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Hi Terry:

My comments are inline below.

Warm regards,

Cable



On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 1:08 AM, Terry Loane <terry@dawsonloane.co.uk> wrote:

This issue of alleged/apparent 'dodgy dealing' by a major publishing and education company is just one example of a much bigger issue. The Pearson story centres around a blurring of the distinction between a commerical for-profit organisation and a (closely related) charity. But what we see around us in the world of education is an increasing blurring of the traditional dividing lines between the commercial, the charitable and the publicly funded.

I agree.  I would add that it is unfortunate that some nations are reducing their financial support for public education... which is accelerating this increased blurring. 

You say, Cable, that

'Creative Commons consistently recommends that publicly funded... resources be openly licensed.'

Now I agree wholeheartedly with this, but can it work at present at an institutional level? FE Colleges (not to mention academy schools) are publicly funded yet they are encouraged to work within a competitive framework. I just don't see individual schools and colleges being willing openly to share educational resources that they have created using public funding with the institution down the road with whom they are in competition for enrollments, for league table positions etc. Yet there is plenty of evidence that collaboration among teachers and among institutions leads to far more successful real learning than competition.

Two thoughts:

(1) Most of the open policies we're seeing are on discretionary / optional grants.  That is - the open licensing funding requirement does not apply to the base budgets of the public education institutions.  Rather - the open license requirement is typically put on optional grant money.  In those cases, if an educator does not want to openly licnese educational resources, that educator need not apply for those optional grants.

(2) I would argue the content educators produce with public funds is likely not what makes an educational institutions competitive or not; this is especially true in highest enrolled courses / general education curriculum.  What does make an institution competitive is: great faculty, student services, internship programs, job placement, physical location, online learning programs, etc.    What content an institution uses for Statistics 201 isn't going to make it more or less competitive.

If I am correct on #2, I wonder if it would be good for public education institution if publicly funded resources were openly licensed.


The ease with which media-rich learning resources can be created, uploaded and accessed is a huge and exciting challenge to our traditional economic and institutional assumptions about how teaching and learning (and, of course, publishing) work.

It is indeed.... and we, as educators, should be asking how we can leverage the technological and legal tools of the day to maximize teacher and leaner access to high quality educational resources.

To the extent possible, we should be driven by these possibilities / opportunities - and not be restricted by older business models.

 
No wonder Pearson feel threatened by OER - but so too should all of us who work in education.

I would debate that teachers / professors / educators should feel threatened by OER... quite the contrary.

I agree that Pearson will have to rethink its business models (partially) because of OER.

Cheers,

Cable

 
To slightly misquote L. P. Hartley:

'The future is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

Terry Loane


On 15/12/2013 02:30, Cable Green wrote:
Comments inline below.

Cable


On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Jacky Hood <jacky.hood@opendoorsgroup.org> wrote:
Cable's posting is very disturbing. The opening salvo is "The next time
Pearson comes after your good work, keep this in your back pocket."

By "come after" I do not mean: acquire, steal, collect, annex.

I mean: belittle, disparage, smear, deprecate...

I mean: the next time Pearson takes a swing at OER as being low quality, poor quality - as costing tax payers more money, as being a waste of time... it may be useful to remind them, in a public forum, that they are not playing by the tax laws of the United States and their actions appear to value profit over access to educational resources.


Unless I am reading this incorrectly, the implication is that Pearson
Education has in the past and will in the future 'come after' (steal?) the
good work done by each and every member of six OER communities. Does
simply belonging to an OER community mean that a person produces good
work? If Pearson is indeed stealing people's work, then it should be
prosecuted, not simply reminded of a court decision of which it is already
well aware.

No - see above for clarification.

Pearson appears to have made mistakes in keeping a wall between its
corporation and its foundation. It has paid dearly for those mistakes:
$7.5M in fines, $15M for the intellectual property, and its employees
forbidden to attend Pearson Foundation Conferences. To find joy in this
situation is lamentable.

No joy - just facts.
 

I suggest that we reach out to Pearson Education employees and welcome
them at other education conferences. Recently I was privileged to serve on
a panel entitled "The Future of Digital Textbooks" with Jerome Grant,
Executive VP, Digital Products, Pearson Education. The conference was
sponsored by the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, an
organization whose members are taking a major hit due to the shift from
print to digital textbooks.

I have and continue to reach out to Pearson.  I am in regular contact with many of their VPs... and I hold them privately and publicly to reasonable standards of proper behavior that supports broad and affordable access to learning resources.

These news stories reflect poor behavior on the part of Pearson and the Pearson Foundation.

Mr. Grant, who once served as an Editor-in-Chief for Higher Education
Mathematics and Statistics, said that Pearson would happily give away ALL
of its content if it could receive a per-student fee for tools. Imagine:
instead of 1/3 of the students buying textbooks for hundreds of dollars
and the rest trying to pass their courses with no materials, each student
would pay a single tool fee and have access to all content. This would be
a win-win for all concerned.

I am eager to see such a proposal - and then compare and contrast it with a publicly funded OER solution.

Open Doors Group and College Open Textbooks have always and will always
have a philosophy of 'no enemies, no victims'. Everyone who loves
education must work together to increase access to high quality content
and tools.

I completely agree.

Cable
 

Regards,
Jacky Hood
Alliances Director
Open Doors Group
http://www.opendoorsgroup.org



---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [OER] [Open-education] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in trouble
From:    "Jacky Hood" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Sat, December 14, 2013 1:09 pm
To:      "Educause Openness Constituent Group"
<[log in to unmask]>
         "OER Advocacy Coalition" <[log in to unmask]>
         "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
         "OER Forum" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Open Educaton @ OKFN" <[log in to unmask]>
         "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Schadenfreude


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [Open-education] Pearson Foundation / Pearson: in trouble
From:    "Cable Green" <[log in to unmask]>
Date:    Sat, December 14, 2013 12:58 pm
To:      "Educause Openness Constituent Group"
<[log in to unmask]>
         "OER Advocacy Coalition" <[log in to unmask]>
         "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
         "OER Forum" <[log in to unmask]>
         "Open Educaton @ OKFN" <[log in to unmask]>
         "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Open Education Colleagues:

The next time Pearson comes after your good work, keep this in your back
pocket.

   - *Educational Publisher’s Charity, Accused of Seeking Profits, Will Pay
   Millions NYT: *The Pearson Foundation will pay $7.7 million after the
   New York State attorney general found that it had broken state law by
   helping develop products for its corporate parent.
      -
      http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/12/12/publishing-giant-pearsons-nonprofit-arm-settles-investigation/

      - *Publishing Giant Pearson's Nonprofit Arm Settles Investigation*
   *WSJ:*
   -
      http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/nyregion/educational-publishers-charity-accused-of-seeking-profits-will-pay-millions.html


This part of the story (in the NYTimes article) is especially troubling:

   -
*Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to
   develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report
   said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and
donations
   from a “prominent foundation.† That group appears to be the Bill and
   Melinda Gates Foundation. *
   - *“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their courses by
   association with the prominent foundation would enhance Pearson’s
   reputation with policy makers and the education community,† a release
   accompanying the attorney general’s report said. *
   - * Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates
   Foundation announced they would work together
   <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/education/28gates.html> to create 24
new
   online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core. *
   - * Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold
   commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of tens of
   millions of dollars. After Mr. Schneiderman’s office began its
   investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for
$15.1
   million.*

Creative Commons consistently recommends that publicly funded (and
Foundation funded) resources be openly licensed. It's too bad these 24
reading and math courses, funded by two Foundations (and then sold to
Pearson for $15.1M), were not openly licensed and made available to the
millions of teachers and students who desperately need updated learning
resources.

Cable

--


Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen <http://twitter.com/cgreen>
http://creativecommons.org/education
* reuse, revise, remix & redistribute*
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--


Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen
http://creativecommons.org/education
reuse, revise, remix & redistribute




--


Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
@cgreen
http://creativecommons.org/education
reuse, revise, remix & redistribute

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