Today, Jenni Hayman sent out a message in the ECHO group with a link to the WikiEducator Research/Open Educators Factory site. This describes a project about open education and lead me onto a web tool to self assess & rate your individual openness.The graphic results are provided immediately, along with some recommendations for readings and viewing to extend your learning. So, I guess I'm not really surprised, but it turns out... I'm an open designer, OER user, open teacher AND and open evaluator.
Open Educator is defined as:
An Open Educator choses to use open approaches, when possible and appropriate, with the aim to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning. She works through an open online identity and relies on online social networking to enrich and implement her work, understanding that collaboration bears a responsibility towards the work of others.
An Open Educator implements openness along four main activities. She:
1. Implements Open Learning Design, by openly sharing ideas and plans about her teaching activities with experts and with past and potential students, incorporating inputs and transparently leaving a trace of the development process.
2. Uses open educational content, by releasing her teaching resources through open licenses, by facilitating sharing of her resources through OER repositories and other means, and by adapting, assembling and using OERs produced by others in her teaching.
3. Adopts Open Pedagogies, fostering co-creation of knowledge by students through online and offline collaboration, allowing learners to contribute to public knowledge resources such as Wikipedia.
4. Implements open assessment practices such as peer and collaborative evaluation, open badges and e-portfolios, engaging students as well as external stakeholders in learning assessment.
Despite that result based on a handful of questions, I'm still not sure about my 'status' as an open educator. As I've been exploring the 'dial it up' model, there are steps and mechanisms to shift my teaching and learning further into the open, but those will need to considered carefully and negotiated. My open means that my students, colleagues and institution are also 'dialing it up' with me. Where do ethics and privacy come into this equation and how can open be balanced with safer internet practices?
