The OER Arts Resource Epic - From Egg to Ugly Baby: Day 1. The 'egg'
OK so this is a retrospective. The 'great creation' started in early 2015 - with a success (- my employing university offered a substantial grant - and plenty of support)- for 'winning proposers' to create an Open Education Textbook. In my case the proposal outlined an embarrassingly ambitious proposal (I cringe reading it now) to create an Open Education Textbook for pre-service teacher arts education. Somehow, my proposal persuaded the panel that I had potential - and I gained that funding.
Here are parts of my responses to the proposal form topics. Can you spot: The 'green' applicant? The shaky ground? The impossible goal? Sheer ignorance? [All present and looming large]....sigh...
Q1. The 'HOW and WHAT' - how will you go about developing an Open Textbook? What new and existing materials will you use?
A1. My approach will bring together resources for each of the 5 arts (drama, dance, media, music, visual arts) to create a 'live' textbook with digital contributions from contributing artists/educators around the world to avoid a 'monocultural' approach. I have extensive international contacts including (name of UK arts/research group) who co-construct and share their work.
Q2. What type of format? (eg. MP3, PDF, ePUB) and license (e.g. CC-BY, CC-BY-SA) will your textbook use?
A2: EPub and CC with All rights reserved as artists will wish to retain control of their work and will not want it to be re-shaped, copied or adapted without permission.
So wrong.... but right in ways I did not foresee. Why? Well...what is the point of having a static site with content that cannot be re-used without permission? That is hardly an Open Education Resource. But...I was right in my concern that artist-colleagues and friends would wish to keep control of their artistic creations. They did.
To my embarrassment - the enthusiastic international contacts I boasted of in the proposal - artists, performers, collaborative academic colleagues - evaporated into thin air.
What did I get right?
The passion - the genuine commitment to diversity and to engaging future teachers in sharing their own works on the site.
I gained the funding and was announced as one of the winners. Exciting. That was where the real challenge started. Trying to shape my own thinking - and the project - into something 'do-able'.
I had 10 months to complete the project.
Plenty of time!!? Hmmmm....
......Next? All the lovely things I planned to do with the funding!