 The purpose of the next hour, it's less than an hour actually, is to synthesize the conversations from the breakout groups to hear back from what has happened in the groups and really also identify areas of potential collaboration as we move forward. I'm sure there are many opportunities here to connect the dots and there is, of course, no one who could do a better job than Carolina to guide us through this exercise, tie things together. Carolina is one of my all-time favorite Berkman Fellows, a former Berkman Fellow, is of course well known to all of you and it's just delightful to have you back on campus and I'm looking forward to this session. We will end at 11.30 sharp, we'll then please cluster again in the clusters that we've been working together over the past few days and we'll then walk over and we will give specific instructions to another building so that you also see another part of the Harvard Law School campus for lunch as well as cluster meetings. But more on that later on with that over to you, thank you. So hi everybody, good morning. I hope everybody had some breakfast today, I still see some fruits there so maybe that's one of your last times to be healthy this morning and have some fruits. I want to thank Urs and Berkman Center and Hall of Foundation for putting this together and thanks for trusting me the job of the moderation of the session. I want to call up on, first we're going to do a 15-20 minutes report on the breakout sessions so we can learn from our fellows that were in other groups how the discussions went there. So I would first call up on Ronaldo Lemus that moderated the international panel and then we're going to move forward to Gian and also Justin Reich and who coordinated the informal group. And then if you also could report five minutes. So Ronaldo if you could come up here and if the other reporters could come and sit closer here so we can move faster to you guys soon. Thank you Carol. Actually this is a very hard task to be the first. I didn't have the time to sum up everything. We had a very good discussion about so many items. We had descriptions about the OER policies and situations in countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Mali, Brazil and so many others. I cannot go through all of them but I would like to get you some of the points that were raised in the discussion. So for instance one of the first points is that sometimes money is actually available in some developing countries in order to build resources for educational materials, not necessarily for OER and sometimes not really attached to good policies. So one of the challenges is actually how do you play the issue of getting better policies at the state level and also like how civil society is also a very important component for that to happen. Another thing that we heard is also about initiatives for instance the open data initiative in Kenya which is not really specifically within the definition of open educational resources and actually when we discussed that that actually raised the issue between a sort of a distinction between open educational resources and open educational connections. What is the difference should we focus on content production or should we focus on other forms of like creating new forms of learning of connection between the students and professors and I think that was basically one of the pervasive issues that ran out through all the discussions that we had. So we had like descriptions of what is going on in New Zealand for instance and the open access license initiative that was happening there but not really extended to the tertiary education situation. We also talked about institutional resistance so you have like sometimes publishers resisting OER and other sorts of challenges. And another very important point that was raised and I think it's especially interesting considering the case of Brazil which is sometimes the government doesn't really understand in full what's going on in terms of open educational resources and sometimes that's a good thing. So we discussed the issue of the secretary of education of Sao Paulo which did a very interesting and comprehensive open educational resources program but then when it was accomplished he confessed that he was glad he didn't really examine all the details because if he had he wouldn't have passed it. So basically he said oh I'm glad that I did it. Now I understand how complicated it could have been if I really had understood the whole thing and so sometimes that is a good thing in the case of Sao Paulo. He was glad and actually when he adopted the program now he's pushing for a new legislation to be approved actually mandating the same sort of thing for the future as well. So one of the final questions that we had I'm not going to take much of the time was actually a very good question coming from a colleague from Mali and she basically said but what happens in countries where you don't really have the infrastructure to enjoy OER. So for instance you don't have access to computers people they type slowly they don't have really the resources that are necessary to enjoy the benefits of OER and that was basically one of the final comments that we had and my comment was that basically I wished it had been the first comment we had like in our session because that is another very important issue that is unresolved but I think has to be dealt with as well. I think that's pretty much it. Just to finish this is just a brief summary we talked much more about this and we had an excellent scribe that was Alicia she took like very comprehensive notes about the session so I wonder if anybody is interested in a detailed description she can certainly make them available they are very good notes thanks. Thank you Ronaldo. So should I call up Justin to report. Hello so let me here's the brief summary we were talking about domestic context which I think we primarily interpreted as state and national domestic policy kinds of issues. So I would say that we had three ideas and two threats that would probably summarize our conversation certainly the idea of supporting open policy which Cable described really eloquently yesterday at the state level and the federal level is kind of the big no brainer idea that we didn't talk about because we all agreed with it but we thought about sort of two complementary pieces to that. One is is that you know that education is famous for having a decoupling between educator practice and district state federal policy and so complimenting open policy with some kind of national efforts around teacher professional development related to OER and deeper learning and those kinds of things is really critical especially given that the I mean the landscape of professional development right now is essentially the publishers are providing the vast majority of professional development and then there's kind of a hodge podge of other institutions and of course districts and schools provide a lot of their own internal professional development but so thinking about how can we have you know what I think we didn't get I think that we identified that as a need more than idea but there are definitely a lot of people here who are doing professional development kinds of things I know that Hewlett just made it a recent grant to the Buck Institute of Education and Alfred is here from there and he's thinking a lot about providing you know scaling up professional development around project-based learning and so that would be an interesting strand to have developed in this community is make sure that all the people who do professional development stuff have opportunities to get in a room with one another and come up with the idea that we didn't finish coming up with and then another idea that came out was to have you know one of the things that we actually don't know enough about is what do investments in learning resources look like and as a way to lever institutions to rethink some of this what if there was funding for one of the three major auditing agencies like Price Waterhouse Cooper to go to a national sample of districts and institutions of higher ed and audit in a pretty formal way their their investments in learning resources and try to figure out so exactly how are they investing those learning resources and to what extent can we understand what kinds of outcomes they're getting from those learning resources with the idea that that that auditing can bring about compliance and change in a kind of stick like bludgeon like fashion so fund some bludgeoners and then two threats that we talked about were one you know thinking about as there's more both related to the sort of momentum of OER so if there's a shift from proprietary more expensive resources to less expensive OER resources to what extent can we support institutions and thinking about how do we make sure that that's not simply conceived of as savings to go to healthcare and pension funds but that that money can continue to be preserved for different kinds of learning purposes whether it's professional development or tablets or other kinds of things and there's actually really good exemplars in this community like the Louise Bay waters and the leadership public schools of how in their shift to CK 12 textbooks they preserved the funding that was going into those textbooks for professional development but seeing that as a real kind of potential threat to look at and trying to think about you know what are the level you know what are the the federal state and district level letter verse that you can pull to make sure that if there are cost savings that are associated with OER there they get moved to learning opportunities and not other things and then the second one was actually thinking towards the election in November and thinking about you know sort of we've had a lot of momentum behind OER what does a change of administration look like I think it's not very difficult to imagine stories that you can tell about OER that are that that that democratic years are pretty sympathetic to but but we were sort of conceiving of two kinds of storylines that conservative thinkers might think about OER one you might imagine the sort of tea party perspective of like this saves money this is about government efficiency like this is totally great you know this is a nonpartisan bipartisan sort of issue the other storyline that you might be able to tell would be something like here is you know the the state control government kind of using federal funds to put proprietary businesses out of business and to select for schools and institutions you know what kinds of government mandated materials they have to use and this is a you know looks more like a socialist plot than a government efficiency kind of program and so really thing and something that I'm really interested but that that other than that was my idea that I think has come up a few times as a sort of idea of marketing branding and thinking about you know if we want as Kathy said you know open to be to the education movement as the word green is the environmental movement you know what does that mean thank you very much interesting could I call you say use or investment I understood just thing can you correct that on can you report on that number two does that translate what you were explaining to us investments what if the flow of money on purchasing and developing right okay and Karen could the ginas to report on the informal group thank you so we had a very stimulating and spirited conversation about informal learning and I think there was a lot of enthusiasm about informal environments as a vehicle for disruption and innovation that we're all excited about we talked about informal learning as a way to bridge gaps both from a learner perspective gaps maybe in learning readiness in affordability pacing as a way to individualize and differentiate in ways that sometimes is more difficult to do in formal settings we had some very good examples of informal learning acting as a bridge and also bringing the informal elements into a formal setting so some of those examples were the bridge to success program in the UK western governors hi-tech hi Esther's work at Palo Alto high school and then one that we didn't we we sort of mentioned but didn't talk a lot about but I think is a real a big area for this are the MOOCs where you know there's a sort of a hybrid model that David Wiley was certainly a pioneer in in the early days of having a formal university class that's that is credit and face to face but then sort of opening that up to a much larger group of people who are learning in an informal way and sort of that as a really a way to bridge the two areas and then we we concluded with a great discussion about badges which I know is of interest to a lot of people and we had reflections on everything from that badges should be primarily have meaning to the learner and be a source of fun and motivation to badges as a as a new kind of transcript which was a really that was that was useful to me to sort of frame it that way and then all the way to badges as a better system of accreditation and I'm going to just turn it over to Carla from Mozilla just for a minute to talk more about badges because I think that's that's a big topic and she is the queen of badges brightening okay hi everybody for those of you don't know I'm Karla Kassili and with Mozilla Foundation we are with we are the people behind the open badges work and just to give you an idea badges can actually be used in lots of different versions and right now we were focusing on how they might be used in representing informal learning in informal settings and tying that back to the idea of how do you bring that back into formal and there are lots of ways to do that but badges after offer an opportunity to do for any issuer to provide their values kind of not only to the people who are learning from them but also to the general public and I could go on for a very long time but I don't want to right now so that we can keep the conversation moving but I'm happy to have the conversation with anybody about the use of badges and in particular I just want to look at some of my notes that I took during the conversation that we just had so there's some outstanding questions that people have about badges like how do you know that the person who is getting the badge has been doing the learning and I think that's actually an outstanding question for any kind of learning except for people who show up and it's the face time that people get in class and then so David also mentioned that badges are credential and that's probably the best and simplest way to think about them is that from a standpoint that they can produce a transcript they can be be a very granular transcript instead of the overarching thing that a lot of people have to rely on right now which are degrees and certificates so can we start to move down into smaller levels of understanding of what people are good at and can students start to and students and learners because it's really the concept of lifelong learning can people start to use them in ways that represent not only when they're in academic environments but also when they're outside of that and can they start to be tied together so that you can see not only the learning that's happening within traditional academic institutions but also all of the learning that's related to that is that in some ways sometimes is tangential but can be the thing that leads people to getting better jobs being good community members so badges are possible to be able to use not only general representations of knowledge but also associations affiliations they can be used to represent soft skills not just necessarily do you understand all of JavaScript but are you a good mentor are you a good JavaScript mentor are you a good community member so I'm gonna wrap up there so where is Jane now to report in the last so we're gonna pass now to the formal for five minutes and then we're gonna open the discussion and if anybody else feels that there is something we missed here you should just raise your hand and participate and we're gonna get to that so thank you thank you so in our formal session we discussed K through 12 education and we also discussed higher education we discussed the use of textbooks and why it's taking so long to move away from textbooks we spoke about administrations and policymakers who have who have been slow to implement the kinds of changes that would encourage teachers incentivize teachers to look at OER to consider OER to develop their own teaching materials and we discussed that there actually are not only inadequate incentives by and large for teachers but in addition to that there are really disincentives for teachers that if you look at scholarship that teachers are not rewarded for developing educational materials for their students by and large they're rewarded for other kinds of writing and teachers lose time if they're going outside of textbooks moving away from textbooks and developing their own curriculum so we discussed a system that's really a very slow system and of course there are many exceptions all around the country and many people here who run incredible programs at both the K through 12 level and also at the university level but that by and large when you look at at state systems it's very very slow for change when you look at university systems it's very slow for change we we had people in the room who came from all different perspectives so we had someone in the room who talked about his school offering teachers an incentive it was a fifteen thousand dollar incentive five thousand dollars per teacher to have three teachers collaborate on what would be an online textbook that would be available to students and that that experiment really failed that basically it was not a sufficient incentive to get teachers to either step up in the first place or to follow through on that challenge so there was this question about how how can teachers be properly incentivized in a more widespread way to develop materials and also to use materials that are already online then we had a you know very vigorous discussion about whether it's even necessary for teachers to be the ones who are developing the instructional materials and to what extent are the materials already existing online to what extent are there alternative approaches to what extent should students be playing a much more active role in finding information online and in bringing information to the classroom so we had a great deal of discussion about that we also talked about that there are that there are certain there are certain drivers that are in place or being set up that are going to help to encourage change cost is obviously a huge factor and that's something that students are going to be increasingly conscious of that school systems are going to be increasingly conscious of that universities are increasingly conscious of so that should help to reduce costs and to get people to move away from for more traditional materials and we also talked about the green movement and student interest in that in particular and teacher interest as well and and states as being another driver that will help to promote change but I would say that there was a certain amount of probably frustration and a collective experience within the group that changes very slow to happen and that it's you know while it's in the works it's going to take quite a while so thank you very much for the reporters and I just now when I get back to the audience but also I want to give up my summary of what I've been hearing here and and then go back back to you so I think one of the was very funny when we heard in our group in the international breakout session the question at the end but how do we start and I think all of us we are all the time asking ourselves how to start or how to keep moving this process and then we identify a new element and we think how to start right and I think we are really we always need to remember that we all of here are part of a broader ecosystem right a broader ecosystem that have its own declarations already has for example the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education right it really provides us a broader ecosystem to understand the role of each of us in this broader movement or ecosystem since we did so many analysis analogies with the Green Movement and I think we all should recognize the value of each of these stakeholders presented here and really learn what are our conversions is and where we can collaborate and from all the presentations here I heard some very important topics I have I heard about technology right how we take the infrastructure that we need to foster the access to open educational resources how we move that forward through mobile through internet access and how we we work together with countries that are doing the leap from no technology to having tablets in the classroom right how we insert we are already in that movement right how we help to design that taking OER into consideration and the professional development I think has a pretty important point there another topic here were the case studies right we all have projects and we are learning from these experiences and so I really think that how each of us started back can really provide inputs for people that when I start now so it's great that we are all in the same room and I I hope you enjoy these moments to rethink how to start the other topic that appeared international but also domestic is the policy issue right how we provide and develop policies and how we understand the flow of economic investment into we are and how into educational resources and how we transform that investment to move forward to OER and we also heard a lot of about institutional change right and how formal can converge with informal through some systems and some new incentive systems and how we can collaborate to bring this innovation and this disruption from outside the system to inside the system and how everybody can gain with that and at least but at last I think we are all here thinking about incentives right and this happening many other movements right happening the open access movement half is happening the open data movement happening the the free software we all have to rethink our incentive systems to really move forward institutional and the formal environment open those environments to this disruption coming from the informal setting so I just want to get back to you and and really congratulate all of you to these amazing pieces that all of you are putting forward all of us are putting forward in this ecosystem and ask if any of you have any comment to complement our notes but also to discuss some of our notes I think we have a homework here that a hell it and Berkman has put to all of us to find areas of collaboration right and there is I think a big area here that is research about a lot of that research on incentives research on the flow of capital research on how to improve the curriculum of professional development and so on so if you could after the summary point us new forms that we could collaborate on moving forward it would be great what do you think we still need how to start about what we still need so anybody I think we're gonna call out of the blue if you have any raises their hands Wayne thank you Wayne let me we have other microphones okay there it is the microphone yeah I'm not sure if this is in direct response to your question but I'm reflecting back to the high-level logic model that you presented that Kathy presented at the beginning of the meeting and if we think about the long-term impact on the long-term outcomes around how do we mainstream OER within our institutions and in relation to the question which we've been asked here what are the key variables that might lead us at closer to that ultimate aim I think one of the key variables and the something very practical we can do from within the formal sector to actually get to that point is around the formal accreditation of learning that is based entirely on OER courses and the reason I'm saying this is because what it will do is it will create a competitive advantage that you cannot match unless you are using OER courses and a practical example of this and just to take a step back in terms of you know why we're all doing this I mean so John Daniels to mankind colleagues with their research have you know shown us that over the next 15 years we are going to have to provide an additional 98 million places in post-secondary education globally and if you do the mental math around that it's approximately building four sizable universities of 30,000 students each every week for the next 15 years for the majority of these 98 million learners they are not going to be able to afford traditional the traditional model nor are they necessarily going to be able to find places you know within the system it is plausible to be able to provide free learning opportunities using high quality independent study OER materials and provide free learning to all students worldwide using OER and our formal sector can provide formal credit on a fee-for-service basis and this is what we're doing with the OER University model and if you're wondering whether this is theoretical speculation by virtue of our networks I can assure you that we have got accreditation in three regional jurisdictions here in the US we've done our calculations we will be able to provide a full degree program for under 5,000 US dollars using OER courses so the strategic lever if we are serious about this movement is within our institutions to start thinking about how do we achieve formal accreditation for OER learning based solely on OER courses and that will be the impetus for moving mainstream adoption forward in my view that's great Wayne and I think really touches on how we can really flip the conscious and the knowledge about cost and about impact so I think and this is something we discussed in our group also like where are the statistics where is where are the numbers because these are also the numbers that impact the policy level at the international level and and and so on and I think you did a great job work on helping us to move to the specifics so what I would ask you all to help us develop here are the key variables right so you touched on some quality cost access so we are trying now to go deep from this broader context to the key variables so if anybody can contribute with that I think in the talk about mainstreaming it's also who are we trying to help and Wayne talked about sort of the expansion and I think for each of us if we sort of look at the audiences that we're reaching and the people who were not reaching and I think open educational resources and the bits of it that are free the bits of it that fit outside curriculum the cross between informal informal helps us address people who are at the margins and going to use Utah's phrase from our cluster yes a cluster D that so I just sort of like that to be up there is another variable sort of who are at the margins can we be addressing a sort of social inclusion aspect so that we don't go down yeah so it we don't so I think it's very interesting Justin showing yesterday the risk that what we do helps people who are already fine and so deliberately looking for ways to help those people who have got problems and are outside the system I think that's an action we could all take does anybody from the informal discussion or SJ want to address that and this is this is from the opposite of the formal of the formal spectrum I just I think that there's a there are different timeframes that that people are thinking about and there are some discussions about what do we do in six months what do we do in a year what do we do for this generation of university students and I think that's right so first I'll pitch the hack day for people who submitted technical ideas that you think can be done really quickly maybe some of us can work on them and produce a an implementable spec by the end of tomorrow but I also want to encourage people to think about what we do in a generation in 10 years we could make openness and open education the standard for everyone who's coming through school now and I hear people thinking about how you work with big established institutions but think about how you work with children I think there are things we can do today that set a standard for what education should be so that in a generation this won't be an issue it won't be a question of of rich versus poor it will just be understood that education should be open in various ways thank you I was inspiring anybody wants to dialogue with the this topic of including or generation nurse and I also would like to call you guys to show us a little bit what to learn it from the breakfast bazaar what are the spices and you found there how it sparked you so so building on your previous comments about the children and also the badges it strikes me as again going outside the traditional system I think there are teachers in every community and there's a big barrier to becoming a teacher with the the cost inherent in doing so and if it could be informal mechanisms for folks across the community and within a community to become teachers and really break break apart this notion of traditional education particularly in those less those underdeserved populations I think that needs to be a real focus any other comments and and I think we we are reaching some some okay let's go there no you can just really briefly I mean these are serious issues and obviously we're the brain trust to solve them but we shouldn't lose fact that education should be fun and learners should want to learn it shouldn't be something they're doing to get a job or credential it should be something that they do for the sake of doing it I think that is one of the biggest causes to action in my estimation how can we make we are something that's not only policy but it's a game to some degree for the ones who need to consume it that's great and I think it little by little I think there is a message emerging from here right we have the fun we have the kids we have the a lot of things a lot of homework we need to do on how to start for the next generation and maybe finding a common message and that actually I heard a lot people asking but what is the goal what is the common goal what is the common message here right and we may need to deal with that even illegal issues right that are starting to be raised in in our community so how we put all this together in a common message that actually can later spark these collaborations in within this context so anybody has any suggestion on on on that messaging thanks for those of you that don't know me I'm Delana Tonks I'm the director of the open high school of Utah and we build our own curriculum I think that the messaging on this is to empower teachers to meet student needs it's as simple as that I've hired teachers from all walks of life with all sorts of backgrounds and after their first year working with solely open educational resource curriculum they tell me that they can't go back that I've broken them as teachers and that they can no longer work in a proprietary world because they're using the data to inform instruction and they can't tweak the curriculum to meet those students needs unless it's open how should train the teachers through professional development but then break in them right hi so I think one of the questions that we're talking around is what are our definitions of success I feel like there's lots of different goals but nobody's actually clearly defining what are the things what are the metrics sorry to use that word what are the things are going to lead us to feel like we've accomplished what it is we've set out to do I thought you would put forward our goal you know I ain't you the queen of badges anybody wants to address there at or have any other experience that you want to share today during our last day we still thank you you go there okay there it is hi everybody so I think that there are a lot of great ideas and a lot of great conversation that's that's been going on I've been popping in on some of the breakout sessions and everything and I think this is a really interesting opportunity for all of us you know on the first day we talked a lot about our logic model and our theory of change and the different pillars and this is really informative for us also because you know we have this ideas and these theories of change but this is where we're reliant upon you for as the as the folks who are doing all of the work about what are the things that as we look through all of these what are the main thrusts are like of of the strategy going forward what are the things that we're missing what are the things that really should be strengthened going forward what are the things that you know those are great things but we need less emphasis on those so that we can put more emphasis on on this right so that's what I would love to hear more of because and and these more concrete ideas about and I know there's a lot of different things but if you were in our shoes I would say you know what are the things that you would work on and knowing that there are a limited amount of resources what how can we as a field use the resources that we have and collaborate more with each other because we have folks working in supply we're working in policy and research how can we reinforce the work that's already going on with each other right so I would encourage you to let us know like and keep adding the ideas on here is it the professional development for teachers is it more research to undergird some of the policy work that we're doing so and would encourage us to continue to talk more about those especially in our cluster meetings and make the most out of this last day together because going forward we all disperse we all do our work and we get energized after a conference like this for a few weeks and then we get busy with with our particular roles so how can we make the most of the time that we have here together to collaborate do the brainstorming have the face-to-face meetings that make the most of the time that we have here thanks Kathy so my name is Robin Steiff and my company's lunametrics and we do the analytics for the OER I guess you could call ecosystem some of a part of it how if I said many of the grantees but not all of them are included and one of the things that we work on with Kathy is trying to understand how do we get metrics and we really do talk about metrics and there is nothing that I would love more than to see a list of you know not all not all metrics are gettable right like not everything is measurable even though we want to be able to but there's nothing I would love to see more than let me go back up for one minute so the lot of the metrics that we get are things that we are able to get right so we use proxies like time on site and a number of people and growth of the audience and because we can't get at did not every OER has did I get this in their curriculum but so like as you as everyone talks I keep thinking about you know one of the things that I'm personally the most interested in is is our students doing a better job of learning using OER's and on the one hand I'm not sure how to answer the question though I have a team of people that are really good at on the other hand I feel like I want to know what the questions are before I even start to think about like how to answer them and like that's one that's on my mind but it might not necessarily be on yours like Kathy just talked about policy like that's a whole other problem and that's probably not one for me to worry about like but there might be other people here so I would just love to see I mean I'm sorry you took the word metrics back because I'd love to see a list of four questions like we aren't answering these questions and we'd like to measure them and that's all wanted to build on that I think one of the core things that's a little bit missing from all of these buckets is just evidence of impact so what's driving the OER movement right now quite frankly I think it's not only the enthusiasm and the great innovative ideas here but costs I mean it's free and if it's free that's a very attractive thing in a time of recession so I think David's study is one of the ones that we all cite because we have a study and the work that and Carnegie Mellon earlier you know where we were able to sort of demonstrate that it had more efficacy over time we all use that again and again we need a 10 cost studies and 10 impact studies so I think this that's sort of the next level and to Wayne's great point I think around credentialing relating that then to student outcomes so do students who actually are credentialed through OERs are they more successful in life that's what we're trying to do it for the more we can link these things I think the better off we are so to me that's the next big move for this movement is is linking it to impact in about the productivity and also an effect on teaching and learning I think this is great and even if you say that's not related to policies heavily related to policy right because in Brazil or in other countries and I did we did a lot of work here in the US when you go to talk to politicians they want to know about impact and we just have an adult right so in Brazil we have a state that developed open test books that had a whole system of incentives to teachers including payment and sabbaticals and working together and even traveling you know and and the politicians when they support the bill they really mention that case over and over but we don't have the numbers right we got some numbers on how economic the resources flow into producing resources but also there is that research is getting old so I think this is a really important topic and cable I saw you raising your hand do you want to but I was just gonna plus one on what Barbara said I think she's right on the money we need their research and to put that in a little bit more general terms I think we need to be clear about what problems are we solving right so so Wayne you know said look we've got a problem we've got millions of people on the planet that today have zero access to a higher education opportunity and moreover have no access to a higher education opportunity that's accredited that that's affordable it's just not there it's not gonna be there given the existing systems we need to step in and that's what we are universities trying to do in the US we're having conversations right now Doug and I were talking about this last night about the common core standards in K-12 there's a massive problem that the K-12 systems are already underfunding their textbooks in their curriculum refresh rates their 10 years behind they're not gonna be able to get two updated curriculum to meet the standards given the current models that's a problem that's a that's a relatively simple problem for OER to step in and solve David was just talking in the last session about people are out of work all over the world and there's partnerships between the National Manufacturing Association and badges and others to say people need jobs how can we use open educational resources plus badges as a as a form of accreditation to show the employers they've got the skills so they can get jobs right and to the extent that we need the research in the case studies to back that up ultimately those are the kinds of stories we want to be able to tell right when you've got these kinds of problems there's easy solutions well and I just this is Doug Levin I I think we just want to be a little bit careful about not falling into a trap there's that OER solves one problem I think it probably solves multiple problems and even in the short time that I've been with the community I've seen tremendous innovation and in two four years from now I expect to see a lot more one of the challenges right with you know sort of we need to be mindful in in as we get much sharper about what success looks like and how we know it when we get there that we also allow the community the opportunity to go after new problems that we didn't actually realize we're necessarily there we could solve so so another sort of a problem for instance that I've been thinking a lot about frankly is just around teacher professionalism teacher capacity you know quality teaching so one of the best ways some of the women the best for his professional development it seems to me would actually have some agency if maybe not in the development of your own curriculum as I'm thinking in the U.S. I'm not sure it's realistic to think three million teachers are each going to develop their own curriculum every year and every five years you have a whole new crop but they can be modifying it they can be improving it they can be customizing it to meet the needs of their students right now they have no agency whatsoever in the U.S. in the K-12 context even in the selection materials that they get in many places so the fact that if there were OER materials available this could be among the best professional development opportunities they could ever have right so and that solves a problem potentially a problem about teacher quality which is different and it is related to student learning ultimately I think there's a strong case to be made that way and then finally an unrelated comment that I do worry about that is an issue for us in general in thinking about what success is we need to think about sustainability you know we celebrate our wins it's important to celebrate our wins we have them but this is a process and this is sort of a forever more and always and we'll continue to need to be looked at implementation needs to be good every time we stumble and we will continue to stumble it will be held against us if we don't learn from those mistakes and be honest with ourselves at least in this room right about what success really means and to celebrate those but also to be really clear-eyed that you know this policy win was a great press release but six months later things didn't work out the way that we had hoped this is Steve Mitchley I bring up a topic which may not be of interest to everyone in the room but relates what you could call operating models to put it in the most generic terms business models would be in the commercialization terms and just to speak to the notion that there's conversations about replacing existing curricular materials curricular systems professional development and I think we have to ask ourselves the questions of are we producing OER materials that are designed to replace those materials within the existing business models so instead of buying a textbook you're going to buy this and it's cheaper or free or are we talking about creating alternative business models different ways of integrating the things we create into the educational system and I think that we talk past each other a lot I hear this in this conference and others dodging that question which is there's a commercialization opportunity to sell something in the existing market channel that the publishers have created and defended or there's an alternative to try to disrupt and dismantle that and replace it with something else but if we don't have a clear vision of what that alternative is then I think we default to a no man's land between these two things where we have all this great stuff but we're not trying to sell it in the existing market but we're not actually creating an alternative market channel we're just creating a new set of materials that through some miracle of the internet plus populism plus collaboration will emerge something but I think the publishers have seen that coming before and are fully equipped to manage that sort of intrusion into their industry so I would just encourage us to not in terms of the hard problems not just talking about the creation of resources or even the dissemination or availability of resources but the actual business models the operating business model are we going to as an industry hire sales people and bid on RFPs and sell these things down that path or are we going to pay lobbyists and get active in changing the rules that make that the only viable road in at least within the US so I may be wrong about all those things I'm saying but I want to challenge the community to if that is wrong to say why it is wrong so I just when I open for a final comment we have hit our hour and we have some comments also from from Ferris so any final comment it's been great to be here and as I've been listening to and I talked to my other group about open education resources this is really about open education connections a lot of people have said well K-12 teachers don't get it they're working like crazy and they do get it but they don't really have a direction to go and it's hard to find things and you know we're not talking about building the network you're just talking about giving teachers what they already have we have videos we have books the publishers will not connect the teachers and the learners around a textbook you are open and you can and whoever builds the Facebook for education that's going to be worldwide is going to own education you have the opportunity I feel like you're trying to be publishers you are publishers but what publishers are forgetting is that they should be connectors they're forgetting what they're doing we are not consumers we are connectors and we will connect with or without publishers and we will connect with or without open education but to me that is the opportunity you have if you can pull us into network get a sharing with each other then you are sustainable because you do have the network thank you so I really see here it feels that we are in a cycle right if we don't train our teachers and if we don't involve the students we will not ask develop the skills we need even to be no innovative about business models right we we have to think about this generation how we create how we we help people to be creative and to really engage in innovation and disruption and and how we all can converge thinking about like 10 years from now what is the generation we we are expecting and what are what are the role what is the role of each one of us here in this room so I think we really end up in a in a in a in a cycle here in terms of what comes first so I really invite you all to to keep collaborating and to keep helping us setting this research questions and setting the five ten years of helping how let you set that strategy moving forward they are asking that help so I think it's a great opportunity for all of us I would like to pass the word for Rob Ferris from Birdman now thank you so much so thank you all for your ideas and participation great morning I want to explain to you what you're gonna do next please listen carefully because it's a little bit complicated and it's this point in the conference where things could really go terribly terribly wrong there's three things you need to do in the next hour and 13 minutes maybe 12 minutes you need to reconvene with your cluster groups and get your interventions into the reporting template you need to find your way to the next venue which is Austin Hall and you need to eat lunch all right all equally important what we're gonna suggest is that you find your clusters now if it helps you to organize I would suggest ABCD here EFGH here IJKLM and everybody else down there once you find your clusters you probably want to come up with a plan for getting your interventions into the template so that we can capture them reproduce them and your great ideas aren't lost forever and to the irreparable harm to the hundreds of millions of students around the world if you need help with the reporting template let us know it should be pretty straightforward you're checking boxes throughout but the link is in your wiki there so that's number one number two around 1145 we're gonna start shepherding people over to Austin Hall it is a stone red building it's a couple minutes that way walks south through the yard you've been that way already if you don't get lost it'll only take you a couple minutes to get there it's number two what was number three ah your lunch will be there waiting for you so find your lunch and please do eat it and enjoy Jonathan Zitrain is starting the afternoon session at 1245 he's a great speaker great session so you don't want to miss that that is there everything is in Austin so you're gonna meet your cluster here come up with a plan take everything you own walk to Austin Hall eat lunch finish everything you need to do by 1245 then Jonathan Zitrain will start the afternoon there