

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We actually had an online activity where we asked people to teach and learn from eachother and there were some

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amazing examples of what happened in the overall community. So I've just picked out a few of them as

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examples of the wide range of things that people offered and taught. And I got to see a few of you come to life

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from Kindergarten and Learn, actually I think Korean, so theres an interesting connection to Korean, and some people

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were doing calligraphy I think or geometric patterns, so interesting things. And the online community experimented

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with a whole range of different tools. Lots of them used google hangouts and kind of self organized, so it was

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nice to see it. Just some of my favorite examples of what people came up with include: Some of my favorite tricks for

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amusing children in restaurants and other venues of Extreme Waiting, which I think is a course thats going to

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run, with a lot of people for a long time. And then maybe the most kind of radical was Stage Combat including how

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to throw a good fake punch. And they posted a youtube video actually of how the session went and its quite

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amazing. And one of the interesting comments, thoughtful comments about the experience that I wanted to

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pick out is that one person reflected on the courage it takes to do these kind of offering to teach someone something

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or signing up. I think that relates nicely to open learning because when we're doing all these things in an open

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space, I think its sometimes easy to forget it does take courage to fail publicly or ask a question in front of

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thousands of people and so I thought this was an interesting comment and also a great response from Arne

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who said it also took him courage as well. He felt like the worst case that could happen is a bunch of strangers

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would think he's a nut and the best case is he'd have a bunch of new friends. So low risk, high potential and then

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go and a big smiley face. And then Simon Fogg whose now I think its now the second week in a row that Simons

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made it to the summary, and I thought just a good example for participants embracing the ethos of experimentation.

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He tried a google hangout that he organized for the first time himself and it was a big learning experience for

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him and we are constantly doing the same thing and its great to see that not only we get to play around with new

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tools and technology and break things as we see happened today but also people who participate in the course

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are doing the same and I think thats great to see. A quick note about whats happening with the backchannel

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chat. Because there are a lot of improvements and new ideas that we're implementing today. One is we have better

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video integration hopefully, where you can move the video window around, you can make it smaller, larger so it

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doesn't interfere with the chat so much. We have automated logs now so people will be able to review

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the conversation afterwards and we're thinking about some interesting analytics. We're also breaking people

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into smaller groups so if you're in the chat right now you will have noticed that you are in a smaller group than you

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usually are and there are three of them I think. This is kind of an experiment to see if we can get more in depth

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conversations going rather than having this firehose of hundreds of people speaking at the same time. So

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something we had in mind but probably not going to do because of the problems we had in the beginning, was

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to do a break-out activity but we'll see how the rest of the session goes. And finally last week we did a midweek chat

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where I think about forty people logged in to the chat and discussed what was going on in that week and asked

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questions. We had almost the same amount of conversation we had with almost 200 people or 250 people during

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the live sessions. But we're not sure exactly where we should go with the midweek chat, is that something we

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should do every week or do people maybe want to run their own chats? So we're kind of looking for some ideas

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from the community. And I also wanted to point out, to give a shout out to Drew Harry whose been the person

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behind a lot of the chat improvements and setting up the backchannel chat and whose really got some exciting

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ideas where that could go. He hasn't been in the room here and he hasn't been in the live sessions so I thought

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we could say thank you Drew and you should follow him on twitter, he's doing really interesting work in this

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space. And then the final announcement is this week for the first time we're going to do a rebroadcast. So a lot

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of people tune into the live session and then they can chat in the background. And then we thought for people in

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different timezones where this time is difficult we could do a rebroadcast or maybe two rebroadcasts. We're going

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to do one tomorrow, mainly for Europe which will happen at 6pm CET. And then we're hoping to still do one

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for Asia but we're looking for someone to partner with who can definitely be awake at that time because we may

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be sleeping. So without further ado, I'd love to jump into the discussion with Audrey and Mako and first of all

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thank you very much for joining us and bearing with us through some of these technical details and problems we

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had in the beginning and might even still be having. I'm seeing people frantically rearranging laptops around.

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And I thought a good first question would be to ask you how you got interested in open learning and what your

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trajectory is. And as you talk about that maybe also give us some insight on what your definition of open learning

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is because there are lots of different aspects of open or people have lots of different understandings of open and

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of learning. And I thought I could ask you guys to introduce yourselves by talking a little bit about your open learning

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experiences and why don't we start with Audrey. And i know we've had lots of conversations around this stuff and

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around the larger courses that are happening right now. Also theres one conversation about the diminishing value

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of the crafts where people, theres a more standardized way of education and learning that people seem to be expected

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to participate in and I think we were talking about carpentry or something and why isn't that more promoted or

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appreciated pathway? I don't know if thats the direction you want to take, feel free to go in a totally different direction

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maybe just kind of take it away for a couple of minutes and talk a little bit about your work and how it relates to

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open learning. Audrey: So, my name's Audrey, I'm a education technology writer. And I've actually been

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thinking about the way technology impact the way we teach and learn for a very long time. When I was a college student,

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I actually dropped out of college and had a baby very young and ended up going back to school in the '90s under

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what was then called distance education. And always thinking about the ways in which technology was very

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helpful for folks like me who needed to have a different sort of access to learning resources. But it wasn't until I was

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actually in graduate school much later that I started thinking about open learning particularly with the rise of

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blogging and moving a lot of my conversations about not just what happened in the classroom but my own

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explorations and my own place in the academic world, that I started to really think about the sorts of networks

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I was able to develop and the ways in which I was able to practice this, my work, my research in a different setting

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one that was more transparent than academia often allows graduate students to be. And I've been blogging

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actively since around 2004 and for me thats the way in which I practice online. Some of it obviously has to do with

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how I license my work, the way in which I share my work publicly but its also this notion of different sort

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of transparency and a willingness to put ideas out there that might be half baked and engage in building networks

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with people, sharing ideas with people, working around exploring ideas together on the web. So I feel as though

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thats a very different way of thinking about learning than traditional classrooms, sort of higher ed as I was exposed

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to it. I do think its been interesting to watch, someone who spends a lot of time looking at this new interest and excitement in learning online that might

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much of what I see actually replicates behaviors that are still very traditional in the classroom. Its less about open

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exploration and more about moving that lecture scenario into a web based one. I think theres a lot to be said

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about inquiry driven, self driven, open connections that online learning offers that simply by having open

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enrollment in online courses doesn't necessarily address. Philipp: Yeah and I definitely want to come back to that

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point about whats going on right now. But Mako, over to you. So you have a wealth of things you could refer

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back to but you shared a very interesting, very personal essay with me just a couple of days ago which I hadn't

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read. I don't know if you want to reflect a little bit on that, kind of what you describe as unlearning and joining

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this geek culture and relating it back to whats happening in learning and education today. Mako: Can you

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hear me now? Is the mic working? So the essay that I shared is called The Geek Show Inherits the Earth or

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something like that, my story of unlearning. The quick summary is that I grew up in, for a lot of reasons and in a lot

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of ways not a huge fan of formal schooling as it was applied to me in particular. At the same time that I was

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struggling in school in a lot of ways, I was really thriving in a set of communities around technology communities,

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technology development communities. I initially when I was twelve years old started contributing to a bunch of free

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software what a lot of people now would call open source, operating systems projects. I worked a lot on a project called the Debian Project

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which is a pretty widely used operating system in the flavor of Linux. I was part of the founding team for

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for the Ubuntu Project which is probably the most widely used Linux distribution.

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And so thats a little bit out of order, but I've been working on free software for a long time, sort of had this

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life that I would much rather be spending my time on than a lot of the things I doing learning in school. Whereas I was

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learning an enormous amount of stuff producing software that by the time I ended up in college was used by

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many millions of people. I finished high school early and moved to Ethiopia because my parents thought that

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was a great idea. They liked the idea of us seeing the world and I came back to go to college at sort of an alternative

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liberal arts school called Hampshire College which attempts to build an alternative approach to education and

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to learning into the curriculum. No grades or tests that sort of thing. And I spent a lot of time at Hampshire and

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subsequently I've basically, I've been in and out of school, I'm finishing my PH.D. now at MIT but I spent a lot

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of time trying to reconcile both my sort of position in very traditional academic environments and a lot of my work in

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in these free and open software communities where really many of my friends are and where a lot of types of things

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in the world that I'm most proud of, have occurred. I think that I have worked in a few projects which are explicitly, what

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I would consider open learning projects. I worked a bit with the One Laptop Per Child project. I really came to MIT

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originally because the project was starting up and I wanted to get involved in some of the discussion about the software there. Although

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a lot of communities that I work in are projects that aren't explicitly designed as learning projects, projects like Wikipedia,

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Debian or a bunch of these free open software projects but I think enormous amount of learning takes place

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in what I think are these wonderful environments where people can join and begin to participate and ramp up

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and learn in that process. Thats the context in which I've tried to approach this and some of the ways in which I've

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tried to bring these two worlds that I operate in, together. My research is about free and open source software communities

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and involves work in a lot of these communities as well. Philipp: Yeah actually could you maybe give a short summary

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of how these communities work, because not everyone may be as familiar, so without going into all the details?

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But if you could do a quick summary of how does an open community like an open source software community

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work, whats special about it? Mako: Theres lots of people who write pieces of software, we'll take an example

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of pieces of software although people also create, try to apply similiar sorts of ideas to the other types of

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knowledge products as well. One thing, I'll write a piece of software and what I'll do very often is, I'll write a piece

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of software to solve a particular problem that I have. I then usually put a free license on it and put it either on my

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website or on another hosting website like Github, one many people would use and then I'll invite other people

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to come work with me on it. What happens the vast majority of time, no one really shows up. But sometimes

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in a number of these projects are large communities people who are working together and collaborating on mailing lists and chat

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channels. There are large numbers of people, the majority of whom are making smaller fixes like hey there

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was a bug in this I wanted this to work in a different way, they can download the software, they can make a

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change, they can share it back with the community. But sometimes people become much more involved, you end

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up even with sometimes pretty complicated organizations. So the Debian project which is what I really

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got involved in is the product of, now includes more than 30,000 distinct pieces of software, all sort of integrated

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together. It involves somewhere around 5000 people who have explicit membership in the project, theres a

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membership process, its a real community. I've travelled around the world, almost every city I go to I just look

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up the list of local Debian developers. I'm going to be meeting up with some people, I'm here in Mainz in

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Germany and meeting up with some Debian people while I'm here. Because theres a community of people who've

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been working together, seen eachothers bugs, fixed eachothers bugs and through that process, we've developed

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together an operating system which I'm running on my computer right now using it to talk to you and which

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millions of other people are as well. So its a pretty cool process and community. Philipp: Well the process you've

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just described as kind of putting things out that you've worked on and letting other people contribute or give you

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critique actually sounds very similiar to what Audrey was talking about when she spoke about her blogging practice.

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So I think theres an interesting question about how generalizable are these practices from open source

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software communities to other areas of learning or other communities. I was wondering if actually there are

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two directions we could take with this. One is, one thing thats special about open source software is that

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everyone who participates in that community to some degree works on the same thing, theres one thing that

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people are producing together and theres lots of little pieces that you can tackle there to work on this one thing.

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Maybe in learning other things we don't have that one or maybe we do. And thats one question there, how

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generalizable is that idea. The other one, the question that always comes up as well, this is for software people,

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this is for technology people but is this going to work the same process for other areas of learning maybe the

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humanities? And so maybe over to Audrey to just kind of riffing on this idea of how generalizable are these open

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source software lessons to other areas? Audrey: I do think that some of this, I think as we take what we can from

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open source communities, from software communities, some of this we have to think of in terms of metaphor. So

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when I write something and if I were to post it and share it on Github theres sort of a different expectation about

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what an essay does than what a piece of software does. An essay does not have to be executable in the same way

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that a piece of software does. When we think about debugging an essay its a very different process, I would

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think practically than debugging a software. You could say in some ways its the same way, do you have the semicolon

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in the right place? But I think that when we're thinking about some of these things its actually about debugging

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outside of software is interrogating, interrogating more than just does the code run and can we improve the code?

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But I do think there are some really important and really valuable things that other fields can learn from open source

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communities and part of it has to do with this notion of debugging and thinking about looking at things closely.

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Thinking about how can we fork ideas and always give credit back to build better ways of giving credit back to

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where ideas came from. And also sort of this notion of remembering to license things openly. I've been

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experimenting with putting some of my work up on Github as well and I think there are a lot of interesting

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ideas that we can learn from it. And there are a lot of things that we do in learning that I think we could make

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better use of some of the tools that have been built around something like Github, to be able to track changes,

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to have a more transparent way of filing and managing issues around our learning and not just around our code. Philipp: Yes

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maybe just a quick note for those who may not be aware of what Github is. Its a source code repository where you if

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you're writing software could store your source code and then it was very easy for other people to make a copy

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of that source code to work on it for yourself and send back requests for improvements. So people would fork

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software projects. Maybe one of the more interesting things about it, is that it then spawned this huge community

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of collaboration where people would be working on eachothers software projects, change requests and it

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has grown to, if you were a software developer today, you'd kind of have to be on Github almost to be active

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in the community. So Mako, kind of continuing with how generalizable are these lessons for non-software

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learning communities. I know that you've worked on kind of governance/community practices and guidelines

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and I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about what you wanted to achieve in the open source community

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and then think about would that be a good model for more non-software learning communities? Mako: I would say

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first that the primary, the reason that I became involved with working in these software communities

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was primarily because there was set of principled statements about why software should be free. And

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the argument basically was two-fold. It said that it was important that software was free so that we could share

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it and that anyone who wanted a piece of software could have it because of course if I write a piece of software

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I can give it to everyone for the same cost that I give it to any single person. So one argument was that we think

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that sharing is good and that there is to some degree, an ethical imperative to share when we can so we should

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do it. And the second point was that software should be under the control of the users because the software

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that I choose to use mediates my experience of the world, I'm limited in my ability to communicate to you by

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decisions made by the team that wrote the software that I'm using to communicate with you all now, hopefully.

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Mostly successfully. And those people who, the technology designers, the people who are implementing

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the technology have an enormous amount of power over all the people who use the technology. They are

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determining to some degree what I can say or how I can say it, who I can say it to. And so free software was

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a statement, I think most importantly about, who should be able to control their experience of the world.

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Because the argument went our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by technology. So I think that

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from the perspective, from this principled level, I think the principles apply very clearly to thinking about learning

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or education because I think to the extent of our experience of the world is mediated by the ways in which

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we learn that the questions about how we learn and when we can learn should be under control of the learners.

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From a principled perspective, I think that things translate very well. The main argument in favor of free software

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, the reason that I decided to work on this stuff and lots of other people did as well, I think this is something that

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applies very well. In terms of the organizational forms or the particular tactics or even the particular tools like Github

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I think theres a sense in which, talking about the degree to which Github applies or doesn't apply, and I think in

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some ways it could work effectively for something and in other ways its less good. I think that terms of what Audrey

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mentioned in terms of questions of bug fixing. I think of work sometimes, I sometimes divide them into works

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that are functional and works that are less functional because its very easy to imagine submitting a bug fix to

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something like an encyclopedia article and in fact people do it all the time because there are things that are sometimes clearly

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wrong, sometimes its a little more difficult to understand what might be right or the most right thing in a

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particular context. But I think that even that conversation is something that happens a lot in the case of software very often.

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I think software is actually the.., as someone whose spent a lot of time writing software, I think the question of

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what is or is not clearly a bug is something people will spend an enormous amount of time talking about. And

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I think thats a useful conversation that teaches people a lot about how we can learn a lot about it. But I think there

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are lots of lessons in terms of the particular tools and terms of the particular processes and forms of organization

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Wikipedia was explicitly inspired by the free software movement, it used licenses and tools which were

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modelled after things which had happened, which had been built and used in software development for a long time.

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I have a lot of , I think that we can look around the world and see lots of places that we can learn from but

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I think theres lots to be learned in a bunch of different ways. Audrey: I think that theres something as well about this

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notion of software in particular, proprietary software thats increasingly that you are unable to crack it open and

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look at it and it truly is a black box. For me, thats the opposite of what, thats the absolute antithesis of what we

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want learning to be. We want learning to be, we want to be able to hack it open and take a look at whether or not

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we're talking about our own processes or the subjects that we might be learning about. We do want to be able to

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crack it open, study how it works, look at all of the pieces and figure it out at sort of a fundamental level, back

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to use the analogy, back to the level of the code. So I think theres a lot to think about. How does open source have

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a different way of us thinking about software that moves away from this black box that you don't want to know

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in that scenario, you don't get to know how it functions, you're just supposed to know that it works.

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And so I think its important in learning that you don't just get this received knowledge that you're supposed to nod

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and say, oh yes this is the way it works, of course it does because it appeared in my text or my professor told

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me that this was the truth. As learners we should be allowed to crack things open and look more deeply. So I think the

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open source model , openly licensed tools, things that let us dive in rather than stand back and consume are

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incredibily important. Mako: I totally agree with that and I think the..., but also become a producer of the stuff. Audrey:

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Yes. Mako: The metaphor that I sometimes use is imagine a world where we taught everyone to read but

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not to write. And thats the world we live in, in regards to lots of different kinds of technology and software where

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people don't have the ability, the can learn but they can't change it. I think thats a , you can imagine what

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the implications to like democracy would be. Its pretty striking. Philipp: Thanks, whats very interesting to me is

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hearing you talk about it. One of the articles we read this week was Illich's Learning Webs chapter from

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Deschooling Society. And a lot of things you just mentioned, you don't want the world to be a black box. You

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want to be able to tinker with it and look under the hood. He wrote about the Web of Things and had this fantastic

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idea where could you go anywhere, any building, any person, look under their hood and say, how does that work?

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I think theres a certain attitude in the open source world where people actually expect the world to work like that.

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And sometimes even when the law or other limitations make that harder, we try to find ways around it. And then also

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I think that theres a very strong notion of agency that I'm hearing in your remarks where its not only that we

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should place limits on who controls access to learning and education but also that the people who are the learners

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should be able to choose how they want to participate, first of all we shouldn't limit who can participate as much as

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possible but then also how they want to participate is a question that we don't ask enough in formal education. So

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it kind of leads me to a transition into a topic thats come up in the last few weeks again and again. In this course we

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often talk about very interesting and compelling ideas for how learning can take place and we find examples for

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it but often, it hasn't really changed the institutions in which most of the learning still happens. Theres often a question

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about, "I'm convinced this is a good idea, but how do I make my school do this or how do I make my university

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do this?" And I think we should spend some time talking about this broadly. The question to tie it up would be,

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there is a very strong notion of activism in both of your backgrounds and works and there is certainly this kind of,

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a little bit us vs them feeling and controlling these things on the fringes. I think thats been very useful because

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its given us an identity, it creates a community of people who believe in the same things. But I'm wondering

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whats the next phase in this. Will we have to be the alternative or is there a way to infuse the system with some

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more of this activism? ...... I know I know either of you please. Audrey: I think that we're starting to see some

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pretty interesting things particularly around push back around open access in publications, thats definitely

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something thats connected to institutional power. Your success as a professor sort of deeply intertwined

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professionally with your ability to publish, so how can professors help leverage and change the publishing, the

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academic publishing industry to be more open access. So some of the walls, the barriers to be able to access that

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knowledge come down. I think we're seeing that around the open data movement so that people are showing

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their work and having anyone has the access to the data, the raw data that went into making various tools, or

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making various decisions or doing research. I think the ways in which we're seeing openness permeate

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institutions, government, universities, Science, I do think we're starting to see some movement forward but I'm

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not sure, I do think that even in those cases all of that work feels very much like activism and it does feel like

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you're having to agitate for pretty substantial changes in which these processes and institutions and business

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models have worked up until now. Philipp: Mako maybe just sort of tee off for you, why don't you say a few words

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about where you're headed because I know you're moving into a more formal academic setting and how is

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the open source activist going to be the professor of the future? Mako: I have a couple of ways to answer that. The first is to say

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I think that we've made enormous progress, I'm not an old guy yet but I'm now no longer, I'm 32 years old. Philipp: Thanks for clarifying that. But I've been

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working in this space for now 28 years in free software and we've made so much progress. When I was a kid starting

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out in this space just in terms of software you couldn't, it ran on almost no hardware, it crashed all the time, it was

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super buggy, it had no feature. I'm running an operating system which is almost entirely free software, my phone

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runs free software, your phone probably runs free software unless you have an iphone. And yes is it the world that

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I had envisioned in every detail, no of course not. There are lots of ways in which lots of things have taken turns

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for what I think the worst but I think we've made important progress. The second point is that I want to continue

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to be the idealist. Yeah, I see lots and lots of ways in which we can, we want to make things better and I want

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to stake out that ground. Other people will make the compromises necessary to put the stuff on my

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phone, maybe my constitution is the activist constitution and thats something which I want my world to be the crazy

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not just saying that things are not good enough, but showing or trying to build examples of how it can be

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better. And I hope that I never live to feel that things couldn't be better because they just worked out already.

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I think that means that I've lost my imagination or something. I think that that said theres all kinds of

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structural limitations that cause one to even in my own work not be able to live up to my own expectations. I can't

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as I teach, you know I'm going to be at the University of Washington teaching, starting next year and I'll be teaching

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classes at a state university and theres all kinds of ways of running classes. I want to say everyone gets an A in the

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class today, if you never want to come back again, great, if you do maybe we could teach eachother something.

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I haven't talked about it to the head of the department yet but I guess there will have to be some compromise

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between that position and whatever else I'm going to work out. But I think that the fact that we have to

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compromise or settle does not mean that we can't move the needle. And I hope to be pushing hard on that

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needle for the rest of my life. And I think if theres enough of us doing it we can make real progress and I've seen

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enough success in projects that I've seen in areas that I've worked on in relation to software, in relation, for example

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encyclopedias which are now freely available. Theres so much great free and open stuff now that didn't exist 20 years

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ago. If we can accomplish as much, even if its only the, even if we accomplish as much, I'll be happy. If we can

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support the first derivative as well that would be even better. I don't know, I'm optimistic and I try to compromise

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as little as possible. Thats my answer. Philipp: Good, I think one thing that has been happening in the last year or so is that more

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and more institutions are at least talking about experimenting with open learning and open education.

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The example are these MOOCs which is an acronym that stands for Massive Open Online Courses, its even got

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open in the name of the thing whatever that thing is. And I think for many institutions they really do feel like this is a big

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experiment, this is a way of opening up access to the institution. I know Audrey has been writing and thinking

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about this quite a bit and I wanted to together reflect a little on are these open courses examples for the kind of open

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learning that we have in mind, or that you have been thinking about? Or where do they fall short and what are

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some of the things you find interesting about them? What are some of the things you'd like to see them do

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differently? Audrey: I think its really interesting to me particularly as Mako was saying we are living in a

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world now where there are so many interesting and powerful open projects that I'm seeing many, I'm seeing open become a

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word that is a bit like green washing, that as long as you slap natural on the label of your food, of course its

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healthy and good for you. So I do think we still need to interrogate what we mean by open and I think that its

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incredibly important that these classes are open enrollment. I think that letting anyone who wants to participate

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in an online class, sign up, check it out for free is huge particularly in light of the high cost of college tuition. I

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think this is incredibly significant and I don't want to diminish that at all. I think that those of us that are trying

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to push these conversations forward, I think that we do need to ask other questions like is this sufficient, is open

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enrollment sufficiently open, are these classes using openly licensed work? Do these classes live on the open web?

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Are people in these classes able to form their own learning communities? And to use a technical term, to fork

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the ideas that are happening in the lecture and then run down and build their own, go down their own learning

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path? I think theres a lot of what I would consider open learning that I tend not to see in these MOOCs that are really in some ways

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an online version of the massive lecture hall in which the professor is still the person who has, purportedly, who has

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all the knowledge and is there to fill the student's brains with what they need to know in order to pass the

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multiple choice tests every 15 minutes. I think we need to push the boundaries still for MOOCs, I think they're great

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first step in terms of access. But I'm not sure that thats my vision of what open learning looks like. Philipp: Mako

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I don't know if you've looked at these open courses a lot or if you've got thoughts on this? Mako: Yes, I think

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that for me the most transformative learning experiences have been the ones outside the context of courses.

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I've had some great transformative courses but I think that, I've never taken a programming course, yes thats true

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I've worked in operating system projects for a long time, I've learned in communities where I wanted to do things

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and had to, I looked in books, I looked at some type of course or teaching materials but mostly I learned from

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working with people, being exposed to code written by people that were better than I was, for example. I sort of

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half took one, I was one of those people who was curious, so I signed up for one and then dropped out half way

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in the middle, I guess like many people. I thought it was interesting and exciting. I totally agree with Audrey, this

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idea of theres a lot of important questions, that a lot of people at the moment are struggling with and I think even

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fighting over what open enough is or what it means. I think thats a great opportunity for all of us who have

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strong feelings about this to come in and help answer that. To think hard about what we think open enough is and sort

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of draw a line in the sand. Philipp: I think we have a question from the back channel or from the room.

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Mitch: One question in the back channel is around the idea of debugging, Susan VG started the conversation

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in the back channel when Mako was talking about debugging software. Then a discussion about debugging

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ideas and how can we draw that idea of debugging to all sorts of different things in open learning. Not just

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thinking debugging the thing, but debugging our own thinking, so maybe they could reflect somewhat on b

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broader ways of thinking about debugging and open learning? Audrey: I think debugging is a very important

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thing in terms of our own learning and in terms of sharing our ideas with others. Its not necessarily a way in

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which we often frame problem solving but I think it is a very interesting way to do so. Its something that as a writer,

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someone who spends a lot of time writing, i taught writing for a number of ways as well. Thinking about the way

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in which the logic for example of an argument works is something that you can think about in terms of debugging

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because of the logical steps of an argument do require certain perhaps not the same level of ability to run a

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program would but theres still has to be some process by which part A connects to part B and that leads you to part

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C. So I think debugging is a really useful concept and its useful for I think students for their own processes as

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well. Define when they stumble, define places where the idea just doesn't execute correctly or efficiently. Mako:

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Yeah, I agree. Debugging is one of these metaphors that is something that I use like in reference to not software

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all the time. Its one little piece of that software developer me that has come in and thought about other

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places as well. I think its more about the process, the idea of ok lets think about after this step whats the state

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as a way of breaking down certain types of problems in the way of undressing. I think its really useful. Theres a

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bunch of interesting things, thinking about patterns, I'm doing the same kind of thing here and here and here

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maybe I could think about whats the sort of abstract thing being used here? Also a lot of interesting tools. I also

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think its limiting that there are lots of, not everything can be easily expressed as a bug, a lot of things are just

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sort of nested or a matter of taste or fuzzier, they're less clearly wrong and so less clearly thought about in terms

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of bugs or debugging. But I do think its a very useful process. I also like the idea, this is something that

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applied to the way that I write for example in general, make the first path and go back and try to find the ways in which

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things don't work, identify issues or bugs and then sort of address them. Philipp: Yes, we have another...just one

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quick comment as you were talking about it, you reminded me of in formal education, you learn something,

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you write a test at the end, you get the results, you move on, theres no time for debugging. And debugging

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is considered something you wouldn't do in education. Either you've learned it or you haven't and the reality is you

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move on to the next thing. The reality is that, this course is an example of an experiment that gets debugged as we go along.

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And often things go wrong but its often the best way to learn, to push yourself to the point where maybe things

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will break and then debug them with the other people and I think its a skill that we are still learning because

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when you're about to start the broadcast and the audio isn't working it freaks you out, its nervewrecking but in a way

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its more exciting to learn that way than to sit in a room with no audience and play around with the software. But anyway

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theres another question here from the online community. Ricarose: So this question is from TL2 and they're

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asking if the panelists have any advice for a classroom teacher, how they can advance open learning in these

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settings? Audrey: With classroom teachers with students, I think that part of it has to be moving towards a more

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collaborative environment. I think theres something about traditional schooling in which we're taught as though the teacher

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the textbook and although we're sitting in a classroom full of other learners, its somehow our learning is our own and

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happens in isolation. I think that learning to work together, learning to debug and trouble shoot, solve problems

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together, to me is the first step in openness, to be able to lay out your thinking in front of others and bounce ideas

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off of one another. I think moving away from this isolated, individual, being forced to learn alone, is really the

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first step towards openness. Knowing that we always learn together, we always learn socially, we work

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collaboratively, as humans we should help make

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learning look more like that rather than expect students to stumble through things in isolation. Mako: I would totally

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echo that. So one thing that I found very effective, is doing my work in these, not just outside the individual but

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within a group but out in the internet in these public spaces, it depends a little bit on the classroom but its often

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very possible to encourage the students not just to document for themselves or for the classroom but to do

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it in Wikipedia or a wiki on a particular subject and not to just throw it out there as a lot of people do but to engage

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with other editors, people in the site, to do that. Its possible to if you're writing stuff in Scratch to upload those things to

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the Scratch online community, if you're writing software to upload it into Github or something else. In some cases

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people are going to come back, they're going to work on it, they're going to make comments and that sort of

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engagement out in the world can lead to both the creation of these communities but also a kind of, I think when

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people know their stuff is going to be public, they often treat it differently then they would otherwise in ways that

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are good and in ways that are less good. I think that at least for some large sort of work its the kind of thing that you

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can think about applying in classrooms right now which lots of classrooms are already doing in various ways.

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In terms of these existing communities, encouraging people to get involved and put their stuff out there and try to

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contribute to something that is not just directly useful to a lot of people but directly useful to, really useful to the

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learning process itself. Audrey: I think that ties back to something you were saying earlier as well that we want to

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really help students become not just the consumers of knowledge but also producers and creators of knowledge

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themselves. So when you help students contribute to learning communities, contribute online, they recognize

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that they have a stake in the creation and construction of knowledge that they really aren't

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just these receptacles to have their brains filled up with other peoples stuff. I think that thats incredibly powerful that we want

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people to feel that they can build and make not just consume things. Mako: And I think that so much energy

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and effort goes into producing assignments which are then read by the teacher, just sort of put to the side. And

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people learn in the process so that can be useful. But I think that in so many of these examples, there are people

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who would love to really have problems that they want solved. Wikipedia, the vast majority of content in

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Wikipedia doesn't exist in any language other than English. People would love a poor translation even done by

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someone who was learning and they might be able to fix it up and if you stay involved you could learn in that

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process, is just one example. Philipp: Do you want to skip that? We're running a little bit.. Mitch: There's a few more

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questions but maybe we can ask Mako and Audrey to answer them online, we'll post them online and try

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to get them engaged in the discussion in the Google + community. Philipp: That would be great and we're happy to

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point you to the right places and maybe summarize them. That would actually be a perfect example also for the open

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learning communities we've been speaking about. We have to wrap up but I have a last question to you guys and then we're going to talk a little

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bit about logistics. And that is, people, a lot of the responses that I often hear when we talk about these open

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learning ideas is well this works for some people and that group is sometimes even described as an elite. Its not

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the old elite who went to all the right schools necessarily but it is, both of you have very compelling personal stories

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and you've been very resourceful and you've had strong interests and you've followed your passions. So I think

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some people may feel, how can I apply those practices to my own life? And I think it would be great if maybe you

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could say a few sentences about, is this a new elite or is this something fairly easy to pick up by anyone? And kind

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of apply to their own situations? This is the part where I'm looking for an inspiring closing remarks. Audrey: I think

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that they don't work for everyone. I think if we can be make learning be passion based, if it can be inquiry based

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if we can encourage curiosity we might not have students solving a whole new legion of math worksheets

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but maybe we'd have them work on some pretty cool, things that really authentically drive their own learning forward.

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I do think optimizing for passion, optimizing for curiosity are the whim here. And I think, I recognize there

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are certainly barriers to doing that, there are lots of barriers to doing that online even. But I do think that finding what interests you

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particularly for young learners and going with that is an incredibly empowering first start and its something that

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schooling tends not to do. Mako: And I think that not everyone is going to become a Debian developer, not

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everyone is going to work on the kinds of projects that I've worked on and I think thats great. Because theres a world

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of other stuff which is not being done at all and is really important. Theres a bunch of really great projects

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going around to seniors and helping provide a little bit of information to them on how they can contribute to

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Wikipedia for example so that they can document their own experiences in their lives in their towns and villages and

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spaces. Its been enormously useful to them and transformative to them that they are able to do this. And its

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really great for the rest of the world that gets access to all this really great information. There are huge, I think that

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whats necessary is more just, everyone has skills and interests which other people want enormously at any

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given point and I think could benefit from that. I think that those of us who've been, and I count myself as one of

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them, who've been building tools to support this kind of work have historically focused on the kinds of things that

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are useful to them. So as a software developer I spent a lot of time writing tools that are often useful for other software

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developers. And I think that if we spent 10% as much time building tools for great documentation of, or collaboration

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around articles of fashion or clothing, we would have so much more work in that space. Thats just an example

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of something that I think has been relatively underserved in these communities as compared to software. But I

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think you can just look around and I see that theres a world of opportunity and I think that this is only going to get

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broader and only going to get bigger and no one has any excuse anymore. Philipp: Thank you both for participating

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and tuning in from, actually Makos in Berlin, Audrey is in California, we're all over the world here, and sharing

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your stories and your thoughts on this. There are a couple of more slides about next week. I'm going to hand over

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to Mitch or Ricarose. I've also got the remix slide so maybe, do you want to? Ricarose: So next week we'll have

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the theme will be Social Creativity and we'll have Gerard Fischer and Andres Monroy Hernandez with us.

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For the activity next week, we're going to do another activity with Scratch, we're going to do a remixing

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activity. As you can see there is a project page in Scratch website, scratch.mit.edu and we'll ask you to explore

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some of their projects there and find a project that you think is interesting and you can download it and look at the

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code and remix it. So you can build upon this project and we'd like you to share it again on this Scratch website and

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in the project notes share what you changed and also remember to give credit. Is there anything else? Philipp: No

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thats it so thanks for participating, thanks to you guys again, thanks to the online community and for those who

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who are, for whom this time didn't work maybe we'll see you tomorrow for the rebroadcast of the session.