During MozSprint, we wanted collect and map stories, perspectives and examples of the Open Web and related tools and spaces that can be used in or are relevant to education. To facilitate this, we created three sites. Each of these spaces are powered by SPLOTs (created by CogDog, aka Alan Levine) which are open source customised WordPress themes that facilitate co-publishing without the need for contributors to have user accounts or logins. SPLOTs allow for anonymous posting through a form embedded in a site page; contributors can choose whether to remain anonymous or to identify themselves with their name, a pseudonym or a social media handle.
Catalogue.owlteh.org aims to collect instances of the Open Web covering applications and platforms that can be relevant for teaching and learning. This site is built using the TRU Collector SPLOT.
Stories.owlteh.org aims to gather detailed accounts of how the Open Web can be used for teaching and learning and also welcome contributions from educators and learners who want to share how they first realised the potential of the Open Web for education.
Perspectives.owlteh.org aims to collect perspectives of on how the concept of the Open Web is defined and how this can relate to learning and teaching.
Back in April, we were lucky enough to have a large number of open education practitioners visit us at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, where we filmed and interviewed Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin, Mia Zamora, Brian Lamb, Alan Levine and Ewan McAndrew asking three things:
What is the Open Web and what does it mean to you?
Why does the Open Web matter in education?
Inspiring examples of Open Web in education
These interviews became the first contributions in the Perspectives collection. Anne-Marie Scott then sent us a video of her perspective on the three prompts which we then edited and added to the Perspectives during the Sprint. We had lots of contributions to the Catalogue, including explanations of open tools and spaces such as The Jupyter Notebook, Hypothesis and Mastodon. It was an intense few days (powered by coffee, snacks and a love of Italian Spiderman) but an amazing experience connecting with people all around the world. We have made a bunch of new friends and we look forward to continuing to share ideas and contribute to the world-wide movement for a healthy internet! We will be sharing news on future plans for the OWLTEH project very soon so watch this space!