The Urgency of Open Education: Cheap Thrills, Participatory Culture and Working Social Media

Do the implications of digital media turn our educational institutions inside out? Can educators learn to stop worrying and love the remix? Is originality overrated? What's the difference between reuse and plagiarism? Is openness our only hope? Where's the RSS feed? What does "data literacy" look like? Are Web 2.0 companies a teacher's best friend, or a bunch of creeps converting our work, our relationships and our private data into market share? Has the Web 2.0 bubble popped, and if so now what? How do we teach our students, our colleagues and ourselves to be technology strategists? How many copyright violations can be jammed into one presentation? This presentation and discussion review the opportunities and initiatives resulting from the convergence of open source, free culture, open access and open educational resources. Special emphasis will be placed on how social media can be employed for professional development, and on the notion of the personal learning network.