I was starting a CV entry for people who had looked at the model. http://davecormier.wikispaces.com/impact+on+field You might find the last entry particularly interesting in terms of how the model can be applied.

On the other hand offering a fundamental critique, even being anti-capitalist, by itself doesn’t do it. As David Harvey says, the Taliband and communist rule in Nepal both offer anti-capitalist critiques. I notice you used the word ‘progressive’ in one of your tweets. I think it is the ‘progressive’ values that could underpin open education and its critique that are important. The elaboration of the ‘many reasons’ in your last paragraph is crucial, along with what we mean by ‘better’ and ‘more relevant’ (better in what ways, relevant to what and whom?). Thinking about it while I write this, it looks like there is a political battle to be had within open education. What I mean by it seems very close to yourself, Graham and Richard. It doesn’t seem to be the general view so far.

Within the open source community, there are those that see it as a pragmatic political project (i.e. Stallman and the Free Software Foundation) but others couldn’t care less about the political implications of their involvement in open source and working entirely for other pragmatic reasons.

Similarly, there are a number of different motivations and aspirations among advocates of OpenEd. That’s OK to some extent – healthy even – but surely there will come a point when each of us decides whether our aspirations lie ultimately outside HEIs or inside – in or against – whether OpenEd is for the transformation of a current, undesirable state of affairs, or for the reinforcement and development of it as a mechanism of efficiency through the re-distribution of ‘learning content’ under the name of ‘e-learning’.

My simple view is that open education is intrinsically a response to a system of education that is increasingly untenable (and for some of us, undesirable) for many reasons. OpenEd is a critique of what’s wrong and a proposal for something better and more relevant to the world we want to live in.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TerryWassall: trying to get my head round the practicalities of open education/learning http://tinyurl.com/ycvozus Any help, suggestions gratefully recv’d…