freebassel | Open World

freebassel | Open World
Open World
Lorna M Campbell
Last week I presented one of the
keynotes
at the
FLOSS UK Spring Conference
in Edinburgh.  I had been invited to present as the organising committee were keen to diversify both the scope and the gender balance of their event, after a first call for papers brought in only male speakers.  Persuaded by the enthusiasm and commitment of the organisers, and after discussing the invitation with colleagues at the University, I accepted their invitation.  However after a second round of blind peer review again brought in only male speakers (thus illustrating the problem of blind submission in any domain that already lacks diversity) I began to get a bit apprehensive.  Normally I would politely decline an invitation to participate in an all-male panel and now here I was keynoting at an all-male conference.
I discussed my concerns with the organisers who once again were sensitive to the issue, keen to talk and open to suggestions.  And I was more than a little relieved when my inspirational senior colleague Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at University of Edinburgh was invited to open the conference, and Christel Dahlskjaer, VP of Open Source and Digital Advocacy at Private Internet Access, was also added to the programme.
My talk was scheduled to take place on the second day, but I went along on the first day to hear Melissa’s opening address and Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb’s keynote.  I had expected female delegates to be in the minority, but I was a little startled to discover there were only three women in the room out of an audience in the region of around eighty people.  Melissa raised this issue diplomatically in her opening address which included a call for more diversity and inclusion in technology industries.
Although I get a little keyed up when I’m speaking in public I don’t generally get
too
nervous, however I was extremely apprehensive about presenting a non-technical keynote to an all-male audience of technical developers.  Particularly given that my talk, an over view of the
Open Knowledge Landscape
, highlighted the problem of systemic bias and structural inequality in a wide range of “open” communities.  In an effort to work up a little courage I did something I don’t often do; I called for back-up.  The evening before my keynote I tweeted…
I need all the
#femedtech
people and
#uncommonwomen
to send good thoughts my way tomorrow morning. I'm giving a keynote at an all male tech conference.
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
April 26, 2018
To say that I was overwhelmed by the response would be an understatement, so I’d like to thank each and every one of you who replied to my tweet, I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your support.
I also tweeted a thread of all the inspiring projects and initiatives that I had included in my talk, because if you’re speaking about diversity and representation I think it’s really important to give credit where credit is due.  The twitter thread proved to be really popular so I might do this again next time I’m giving a talk.
For those that are interested, here are some of the people and projects I'll be highlighting in my keynote (thread)
#femedtech
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell)
April 26, 2018
On the morning of my keynote I was encouraged to see a couple more women in the audience, maybe five in total?  But it was still pretty daunting to get up onto that stage.  The audience however were faultlessly polite and engaged, particularly when I spoke about structural inequality and lack of representation in technology domains and open communities.
I ended by highlighting the story of
Bassel Khartabil
and the
Memorial Fund
that Creative Commons established to commemorate his legacy, because I believe it demonstrates why it’s so important for all those of us who work in the broad domain of Open Knowledge to come together to break down the barriers that divide us.  I always find it difficult to talk about Bassel and this time was no exception. I choked when I tried to read a passage he wrote from Adra Prison in Damascus and I was almost in tears by the end.  However I make no apology for getting emotional over such an important story.
There was only time for a couple of questions after my talk, one about business models for openness and another about how the conference could become more diverse and inclusive without compromising the integrity of their peer review process. During the break afterwards, I was really touched by a young delegate from the University of York who said he had benefitted so much from working in open source software projects and using Wikipedia, and wanted to know how he could give something back to the community.  I suggested becoming a Wikipedia editor and gave him some pointers on how to get started.  And I also really enjoyed chatting with some Edinburgh Informatics students who were hugely enthusiastic about the University’s commitment to Open Knowledge. Although there wasn’t a great deal of activity around the conference hashtag, I was touched to get one or two really supportive comments from delegates.
Sad to say that I had never heard of this very powerful story until today:
thanks to
@LornaMCampbell
for her illuminating talk at
#flossuk2018
#opencommunities
— Mark Keating (@shadowcat_mdk)
April 27, 2018
Fantastic keynote by
@LornaMCampbell
@flossuk
on open knowledge, systemic bias and barriers and the cost of freedom. Inspiring and moving. So much to do.
— Magnus Hagdorn (@mhagdorn)
April 27, 2018
Tim, Marko and Mike G from our team had a really good time at
#flossuk2018
. Many thanks to the organisers for a great event. Our highlight was
@LornaMCampbell
’s fantastic keynote this morning.
— The Scale Factory (@scalefactory)
April 27, 2018
All in all the conference was a pretty daunting event for me, but it’s one that I learned a lot from, not least how supportive my own Open Knowledge community is and how willing other communities can be to listen to new stories and alternative points of view.  So I’d like the take this opportunity to thank the organisers once again for inviting me to keynote.
Last word has to go to the fabulous Kelsey Merkley.
Vulnerability is a strength and a indicator of true leadership. Is there a video somewhere?
Way to take up space and kick the door in.
— 💫Kelsey Merkley 💫 (@bella_velo)
April 27, 2018
I loved the tweet stream of projects highlighted. A nudge is as good as a kick.
— 💫Kelsey Merkley 💫 (@bella_velo)
April 27, 2018
Transcript and slides from my keynote at the
FLOSS UK Spring Conference
in Edinburgh.
Exploring the Open Knowledge Landscape
from
Lorna Campbell
I’m not a programmer.  I’m not a developer.  And I don’t contribute directly to the creation of free and open source software.  I originally started out as an Archaeologist but I now work in the domain of Open Knowledge and more specifically open education.  I currently work for the Open Education Resources Service within the Information Services Group at the University of Edinburgh, I’m a Board member of both the Association for Learning Technology and Wikimedia UK, and a member of Open Knowledge International’s Open Education Working Group. All these organisations are part of the Open Knowledge landscape and what I want to do today is provide a broad overview of some of the different domains, communities and cultures that make up this landscape including open education, open data, open textbooks and Open Access Scholarly works.  And I also want to explore the boundaries that crisscross this landscape and demarcate these open spaces, and ask who is included, who is excluded, and what we can do to make our communities more diverse and inclusive.
In the words of the late, great Maryam Mirzakhani, former professor of mathematics at Stanford University and the first female winner of the Fields Medal, who sadly passed away last year.
“I like crossing the imaginary boundaries people set up between different fields—it’s very refreshing. There are lots of tools, and you don’t know which one would work. It’s about being optimistic and trying to connect things.”
So that’s what I want to do today, to look at how we can cross the imaginary boundaries of the Open Knowledge landscape and connect our different open communities.
Continue reading
I ended up taking an unscheduled break from blogging and social media over the holidays as I was laid up with a nasty virus and its after effects.  Bleh.  So in an attempt to get back into the saddle, I’m taking a leaf out of
Anne-Marie’s book
with this “Some things that happpened in 2017” post.  So in no particular order here’s a ramble through some of the things that made an impression on me, for one reason or another, over the last year.
OER17
OER is my conference;  I’ve never missed a single one since it kicked off in 2010.  They’re always thought provoking and topical events, but
OER17 The Politics of Open
was particularly timely and
unexpectedly emotional
. I was fortunate to take part on several panels and talks, but the one that will always stay with me is
Shouting from the Heart
, a very short, very personal, lightning talk about what writing, openness and politics means to me.  I’d never given such a personal talk before and, not to put too fine a point on it, I was fucking terrified. I was supposed to end with a quote from the
Declaration of Arbroath
but I bottled it and had to stop because I was in danger of crying in front of everyone. It was a deeply emotional experience, but the overwhelming response more than made up for for my mortification.   I was also extremely grateful to meet up with many old friends and to meet many new friends too.
#oer17
women selfie
@LornaMCampbell
@muireannOK
@catherinecronin
@Czernie
Sara Grun
pic.twitter.com/oEysvOccQF
— ℳąhą Bąℓi مها بالي 🌷 (@Bali_Maha)
April 6, 2017
International Women’s Day
I was honoured to be name checked on
International Women’s Day
by several colleagues who I respect and admire hugely.  I’m still deeply touched.  Thank you.
Mashrou’ Leila  مشروع ليلى
Mashrou’ Leila
مشروع ليلى are a Lebanese indy rock band whose lead singer Hamed Sinno is openly gay and a vocal advocate for LGBTQ issues,
women’s rights
and contemporary Arab identity. Mashrou’ Leila also happen to be one of my favourite bands of the last year so I was over the moon to be in London when they played an amazing open air gig at Somerset House in July.  It was a fabulous night and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a diverse crowd at a music event.  I got quite emotional seeing the rainbow flag flying over Somerset House. Sadly, when Mashrou’ Leila played in Cairo a few months later, seven concert goers were arrested for raising that same rainbow flag and were subsequently charged with
promoting sexual deviancy.
Mashrou’ Leila, Somerset House, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
Wiki Loves Monuments
I’ve meant to take part in the
Wiki Loves Monuments
photography competition for years now.  I’ve taken hundreds of photographs of monuments over the years and they really should be in the public domain rather than languishing on various ancient laptops.  But it took my fabulous colleague and University of Edinburgh Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew, to prod me into contributing.  Ewan made it his mission to get as many photographs of Scottish monuments uploaded to Wikipedia Commons as possible, and
maybe
try to beat the Welsh in the process.  The whole competition was
hugely enjoyable
and got very competitive. By the time it closed at the end of September over 2000 new images of Scottish monuments had been uploaded, and 184 of my old
holiday snaps
had found a new lease of life on Wikimedia Commons. Hats of to
Ewan
and
Anne-Marie
for the hundreds of amazing photographs they submitted to the competition.
A few of my pics…
Women in Red
In 2016 I was honoured to join Wikimedia UK’s Board of Trustees but it was in 2017 that I really started editing Wikipedia in earnest.  I created a number of new pages for notable women who previously didn’t have entries.  The ones I’m most proud of are:
Mary Susan MacIntosh
, sociologist, feminist, lesbian, and campaigner for lesbian and gay rights.  MacIntosh was a founding member of the London Gay Liberation Front, she sat on the Criminal Law Revision Committee which lowered the age of male homosexual consent, and she played a crucial role in shaping the theory of social constructionism, a theory later developed by, and widely attributed to Michel Foucault. MacIntosh’s Wikipedia page still needs a lot more work, so please, if you can help, go ahead and edit it.
Elizabeth Slater
a British archaeologist specialising in archaeometallurgy. She was the first female professor of archaeology appointed by the University of Liverpool.  Liz was also the only female lecturer teaching archaeology at the University of Glasgow when I was a student there and her lectures made a
huge impression
on me. I was chuffed to be able to build a Wikipedia page for her.
Open Tumshies
Mah tumshie appeared in The Scotsman online! And you can read about it
here
Open tumshies ftw!
Audierne Bay
In July my partner drove our aged VW camper van all the way to Brittany and we spent two weeks camping in Finistère with our daughter.  While we were there we visited Audierne Bay, where the
Droits de L’Homme
frigate engagement took place during a ferocious gale on the night of 13th January 1797.  This engagement was the starting point for the book
Hornblower’s Historical Shipmates
, which I wrote with my dear friend Heather Noel-Smith.  The day I visited Audierne Bay was bright and sunny and the beach was filled was families and holiday makers.  It was a sobering thought to stand there and look out at the reefs where hundreds of men lost their lives two hundred years before.
Audierne Bay, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
CMALT
Finally, after
years
of procrastinating, I wrote my portfolio and became a
Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology
.  And I did it
all in the open
Me and inspirational ALT CEO, Maren Deepwell, CC BY, @ammienoot
UNESCO OER World Congress
In September I was honoured to attend the
UNESCO OER World Congress
in Ljubljana to represent the University of Edinburgh and
Open Scotland
, along with my colleague Joe Wilson. I’m so glad we were able to attend because, along with the fabulous Leo Havemann, we were the only people there from the UK.  It was a really interesting event and I hope the resulting
OER Action Plan
it will help to raise the profile of OER worldwide.
UNESCO OER World Congress, CC BY Slovenian Press Agency
Louvain-la-Neuve
In November I was invited to give a talk about OER and open education at UCLouvain. It was a brief but enjoyable trip and I’d like to thank Christine Jacqmot and Yves Deville for their hospitality and for showing me around their unique city and university.
Mural, Louvain-la-Neuve, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
Tango
I don’t get to dance much these days, due to work, commuting, childcare etc, but I did get to have one or two tango adventures this year.
A wedding and a ridiculous frock
In October my sister got married in Stornoway and I promised to buy the most ridiculous vintage frock I could find for the wedding.  I think I succeeded.
Channelling Abigail’s Party…
These guys…
Nike & Josh, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
Also these guys…
We had a family of foxes living in the garden this year.  When I was working from home through the summer months I often had two or three foxes curled up sleeping in the sun outside my window, if not even closer!
Josh & friend, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
Inevitably there was some real low points and losses during the year too.
I had a horrible medical emergency while travelling to Brittany and had to get blue-lighted off the boat in an ambulance and carted off to hospital in Morlaix.  Never, ever, have I been so glad that my partner is a nurse and stubborn as hell.  Without him, I don’t know what would have happened.
Public Transpot
I don’t drive.  That’s a choice, not an accident.  But I travel continually so I spent
a lot
of my time on public transport. I take the bus and the train to work, which is a four hour commute twice a week.  When public transport isn’t available, I use a local taxi firm.  I never use Uber, because fuck that for a business model. I keep reading all this stuff about automated and driverless cars but tbh, I don’t want any more cars on the road, driverless or otherwise.  I want decent public transport, which is regular, reliable, clean, and safe for women travelling alone at any hour of the day or night. Oh, and I also want the people who work for these public transport systems to earn a decent living wage.  Is that too much to ask?
Maryam Mirzakhani
Maryam Mirzakhani
was an Iranian
mathematician, professor at Stamford University and the first woman to win the Fields Medal for mathematics.  In March I was invited to speak at the International Open Science Conference in Berlin and I took the title of my talk,
Crossing the Field Boundaries
, from an interview with Maryam.
“I like crossing the imaginary boundaries people set up between different fields—it’s very refreshing. There are lots of tools, and you don’t know which one would work. It’s about being optimistic and trying to connect things.”
A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
Quanta Magazine
, August 2014
Four months later, I was deeply saddened to hear that Maryam had died of breast cancer at the age of 40.  The loss of such a gifted woman is unfathomable.
Bassel Khartabil
In August we heard the devastating news that
the detained Syrian open knowledge advocate Bassel Khartabil had been executed by the Syrian government in 2015.  I never met Bassel, but I was deeply moved by his story and I contributed to a number of initiatives that tried to raise awareness of his plight. I will never forget that this man lost his liberty and his life for doing a similar job that I, and many of my colleagues, do every day.  This is my
memorial
to him.
This is my personal reflection on the devastating news that Syrian open knowledge advocate Bassel Khartabil was executed by the Syrian government in 2015.
Qasr al Hallabat, Jordan, CC BY Lorna M. Campbell
Some of you will already know that before I worked in open education I used to be an archaeologist.  My main interest was the North Atlantic Iron Age and I spent a lot of time working on excavations in the Outer Hebrides where I was born and brought up.  However I also spent one memorable summer working in the South Hauran Desert in Jordan near the Syrian Border.  It was a bit of a life changing experience for me, I fell quietly in love with the Middle East and when I got back to Scotland I realised that I was stuck in a rut with my job so I decided to leave archaeology while I still loved the subject and turn my hand to something else instead.
By rather circuitous routes that something else turned out to be open education, and it’s something which I have had a deep personal and ethical commitment to for over ten years now.  I never lost my love of archaeology though and I always regretted that while I was in Jordan we didn’t cross the border into Syria to visit Palmyra and Damascus. We had one week free at the end of our fieldwork project and it was a toss up between Petra or Syria.  Petra won.  Years later I watched in horror as Syria descended into civil war and Palmyra became a battleground.  Tragic as the destruction of Palmyra has been, it pales into significance beside the huge number of lives that have been destroyed in the conflict.
Consequently, when I first came across the
New Palmyra
project I was really inspired.  Here was a project that used openness to capture the cultural and archaeological heritage of Syria before it’s lost forever.  What a fabulous idea.  I vaguely noted the name of Bassel Khartabil among the people involved but at the time I knew nothing more about him
“Bassel Khartabil (Safadi)” by Joi Ito – http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482CC BY 2.0
About a year later
Adam Hyde
of
Booksprints.net
, who ran a
booksprint
for us at the end of the the UKOER programme, contacted me and asked if I would be willing to write a piece for a book to raise awareness of the disappearance of Syrian open knowledge advocate, Creative Commons representative and active Wikimedian,
Bassel Khartabil
.  I was horrified to learn of Bassel’s disappearance and immediately agreed.  My contribution to the open eBook
The Cost of Freedom: A Collective Inquiry
is called
The Open World
. Since then I have talked and blogged about Bassel at every opportunity, most recently at the
OER17 Conference The Politics of Open
and
re:publica
, in order to help raise awareness of his plight.
I never met Bassel, but his story touched me deeply.  Here was a man who lost his liberty, and we now know lost his life, for doing the very same job that I am doing now. This is why openness, open knowledge, open education, open advocacy matter.
I was on holiday in Brittany when I heard about Bassel’s death via
Catherine Cronin
on twitter and I was deeply, deeply saddened by the news.  I still am, and I’m still struggling to express this in words. At the moment, I’m not sure I can put it better than the words I used at the end of my OER17 lightning talk
Shouting from the Heart
The plight of Bassel Khartabil is a sobering reminder of the risks of openness, proof that open is always political, but it’s also shows why we need openness more than ever, because openness is inextricably bound up with freedom.  And in the words of another older declaration, the
Declaration of Arbroath
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Resources
Wikipedia – Bassel Khartabil
New Palmyra – Statement on Bassel Khartabil’s Death
Al Jazeera  report – Bassel Khartabil: Missing Syrian-Palestinian ‘executed’
Wikimania 2017 – Inauguration of the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship
I got back from #OER17 late last night, I’m still slightly reeling, and not just from the conference cold I picked up. OER is
my
conference, I’ve been to every single one and they’ve all been special in their own way, but this one was…emotional.  (Sheila has already written a conference blog called
My OER (open emotional response) to #oer17
so I’m obviously not the only one with
feels
.)
There are so many reasons why this year’s conference was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.  The theme,
The Politics of Open,
couldn’t have been more timely; it provoked anger and disbelief, defiance and hope.  It was the most diverse, most international OER conference ever and it was a privilege to be part of such an inclusive group. It was really inspiring to hear about positive open education developments from countries including Canada, Germany, Morocco and Lebanon.  I got to catch up with some very dear friends who I haven’t seen for a long time (looking at you R. John Robertson), met others face to face for the first time (hey
@Bali_Maha
@thatpsychprof
@fabionascimbeni
), VConnected with others (*waves* at
@NadinneAbo
in Cairo) and met lots of new colleagues. And so many amazing women!  Never in my life have I been to a conference where
all
the keynotes and plenary panelists were women.  It’s hard to describe the buzz that I got from seeing this representation in such a public forum. Thank you Maha Bali, Diana Arce, Lucy Crompton-Reid, Muireann O’Keeffe, Catherine Cronin, and Laura Czerniewicz for your challenging, thought provoking, brave, funny and inspirational talks.  And thanks of course to the conference chairs Josie Fraser and Alek Tarkowski and the amazing ALT Team for making this happen.
I’ve made a storify of my personal highlights from the conference here:
OER17 Personal Highlights
, including my panels and presentations, trexit, shouting from the heart, wonderful women, wikimedians, shoetweets and…umm… goats.
There was another reason this was a bit of an emotional event for me. In addition to participating in Jim Luke’s #Trexit panel and presenting a UK open education policy update, I also presented a short personal polemic called
Shouting from the Heart
.  I’ve never given such a personal talk at a conference before and I confess I was nervous as hell.  I wrote most of the talk late on Tuesday evening, but I was struggling to find a quote to end the five minute piece with. It was during the #Trexit panel the following morning that someone, I can’t remember who, possibly Maha, Sheila, Helen Beetham or Audrey Watters, said something about openness and freedom which immediately brought to mind the famous quote from the Declaration of Arbroath.
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the
Declaration of Arbroath
is a declaration of Scottish independenc
, written in 1320.  Appropriate, given I was talking about writing in response to events such as the Scottish Independence referendum and Brexit, and also because I was highlighting the disappearance of detained Syrian open knowledge advocate
Bassel Khartabil
. When I came to it however, nerves and emotions got the better of me; I choked on freedom, and I couldn’t read the last words of the quote.  So please, read it now.
It might sound silly, but Shouting from the Heart is without doubt the most nerve wracking 5 minutes of public speaking I’ve experienced so I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who responded so positively.
Anybody else brought to tears by
@LornaMCampbell
's 'Shouting from the heart'?
#OER17
The Cost of Freedom
pic.twitter.com/pStPbjY0mg
— Charlie (@SFarley_Charlie)
April 6, 2017
#oer17
thank you,
@LornaMCampbell
. your voice, your words, your work inspire many of us, in open education & beyond.
— Catherine Cronin (@catherinecronin)
April 6, 2017
A passionate and inspiring presentation by
@LornaMCampbell
on
#oer
at
#oer17
— Elizabeth E Charles (@ElizabethECharl)
April 6, 2017
privilege to witness powerful, passionate, personal, political, persuasive presentation on blogging & open ed by
@LornaMCampbell
at
#oer17
— Simon Horrocks (@horrocks_simon)
April 6, 2017
What was really astonishing though was that a few minutes after I finished speaking, Sheila retweeted this:
The Declaration of Arbroath was drafted
#OnThisDay
, 1320. Take a closer look at this world-famous document here
pic.twitter.com/WaQESvAIiY
— NatRecordsScot (@NatRecordsScot)
April 6, 2017
Yesterday, 6th April happened to be the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath. I had no idea!  Serendipity is an amazing thing….
This is my blog.  It’s called Open World.  It’s powered by Reclaim Hosting and the title is inspired by Kenneth White, Scottish poet and Chair of 20th Century Poetics at Paris-Sorbonne.  Mostly I write about work, about conferences and meetings I’ve been to, presentations I’ve given, papers I’ve written.  Sometimes I write about my thoughts on other people’s writing.  Sometimes I write about the frustrations of being a woman working in technology.  Sometimes I write about events like Open Access Week,  Ada Lovelace Day, or International Women’s Day.  Mostly I write about Open Education.
Mostly I write because I want to; but sometimes I write because I have to.  Sometimes writing is a necessity, a catharthis, the only way to process experiences or events that are too overwhelming, too infuriating, too incomprehensible to mediate in any other way.  That’s when writing gets personal and political, messy, emotional and confrontational.
I seem to be writing more and more of these personal blog posts recently; after the failed Scottish independence referendum (
Hearing voices
), after  Brexit (
This time it’s different
), after the US election (
The wrong side of history
).  It was Helen Beetham who called one of these posts a shout from the heart and I guess in a way they are.  There’s no denying that they’re a personal emotional response to events that seemed, that still seem, to be utterly incomprehensible to me.  There’s also quite a lot of swearing involved, but I’m not going to apologise for that.
So what has any of this got to do with open education?  I’ve always had a strong personal commitment to open education.  I believe passionately that as educators we have a responsibility to work together to improve opportunities for all, not just for a select few. I believe there is huge creative potential in openness and I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation to open access to publicly funded educational resources.
“Open education can expand access to education, widen participation, create new opportunities for the next generation of teachers and learners and prepare them to become fully engaged digital citizens. In addition, open education can promote knowledge transfer while at the same time enhancing quality and sustainability, supporting social inclusion, and creating a culture of inter-institutional collaboration and sharing.”
These words are from the
Scottish Open Education Declaration
.  I wrote them and you know what?  These aren’t hollow words, I actually believe them.  I actually have a genuine commitment to these words, and that’s why I find it increasingly difficult to disentangle my open education work from the personal and political.  And to be honest, I don’t really care because never has the feminist rallying call “The personal is political” rung more true than now.
I know I’m extremely fortunate to be in the position where I can write these personal political blog posts and express my opinions without fear of reprisal and I am aware that this is an incredibly privileged position to be in.   It’s very easy for some of us to take openness for granted but it’s important to remember that for many there’s is also a risk associated with openness, because openness, education, knowledge all seek to challenge structures of power and control. And in talking about risk, I don’t mean risk in the abstract sense.
“Bassel Khartabil (Safadi)” by Joi Ito – http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482CC BY 2.0
Do any of you know who this man is? This is
Bassel Khartabil
a Syrian open source software developer, open knowledge advocate, Wikipedia editor and project lead for Creative Commons Syria.  Bassel was also a contributor to the
New Palmyra
project; a digital archaeology and open data project that aims to create a virtual reconstruction of the ancient city of Palmyra, much of which has been destroyed by ISIL during the Syrian civil war. Bassel was detained by the Syrian government in 2012 and held in Adra Prison in Damacus for 3 years. In October 2015 his name was removed from the Adra prison register and despite calls from numerous human rights organisations, his whereabouts are unknown.  In order to raise awareness of Bassel’s disappearance a group of open practitioners came together to write the open e-book
The Cost of Freedom: A Collective Inquiry
.  My contribution to the book was a short piece called The Open World which touches on the personal risks, costs and benefits of openness, much like this talk today.   The plight of Bassel Khartabil is a sobering reminder of the risks of openness, proof that open is always political, but it’s also shows why we need openness more than ever, because openness is inextricably bound up with freedom.  And in the words of another declaration, an older declaration, the
Declaration of Arbroath
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
Defining ‘open’ in the context of education.
This piece was originally posted as a
feature
on the University of Edinburgh’s
Teaching Matters
site.
Open education has been my passion for a number of years now so when I was invited to write a short piece on why open matters for Teaching Matters I was happy to oblige.
Before trying to explore this question, let me explain what I mean by open education.  Open education is a broad catch-all term that includes open education resources (
OER
s), massive open online courses (
MOOC
s), open education practice, open assessment practices (e.g. Open Badges), and other approaches.
In the context of education it can be difficult to pin a single definition on the word “open”.  The open in open educational resources, is different to the open in massive open online courses.
Open educational resources are digital resources used for teaching and learning (e.g. course material, images, multimedia resources) that have been released under an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons) so they can be reused and repurposed by others.  The ability to change and adapt resources is an important aspect of the openness in
OER
MOOC
s on the other hand may be free for anyone to join, but frequently the content cannot be accessed or reused outside the course. This sometimes leads to accusations of so-called “open washing”; claiming something is open when really it isn’t.
But why does “open” actually matter in education?  This question is addressed by the
Scottish Open Education Declaration
produced by
Open Scotland
, a voluntary cross sector initiative supported by the University of Edinburgh as part of their
wider commitment to open education and
OER
.  Open education in general and
OER
in particular are part of a worldwide movement to promote and support sustainable educational development. Open education can expand access to education, widen participation, create new opportunities for the next generation and prepare them to become fully engaged digital citizens.
There is also a sound economic case for open education. Releasing publicly funded educational resources under open licences represents a return on investment on public spending. Institutions are already being mandated to publish publicly funded research outputs under open access agreements; surely there is a strong moral argument that publicly funded educational resources should be published under open licences?
I recently had an opportunity to write a more personal reflection on why I believe open matters in a contribution to the open book
Cost of Freedom
which aims to raise awareness of the disappearance of detained Syrian internet volunteer and open knowledge advocate Bassel Khartabil.
I believe there is huge creative potential in openness and I believe we have a moral and ethical responsibility to open access to publicly funded educational resources. Yes, there are costs, but they are far outweighed by the benefits of open.
Open education practice and open educational resources have the potential to expand access to education while at the same time supporting social inclusion and creating a culture of collaboration and sharing. There are other more intangible, though no less important, benefits of open. Focusing on simple cost-benefit analysis models neglects the creative, fun and serendipitous aspects of openness and, ultimately, this is what keeps us learning.
Based on an original painting by Omar Ibrahim, designed by Julien Taquet.
Towards the end of last year, following an invitation from Adam Hyde of
booksprints.net
, I wrote a contribution for a free and open online book called
The Cost of Freedom
.  The book is dedicated to Syrian internet volunteer and open knowledge advocate
Bassel Khartabil,
باسل خرطبيل
, who has been detained in Syria since March 2012. On the 3rd October 2015 Bassel’s name was deleted from the Adra Prison’s register where he was detained and no further information has been obtained about his whereabouts.
The Cost of Freedom is not a statement about freedom and culture — it is a primal scream — the sum of our questions and desires. It is the raw expression of our lives. It talks about what is ultimately made through the dream of free culture: us.
The Cost of Freedom
The book was written in Pourrières in France during a five day book sprint in early November 2015, with additional contributions being submitted by writers from all over the world. Here’s my contribution, a personal reflection on what openness means to me.
“Bassel Khartabil (Safadi)” by Joi Ito – http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482 CC BY 2.0
The Open World
In
Open is not a License
Adam Hyde has described openness as
‘a set of values by which you live…a way of life, or perhaps a way of growing, an often painful path where we challenge our own value system against itself.’
To my mind, openness is also contradictory. I don’t mean contradictory in terms of the polar dichotomy of open vs. closed, or the endless debates that seek to define the semantics of open. I mean contradictory on a more personal level; openness raises contradictions within ourselves. Openness can lead us to question our position in the world; our position in relation to real and perceived boundaries imposed from without and carefully constructed from within.
In one way or another I have worked in the open education space for a decade now. I have contributed to open standards, created open educational resources, developed open policy, written
open books
, participated in open knowledge initiatives, facilitated open events, I endeavour to be an ‘open practitioner’, I run a blog called
Open World
. However, I am not by nature a very open person; my inclination is always to remain closed. I have had to learn openness and I’m not sure I’m very good at it yet. It’s a continual learning experience. Openness is a process that requires practice and perseverance. (Though sometimes circumstances leave us with little choice, sometimes it’s open or nothing.)
And of course, there is a cost; openness requires a little courage. When we step, or are pushed, outside our boundaries and institutions, it’s easy to feel disoriented and insecure. The open world can be a challenging and unsettling place and it’s easy to understand the impulse to withdraw, to seek the security of the familiar.
When large scale open education funding programmes first started to appear, (what an impossible luxury that seems like now), they were met with more than a little scepticism. When a major OER funding initiative was launched in the UK in 2009 (
UKOER
), the initial response was incredulity (
OER Programme Myths
). Surely projects weren’t expected to share their resource with everyone? Surely UK Higher Education resources should only be shared with other UK Higher Education institutions? It took patience and persistence to convince colleagues that yes, open really did mean open, open for everyone everywhere, not just open for a select few. One perceptive colleague at the time described this attitude as ‘the agoraphobia of openness’(1).
Although open licences and open educational resources are more familiar concepts now, there is still a degree of reticence. An undercurrent of anxiety persists that discourages us from sharing our educational resources, and reusing resources shared by others. There is a fear that by opening up our resources and our practice, we will also open ourselves up to criticism, that we will be judged and found wanting. Imposter syndrome is a real thing; even experienced teachers may fail to recognise their own work as being genuinely innovative and creative. At the same time, openness can invoke a fear of loss; loss of control, loss of agency, and in some cases even loss of livelihood. Viewed through this lens, the distinction between openness and exposure blurs.
But despite these costs and contradictions, I do believe there is inherently personal and public value in openness. I believe there is huge creative potential in openness and I believe we have a moral and ethical responsibility to open access to publicly funded educational resources. Yes, there are costs, but they are far outweighed by the benefits of open. Open education practice and open educational resources have the potential to expand access to education, widen participation, and create new opportunities while at the same time supporting social inclusion, and creating a culture of collaboration and sharing. There are other more intangible, though no less important, benefits of open. Focusing on simple cost-benefit analysis models neglects the creative, fun and serendipitous aspects of openness and, ultimately, this is what keeps us learning.
In the domain of knowledge representation, the
Open World Assumption
‘codifies the informal notion that in general no single agent or observer has complete knowledge’. It’s a useful assumption to bear in mind; our knowledge will never be complete, what better motivation to keep learning? But the Open World of my blog title doesn’t come from the domain of knowledge representation; it comes from the Scottish poet Kenneth White (2), Chair of 20th Century Poetics at Paris-Sorbonne, 1983-1996, and a writer for whom openness is an enduring and inspiring theme. White is also the founder of the International
Institute of Geopoetics
, which is ‘concerned, fundamentally, with a relationship to the earth and with the opening of a world’ (3). In the words of White:
no art can touch it; the mind can only
try to become attuned to it
to become quiet, and space itself out, to
become open and still, unworlded (4)
disquiet ambient/electronica
have recorded a number of the contributions to the book, including mine, which you can listen to here.
References
I cannot remember who said this, but the comment has always stayed with me.
White, K., (2003), Open World. The Collected Poems, 1960 – 2000, Polygon.
White, K., (2004), Geopoetics: place, culture, world, Alba.
White, K., (2004), ‘A High Blue Day on Scalpay’ in Open World. The Collected Poems, 1960 – 2000, Polygon.
Links
The Cost of Freedom
Free Bassel Campaign
Bassel Khartabil
باسل خرطبيل
Disquiet Junto Project 0202: Text-to-Speech-to-Free
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