The Ethic of Open Digital Content

An Article for The TechEdge: The Journal of the Texas Computer Education Association
by Wesley A. Fryer
(Updated 17 September 2006)

In the course of human history, is is remarkable to observe that little more than five hundred years have passed since Johann Gutenberg invented the first printing press and thereby revolutionized the dissemination of ideas throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Just as the printing press incited a new era of publication and idea sharing, today the Internet and a phenomenon known as “web 2.0” or “the read/write web” is ushering in a revolution of equivalent proportion. Like the revolutions incited by Gutenberg and Copernicus, this new era of web-enabled publication, interaction, and collaboration brings with it a host of issues and opportunities which will be shunned by some and embraced by many. Those with access to the Internet are moving quickly into an era of unprecedented access to an unbelievable cornocopia of information and ideas, no longer published in a single direction for a passive audience. Rather, many of these ideas are shared in interactive formats which provide a distribution network and a potential for amplification undreamed of only a few decades ago.

The growth of the Internet resource “WikiPedia” (www.wikipedia.org) is illustrative of these dynamics. Started in January 2001, the English WikiPedia has quickly grown into the world’s largest encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia). Exceeding traditional encyclopedias in both breadth and depth by a factor of at least ten, WikiPedia versions are available in over two hundred languages. WikiPedia is touted as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” In 2005, Nature magazine published results of comparative studies between WikiPedia and the traditionally produced Encylopedia Britannica, and found “numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.” (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html) Given the comparatively larger size of WikiPedia, this level of accuracy in its sampled content is remarkable.

Rather than examine the comparative value of a collaborative, globally authored resource like WikiPedia or investigate the web 2.0 technologies which permit this type of resource to explode onto the information landscape in such a short period of time, in this article I want to analyze the ethic of open digital content which is emerging in the early twenty-first century. This new ethic of publishing and content sharing is different in fundamental ways to previous paradigms of print publication. Traditionally, publishing models limited idea publication through access barriers related to printing and distribution costs. Language translations were also inherently limited. While large numbers of books, periodicals and newspapers are printed around the world today in numerous langauages, signficant barriers for analog print publication remain. In this traditional media and publishing paradigm, higher value is generally ascribed to content when access to it is limited.

This traditional paradigm of print publication contrasts sharply with the ethic of open digital content proliferating online today. Online publication of ideas, particularly through blogs and collaborative spaces like “wikis” used by WikiPedia, provide publication mechanisms for people around the planet at almost no cost. The distribution costs of ideas contained in binary computer code of ones and zeros is virtually negligible, as Nicholas Negroponte observed in his book “Being Digital” published (traditionally) in 1995. Digital content published on the public Internet is much more accessible, offers far lower barriers of production, distribution and access, and offers robust potential for language translations unthought-of in the traditional world of analog print.

It is my contention that educators of all shapes and sizes: classroom teachers, librarians, administrators and professors, should embrace this ethic of open digital content. For economic, pedagogic, and moral reasons, educators in the 21^st century need to become “open educators” supporting the free, global exchange of ideas and information in our networked world being drawn ever closer together through the magic of technology.

ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS

The economic reasons to support open digital content seem overwhelming. Large numbers of citizens in both the developed and developing world today are increasingly influenced by a media-centric society in which technology and digital communication plays a dominant role. Writing in 1995, Nicholas Negraponte observed in the opening chapter of his book, “Being Digital:”

The information superhighway is about the global movement of weightless bits at the speed of light. As one industry after another looks at itself in the mirror and asks about its future in a digital world, that future is driven almost 100 percent by the ability of that company’s product or services to be rendered in digital form.

While not every business and service will make this transition from “atoms to bits,” increasingly the content sources of our conversations are becoming digitized. Digital content consumption is increasingly balanced, however, by digital content creation by amateurs as well as professionals. The young digital natives inhabiting classrooms around our planet are not satisfied to remain passive television watchers, however. They are constantly interacting with their digital environment via instant messaging, digital social networking websites, cell phones, and interactive video games. Ours is a digital world, and to be relevant to both emerging and future generations, content will increasingly need a digital face.

Consider the typical textbook adoption cycle for a state education agency in the United States. On a five to seven year cycle, new textbooks are purchased and distributed for use by students and teachers. Print-based encyclopedias used in libraries have a similar refresh rate of years rather than minutes, which is the norm in the digital world. Digital immigrants raised on “atomic” (or analog) print materials often prefer paper to a computer screen when reading, but there is no guarantee this preference will be passed on to the digital natives comprising younger generations.

Ironically, digital information is not only less expensive to produce and dissiminate at the speed of light around the planet, but it is also inherently more valuable. If policymakers and educational leaders insist on keeping students in our schools in print-based, analog information environments (a pattern persisting despite millions of dollars spent on technology and Internet connectivity in the U.S. alone in the past ten years) they are enemies of the future, a term coined by Virginia Postrel in 1998. As David Warlick observed in his 2004 book, “Redefining Literacy for the 21^st Century:”

Today, the future we are preparing our students for is impossible to describe. Things are changing too quickly. We can only predict that it will be a world driven by information, and that the information will be almost exclusively digital.

The workforce and life demands of our present and future provide persuasive economic reasons to embrace open digital content. Some people “get it,” others don’t. Projects like the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) embody this ethic of open digital content. The archive’s motto is, “Universal Access to Human Knowledge.” Anyone can apply for a virtual library card on the Internet Archive’s website and subsequently publish text, audio and video files FOR FREE FOREVER on their website. An unprecendented offer for content publishing, appropriate for the unprecedented age of digital communication in which we live. The theme of The Open Content Alliance (www.opencontentalliance.org) is “Building a digital archive of global content for universal access.” Like the Internet Archive, the OCA seeks to “build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.” Standing in sharp contrast to these organizations and their ethos, the “Teachers Pay Teachers” organization (www.teacherspayteachers.com) conceives of ideas and content in a digital world as commodities which should be hoarded and sold for profit rather than widely dissiminated and given away for free. Groups with ideas like this will likely be in the minority in years to come. Organizations like Lulu (www.lulu.com) that permit publication of books directly from a computer user’s word processor are revolutionizing the publishing industry, and this transformation is just beginning.

Those who seek to be relevant in our digital world will not only produce and share ideas in digital forms, but will also permit OPEN access to those ideas to the world via the Internet.

PEDAGOGIC ARGUMENTS

In addition to these economic reasons, strong pedagogic reasons support the proposition educators should embrace open digital content. Literate communication has always taken many forms, but in our traditional, text-dominated education system we have tended to overemphasize textual literacy. Linguists like Stephen Krashen acknowledge that oral communication develops naturally throughout cultures across the globe, but written forms of literacy have societal pre-requisities (like a taxation system mandating accountability mechanisms) and are not developed as naturally. Despite our increasingly media-dominated cultures, especially in the developed world, text-based literacy remains extremely important. The cultivation of reading and writing skills is a primary goal of all formal educational systems, and large amounts of money are spent each year to promote more effective literacy skill development.

Despite all the technological developments swirling around us, the process of acquiring reading and writing skills has remained remarkably simple. Contrary to what some U.S. politicians and educational product marketing campaigns would have taxpayers believe, students learn to read and write through fairly simple processes. Students who read more read better. Students who write more write better. And students who have more access to texts read more.

In his outstanding 1998 book, “The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions,” Jeff McQuillan notes on page 72:

The connection between the amount of reading done and reading proficiency has been well known and accepted for a number of years. Less well known but of equal importance has been the finding that more access to reading materals leads to more reading, and subsequently higher reading achievement, and can itself explain a great deal of variation in reading scores.

To follow this basic prescription, supported not only by educational research but also by common sense, educators, parents, and others who want to support the literacy development of young people should do everything possible to provide greater access to texts for students. In our digital age, access to text is not and should not be construed as only paper-based books, periodicals, and newspapers. We have vital and overwhelming needs to support public libraries and school libraries around the world. The digital revolution has not changed this pressing need, in my opinion, but the digital revolution offers unprecedented access to not only textual content but also multimedia content via the Internet’s World-Wide Web. MIT’s One Laptop Per Child project (http://laptop.org) promises to provide laptops for students in some countries of the developing world for approximately $100 each, starting in 2007. These students need access to paper-based books as well, but there should be little arguing the value of an Internet-capable $100 laptop in the hands of a young person compared to $100 of books and magazines purchased for even bargain prices. This situation is reminiscent of the age-old question, is it better to give a person a fish so they can eat for a day, or teach a person to fish so they can eat for a lifetime? Certainly OLPC laptops can and will break like other computer hardware, but the potential of Internet-connected digital devices to open up worlds of content and colaborative connections for people of all ages is truly unprecedented.

From a pedagogic perspective, as educators we should embrace open digital content to provide the literacy needs our students have today and will continue to have in the future.

MORAL ARGUMENTS

Why do many educators become teachers in the first place? Why do we have public libraries? Most would agree neither answer is so that teachers and librarians can get rich! Both teaching and the institution of public library systems have noble roots grounded in practical idealism. Thomas Jefferson was among the earliest advocates for broadly accessible education in the United States, writing the “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” the “Bill for Establishing a Public Library,” and the “Bill for Establishment of a System of Public Education” in the United States. His own personal library started the U.S. Library of Congress. Horace Mann was one of the most vocal advocates for the “common school” in the United States, and “spearheaded the Common School Movement, ensuring that every child could receive a basic education funded by local taxes.” (www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/horace.html) Our public education system persists today in large degree because of a shared belief in the value of and right to a free education for every person in our nation.

The traditional perspective on and reality of analog publication was limiting and in many ways, elitist. The open digital content ethic is much more broadly accessible and egalitarian, in contrast. The moral imperative to embrace open content is embodied well by the Science Commons (http://sciencecommons.org/), whose website subtitle is “Accelerating the Scientific Research Cycle.” According to their website:

Science Commons serves the advancement of science by removing unnecessary legal and technical barriers to scientific collaboration and innovation. Built on the promise of Open Access to scholarly literature and data, Science Commons identifies and eases key barriers to the movement of information, tools and data through the scientific research cycle. Our long term vision is to provide more than just useful contracts. We will combine our publishing, data, and licensing approaches to develop solutions for a truly integrated and streamlined research process.

Should the polio vaccine have been kept a secret and withheld from the rest of the world? Should antibiotics have been sequestered away in a government laboratory and kept hidden from a world infested with sickness? Certainly there is still plenty of room for entrepreneurship and the profit motive to serve as engines of economic development in a digital age of increasingly open content. When it comes to the educational and scientific spaces, however, a strong moral case can be made that information and knowledge should be increasingly shared on a free basis rather than sold for a profit. MIT’s Open Courseware project (http://ocw.mit.edu) supports this ethos as “a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) supports MIT's mission to advance knowledge and education, and serve the world in the 21st century.”

Universal literacy is an educational goal, not a pipe dream. To support this vision we should strive to provide students with the broadest possible access to text. Certainly access to content in a digitally networked world also requires ethical decisionmaking about appropriate and inappropriate materials, but we also have a moral obligation as educators to prepare students for those types of decisions—rather than simply block access to anything potentially offensive and thereby prevent valuable conversations from taking place about these issues at school.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHERS AND LIBRARIANS

As educators in our digital age, teachers and librarians should embrace the ethic of open digital content. Practically speaking, this means helping students as well as teachers learn to navigate, validate, and utilize digitally interactive resources like WikiPedia and weblogs. In addition, teachers and librarians should promote related dialog not only about Internet safety, but also the value and power of safe digital social networking. Rather than cringe and ban every social networking site known, educators and school administrators should rejoice that students want to read and write the web. We need to find effective ways to leverage the social drive which students have to communicate in virtual environments into more engaging and worthwhile instructional activities inside and outside the classroom.

In addition to helping students and teachers become more savvy and critical consumers of digital content, teachers and librarians should also help them become more effective CONTENT CREATORS. We should promote awareness and utilization of Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org), which permits content publishers to authorize re-use of materials under a variety of specified conditions. Active promotion of this ethic of open digital content should define the 21^st century classroom as a fundamentally different environment for teaching and learning. The four C’s: Critical Consumption and Collaborative Creation should define our classrooms and libraries. In addition to open content, educators should explore and promote the use of effective open source software programs which provide digital functionality at minimal cost.

Teachers and librarians should promote the thoughtful and deliberate implementation of one-to-one laptop learning initiatives at schools which provide ALL STUDENTS with access to an Internet-capable, portable computer. The digital divide DOES exist, and a powerful way to bridge that divide for students and families is to provide each one with a laptop, 24/7. In doing so, librarians can promote student access to digital as well as textual media sources which students can and will utilize to read and write the web as well as their own world. In our 21^st century world of open digital content, librarians should serve as voices of reason and wisdom amidst a reactionary sea of often irrational, grandstanding leaders. In doing so, we can lead educators, students, and others in the communities we serve to better prepare students for their digital futures, ripe with opportunities and promise.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a "catalyst for creative educational engagement." His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” (www.speedofcreativity.org) was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He is the Director of Education Advocacy for AT&T in the state of Oklahoma.

Additional Reading:

The evolution of Wesley’s ideas about open digital content can be found on his blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity:”

Following the free. 17 Jan 2006. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/01/17/following-the-free/.

Universally Available Research. 20 June 2006. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/06/20/universally-available-research/.

Open content, MIT and our university system. 8 July 2006. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/07/08/open-content-mit-and-our-university-system/.

Free ideas and pedagogy. 6 February 2006. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/02/06/free-ideas-pedagogy/.

Open Content and Open Source Tools. 27 August 2006. http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/08/27/open-content-and-open-source-tools/.