During my professional and personal background I have been lucky to get familiar with the not that new paradigm that the Web 2.0 has provided. Understanding the Web 2.0 as an umbrella of changes that have created a new way how content, information and knowledge travels and is created.

We could say that information is not owned by a small group of people. For the first time in history, everyone is able to open a canal of communication and it is the people who give credibility, it is basically the community who regulates themselves.

The Internet, and in particular the idea behind the open and collaboration net, open the doors to new voices. It said that information is power. And if the information is not only in the hands of a small group of people or corporations. We could say that power is actually in the community.

However, is everyone represented in this community? Or the reality is that even if we have the resources to open the knowledge and make content accessible to everyone, the truth is that who can rich the content is still a privileged people?

This week we have seen in the video how the professor James Paul Gee points raise these questions and points in this direction.

“Now, imagine as you come into a school with your, with your reform with the technology and say I'm going to produce a school where every kid learns deeply. Where they all get to participate, and where I get rid of these gaps between rich and poor.”

“You're saying we own all of our system right through college to prepare people for work when we know that we've just eradicated any good work. Except for one 5th of the people in the country”

Related to that, I found this article about Open Education by Jeremy Knox and Jane Ross. In the article there are some thoughts in that direction. “At the heart of the OER mission is the “provision of access to learning opportunities to those who would not otherwise be able to obtain them””(Downes 2011) Is this really true?

I am sure that thanks to open education people who never had access before, now are able to enjoy a variety of programmes at any time and any cost.

However, is this creating a context of equality? Is this what we need in order to change privileges? 5 years ago I lived in San Francisco, CA and I volunteered in some public High Schools helping students to improve their Spanish skills. I was amazed by how many activities and extracurricular things students did in order to be competitive when they have to apply for the university. I never saw that back in Spain…

One thing that some students were doing was basically taking Coursera courses of coding and programming, some at a very high level. They wanted to be ready for university, but the truth was that they would probably be more than ready before starting studying. Clearly these students that were able to do this were the most privileged ones. Usually white guys. They have the time, the resources and the support from home. The ones I was helping reading definitely have other problems before thinking that they can access a platform like Coursera and learn by themselves. Learning autonomously is not easy at all! It requires a specific set of skills.

Also, having access to open education is not that easy, some people still struggle with having a computer and wi-fi at home. Definitely the options are there, but accessing is not that easy. It is interesting to see how this issue has been raised these days with all the Covid-19 pandemia. I know, for example, that in Spain now, some local governments are launching a campaign to encourage neighbours to open the wi-fi some hours a day to help children without internet at home to download homeworks and connect with their classmates and teachers. Also, they are trying to provide iPads or computers to all the children.

So, yes, we can agree on how good the new paradigm of openness is. But, as the Knox articles suggested, it is very important to have a critique approach to the concept, or we are under the risk to recreate the same inequalities we have experimented for ages.

As Knox commented in his article, one of the reasons why open programmes are successful is because people, especially young users, try to avoid traditional structures. Open education is offering the opportunity to escape old, stiff and standardized constructions. I feel we really need a critical thinking behind in order that this is true. Many MOOC are just replicating very traditional pedagogical methods and not offering a real collaboration or open environment.

As a conclusion, I would say that we should be careful when we understand Open as a “synonym” of freedom. Freedom is a very ambiguous term, that even philosophers have not found an agreement or a common definition.

--

Knox, J. Ross, J. (2015) Open education: the need for a critical approach. From https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2015.1065272

Mitra, S (2012) The Hole in the Wall Project and the Power of Self-Organized Learning from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/self-organized-learning-sugata-mitra

Dror, I. (2010). Technology enhanced learning: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Inside Learning Technologies and Skills, 79-84. From http://www.cedma-europe.org