Press release:
OPENING UP EDUCATION
The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge
Edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar
Foreword by John Seely Brown
Carnegie and MIT Press Make New Book Available Online
Despite the diversity of open education initiatives, tools and resources that aim to make educational assets freely available online-from well-packaged course materials to simple games-educators have yet to take full advantage of shared knowledge about how these are being used, what local innovations are emerging, and how to learn from and build on the experiences of others.
In response, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and The MIT Press have published Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, edited by Carnegie's Toru Iiyoshi and MIT's M.S. Vijay Kumar.
Carnegie and MIT Press are making the book available for free download from The MIT Press website under a Creative Commons use license and also for sale in hard copy. "Both Carnegie and the Press have a commitment to increasing access to information and resources," said MIT Press Director Ellen Faran. "The simultaneous publication strategy for Opening Up Education will further our exploration of how reasonably-priced print and open online editions of a work may complement each other. We are especially pleased to publish this Carnegie title in this new environment so that its discussion of how best to leverage open educational tools may be disseminated as broadly as possible."
In the book's 30 essays, prominent leaders and thinkers in the open education movement reflect on current and past open education initiatives, offer critical analyses, share the strategic underpinnings of their own work, and delve into open education's implications in three areas: technology, content, and knowledge. Together, they address the central question of how open education can improve the quality of education.
"Open source is a welcome innovation for increasing access to knowledge and democratizing education on a global scale," said Carnegie President Anthony S. Bryk. "Embedded here is an extraordinary potential to enhance both teaching and learning. Nurturing such productive uses, and understanding the conditions necessary for these to occur, is important work that still lies ahead. This volume sheds a bright light on the pathways to follow."
"A look at the landscape tells us that efforts with open education so far have been largely confined to attempts at improving what we already do," said Kumar, senior associate dean and director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at MIT. "While this is certainly valid, we encourage consideration of approaches that transcend traditional practices, organizations, disciplines and audiences."
"Opening Up Education vigorously investigates and actively considers the impact of open education on the micro and macro levels of education practices," said Iiyoshi, a consulting scholar and former senior scholar at Carnegie. "It issues a wake-up call to the educational community to not under-explore the potential of open education for reinventing and energizing education, and it creates a structure for future work."
The authors - comprised of faculty, researchers, administrators, academic technology experts, foundation program officers and scholars, and directors of major open education projects - examine what challenges need to be addressed, what potential synergies can be realized, and what opportunities should be seized for a better future for education. Based on this collective agenda, the editors found that in order to "open up" education in ways that can dramatically advance learning and teaching, educators and administrators need to:
- Investigate the transformative potential and ecological transitions of open education
- Change education's culture and policy
- Make open education solutions sustainable
- Make practice and knowledge visible and shareable
- Build the teaching and learning commons through the collectivity culture
Opening Up Education
The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge
Edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar
Foreword by John Seely Brown
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the MIT Press
Publication date: September 19, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-262-03371-8 / 352 pages cloth / $24.95
PDF download available at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/opening_up_education/
For a review copy, please contact David Weininger at the MIT Press:
617-253-2079 /
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Advance praise for Opening Up Education:
"This is a very welcome and timely publication.... Although it seems paradoxical, the opening up of education is a bold approach, and one that will challenge the status quo and destabilize educational models, institutions, those who make them work, and who work within them. However, creating a culture of learning ... is essential in emerging knowledge societies. The three sections of the book put forward much to consider, illuminate many issues and, in the end challenge the reader to consider the possibility and the implications of open [education]. There is a wide range of voices from the community of those convinced that open is preferable to closed."
-Susan D'Antoni, Director, Virtual Institute of the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning
"This important volume brings together the thoughts of many educators, technologists, philanthropists, and scholars who are among the leaders of the Openness movement in education. Reading it is essential for anyone who believes that education is an important, empowering, and democratizing force in the modern world, and that substantial economic efficiencies could be garnered by sharing educational content and scholarly materials at minimal cost through the World Wide Web."
-Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus, MIT
"Whether we realize it or not, improving the cost and scale of quality education is the challenge that underlies all other challenges to the human race. The significance of this groundbreaking book is that it elucidates new business models and technologies that are needed to support educators worldwide in creating the breakthroughs needed."
-Robert Abel, CEO, IMS Global Learning Consortium
"This book is probably the most comprehensive collection of writings to date on the open education movement. It paints a picture of numerous experiments and roads started upon in an arena that is still in its infancy but which offers many major possibilities for transformation of education. Where these roads lead and which are most fertile are still unanswerable questions. But there is no better starting point than this book."
-C. Judson King, Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley
"This exceptionally engaging book interprets Open Educational Resources through references that range from King Lear to YouTube. By presenting the OER movement in all its glorious confusion and rich variety it compels the reader to help it grow from ‘robust early adolescence' to adulthood. It challenges the developing world to appropriate this most promising innovation for the purposes of mass formal education instead of letting it under-perform as merely a mechanism for the educated elite to facilitate informal learning by the less fortunate."
-Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning