OpenEd Week 10: Comments collection

I read some classmates’ post for week 9, and find it is not so easy to give comments on a different reading from me. I don’t know if I can make good suggestions to my classmates since I don’t know what the main ideas are in the other books. I tried to find the classmates who read the same book of me and make comments, and then I randomly choose some posts and give my limited opinions.

First, I read Rob’s post on “The World is flat”. He talks about how his perspective changes from business to education. As a business major in my undergraduate, I feel the same way that my perspective changes a lot after I change my major for my graduate study especially during this new learning environment of this class. This open education class means a lot for us who changed our majors. He also indicates some applications of specific technologies which I also mentioned in my post. I like the example he makes about Chinese and Japanese, and I made some comments on that, “In China right now, many people avoid working for Japanese companies and Japanese companies are well-known as low-paid, high work strength, and high pressure. In fact, there are lots of unemployed people, if they have chances to work in Japanese company they will do even they don't like the work. You are right, ‘the economics override the hate’”.

Jennifer also has the same reading, and she shows a new point of view that, “This bottom-up and self-organized community development process parallels the open education movement. In addition, it helps to explain how an open educational model can be sustained.” She also shows good understanding of each part of the book; I have some comments to her, “You make very clear understanding on each section of the book. But it is hard for me to relate the first few paragraphs to the content of the book, would you indicate that? Or if they are just your opinions, then never mind. I agree with your last few paragraphs, even though I think there are a lot more technologies other than cellphone we are using now for education. It is not cell phone’s fault if the kids use it for cheating, they can also use small cheating sheets. Then do we need to get rid of paper? You are right on this point, but do you think only writing reflective paper will help understand all the content of classes? How can you test on some classes such as math, statistics, and physics?”

I also read Mela’s blog; she makes some brief opinions on three books, but I don’t know if I successfully gave my comments on her blog since I can’t understand the language, I will just paste my comments here, “It looks like you read a few books. I also read "The World is flat", and I share the same thoughts with you. But how can you relate your thoughts to open education movement? And in the thoughts of "Free Culture", do you agree with all what the author talks about? Do you have some ideas that might be against the author's ideas?”

I did have not much I can say about Stian’s post about the book he read. It looks all good to me if there is no prejudice on the field between business and education. And I think this class gives us a good opportunity that we can share our ideas of anything with anyone in this class, feel open! I gave him some comments more than his reading content, and also for his concern about our class; here is my thoughts, “It is good for you to read most of the books. When I have time later, I will try to read more. You seem not like the book that much is it because you are in the education field but not business? I may be interested in reading it since I started with a business background, and later I want to have my own business. To broader my knowledge in another field is also very important to me. I may understand your points better when I read the book later. I feel much better when I see the changes made on our syllabi. It is hard for someone who is not deeply involved in this field to try out a project like that, maybe just me. I was really worried before it changed that for me as an international student, how can I find a professional to agree with my open practice? Some of my classmates from other classes consider if they want to take this class later because of that project. I think I would like to definitely try the practice later when I have enough confidence with my knowledge in this field. Any one here can try it any time. David will be here and more and more classmates will join in, you can get comments any time.”