Open Revolution 英文参考文献.docVIP

Book Review/Science in the Media Open Revolution Sean R. Eddy I n 2001, Charles Vest, then President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that can be readily copied. So, while I like storming the establishment with pitchforks and torches as much as anyone, when I picked up Opening Up Education (or rather, when I downloaded the PDF to my Kindle), I was looking for pragmatism, not utopianism. After 500 pages of “the silos we all know about in higher education are under assault in the new world,” the “hated textbook publishers,” the “epistemological hegemony of higher education,” and the “noble philosophy” of making everything free—“traitors” and “patriots” and “communists,” oh my!— my hopes were beaten down. Many of the 30 essays in this collection are more manifesto than explanation, and many of the 38 authors are writing more for their fellow revolutionary comrades than for us. announced that MIT would make most of its course material freely available online. Browsing the Web site of MIT’s Open Courseware (OCW) project (), you feel the stirring of a “my God, it’s full of stars” transformation: you can borrow material for your courses, study other teachers’ teaching methods, maybe even retake college courses you regret having slept through! Remarkably, OCW is just one highly visible part of an “open education movement.” The essays collected in Opening Up Education, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar, describe ways in which individuals and institutions intend to exploit digital communications technology, develop innovative and freely redistributable educational methods and resources, and improve education at all levels throughout the world. But what does “open education” really mean? What is “closed” about education? Should education be free as in no cost, or is there something about education that needs to be freed as in freedom? This sort of ground is already well-trampled by debates about two better-known “open” predecessors, open-source softwar