Why Open?

Now let's explore openness a bit further by engaging in open practices. This will also be a way to start getting a good handle on both the benefits of openness, and some of the issues that may come up when practicing openly.

You can earn a badge for engaging in an open practice in your group and writing a blog post about it! See the "Why Open? Practicing Open" badge on the left menu.

There will be a synchronous Google Hangout on Tuesday, August 20, 17:00-18:00 UTC / 1:00-2:00 PM EDT / 8:00-9:00 PM EAT / 5:00-6:00 AM NZST / 10:00-11:00 AM PDT facilitated by Jeannette Lee. Please sign-up on the course etherpad: http://pad.p2pu.org/p/Why_open_course_pad. We had to move this to a Twitter chat, b/c we had technical difficulties during the Google Hangout. Here's the record of this chat: http://storify.com/jeannettemelee/archive-of-week-3-why-open-google-hangout-twitter

We will also have a Twitter chat this week (hashtag: #whyopen), on Friday, August 23, at 19:00-20:00 UTC / 3:00-4:00 PM EDT / 10:00-11:00 PM EAT / 7:00-8:00 AM NZST / 12:00 NOON-1:00 PM PDT. Here's the record of this chat: http://storify.com/jeannettemelee/archive-of-why-open-week-3-twitter-chat

At our first Google Hangout session, we decided to create a couple of collaborative documents. Please contribute to them if you'd like!

• Answering the question "Why Open?" collaboratively: http://pad.p2pu.org/Why_open_discussion
• How to market/spread/educate others about openness? http://pad.p2pu.org/p/How_to_spread_open

A. Open Activities--in groups

This week, your group will be engaging in an open practice--either one of those listed in the discussion area from last week (section 2 on menu at left), or one from the list below. As a group, choose the activity you'd like to do. Then either split it up so members do different parts, or each person try the activity themselves...whatever seems most relevant for what you've chosen.

If you have questions or comments or run into problems, you can work together to discuss and try to address them. You could also ask questions in the discussion area below, if talking about them in your group isn't getting you the answers you need.

It's possible you won't finish the whole activity before the week is finished and you need to write your blog post (see part B, below)! That's okay. Just do what you can.

Choose either one of the activities that groups listed in the discussion area, or one of the following:

• Do the tasks at this course on finding open materials that you can use to teach something to someone else: https://p2pu.org/en/groups/teach-someone-something-with-open-content/ If you want to go further, you can do the second part of this course as well (or instead), in which you edit, revise, remix what you've found and attribute the original creators: https://p2pu.org/en/groups/teach-someone-something-with-open-content-part-2/

• Do one or more of the tasks at the "Open Detective" course at P2PU, on searching for open content, and thinking a bit about why open content might be important: https://p2pu.org/en/groups/open-detective/

• Do the tasks at the "Get a CC license. Put it on your website" P2PU course: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/3/

• If you'd like to help edit some articles in Wikipedia try this: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Open_Access/resources, choose a resource that you have full access to either through your place of work or local library. After reading the resource, add information from it into a relevant article in Wikipedia along with the citation.

  Here is a list of Open Access articles on Wikipedia that are part of Wikipedia: WikiProject Open Access/Resources: https://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Open_access&namespace=&pagename=&quality=&importance=&score=&limit=1000&offset=1&sorta=Importance&sortb=Quality.

  You don't have to choose one of the articles listed there but it is a good place to start. You don't need to create an account to contribute to a Wikipedia article, but creating an account gives you more privileges. See "Why Create and Account?": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account%3F

• Upload at least two or three images to Wikimedia Commons and choose a Creative Commons license for them (e.g., Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, or Creative Commons CC0Waiver): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Welcome

• Do one or two "daily creates" from ds106, give them an open license, and post them on your blog: https://p2pu.org/en/groups/make-something-with-the-daily-create/

• Do one or two of the "makes" from the "make bank" created by the Making Learning Connected MOOC (clmooc), and use an open license for them. These were all submitted by participants in clmooc. There are audio makes, video makes, image makes, map makes, and more! Once you're done, give it an open license and post it on your blog. http://blog.nwp.org/clmooc/makes/search-makes/

• If you're interested in learning a little html, you can try one or more of the following Mozilla Thimble projects, which help you to learn some basic html. Don't worry if you're completely new to html--the sites help you learn some step by step. The instructions are on the left panel, mixed in with the code, and you can see the results of what you're changing with the code on the right panel!

  Madame Lille's open art gallery: https://thimble.webmaker.org/projects/opengallery/

  Madame Lille's open cinema: https://thimble.webmaker.org/projects/opencinema/

  Madame Lille's open disco: https://thimble.webmaker.org/projects/opendisco/

  Add your own masterpiece to the gallery: https://thimble.webmaker.org/projects/openmasterpiece/

• If you're interested in video, or want to learn a bit about open video, you could do part of the "A Look at Open Video" course on P2PU. If you're new to video and open video, you might want to read the first two parts of the course and do the suggested tasks in them. If you know a bit about video but want to learn more, look at the rest of the course and see what part interests you the most, and do the tasks there. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/a-look-at-open-video/

• If you're interested in audio, you could do "The Quickest Audacity Course in the World" on P2PU, in which you can quickly learn how to edit and save an audio file in Auadcity, a free and open source audio editing tool. To make this an even more "open" practice, once you've edited the sample file, or one of your own choosing, give it an open license and post it on your blog. https://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-quickest-audacity-course-in-the-world/

B. Blog post and comments, individually

1. Reflective blog post

After your group has completed your chosen activity (or not, as the case may be--it's okay if you don't entirely finish but just get partway!), each person please write a reflective blog post about what you did. You could address one or more of the following questions, or write about some other aspect of the process and how it relates to openness.

• How was your activity an "open" practice, in your view? You could relate what you did to your earlier blog post on openness, or to something you read from someone else about openness, if you like.

• What CC license did you choose if you were creating content? Why?

• Did you run into any problems or barriers? If so, please explain what they were and how you tried to address them (if possible). Were these issues related to openness in some way?

• Was this process beneficial to you in some way? What benefits can you imagine open practices might bring?

• What did you learn through this process about openness, or about anything else? What did you learn from your peers in your group?

• What questions do you have at this point?

2. Commenting on others' blog posts

Just as in previous sections of the course, please choose at least two other participants' blog posts to read and comment on. Once again, try to find people whom you haven't given comments to before! The blog hub can be found here: http://www.whyopencourse.org/bloghub/

You could ask them a question, discuss something in their post that you agree with (and why), or something that made you think differently than you did before, something that was new and interesting to you, or something you disagree with (and why), or whatever else comes to mind.