Once upon an open: an OER story [O-046] Members : OER19

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Thu, Apr 11 2019, 2:45pm – 3:45pm

Authors: Sara Thomas

Room: G009

Theme: Open ecosystem

Type: Alt-format (7 mins)

Description

Session Description

This alt-format session begins from the premise that open education and open practice encourage and allow us to discover and surface forgotten stories, and that stories are important to a society because they help that society to understand itself.

Delivered in the style of a traditional folk tale, and engaging the audience through its performance as such, it will be designed to look at the conference themes of open ecosystem and context, telling the story of how recent open education activities (undertaken in various contexts, but related to engagement with the Wikimedia projects and taking advantage of their global reach) have strategically surfaced the stories of forgotten individuals and histories.

The story/session will look to reflect upon how open education work intersects with the wider world of open practice, particularly the Wikimedia projects, and suggest the role of open practitioner (as an active producer of knowledge) as one related to that of traditional storyteller, where the practitioner is understood as one who enables the distribution of information, but who can also help to shape our understanding of the world around us. (Littlejohn & Hood, 2018) The resources relating to the piece are already available openly through Wikipedia.

So take a seat, and let me tell you a story. About two women of Scotland, of whom you may not have heard: Lady Catherine Bruce of Clackmannan, and Marie Lamont. One a member of the aristocracy, who knighted a poet, and one a girl of 16, sent to her death as a witch…

Session content

One of the many hats I wear is that of storyteller and performance poet. I specialise in folk, fairy and traditional stories, and am fascinated by how folk narrative helps to construct, and support, a people’s sense of identity, and place. I view folk tales as public domain works, as open texts, of which new derivatives are made with every telling. I want to explore the themes of open ecosystem and context through the medium of storytelling, and to that end, this session will be a 7 minute storytelling performance which looks to tell the story of stories surfaced and discovered through open practice.

References

Allison, L. A & Hood, N (2018). Becoming an online editor: perceived roles and responsibilities of Wikipedia editors. Information Research, 23(1), paper 784. Available at: http://InformationR.net/ir/23-1/paper784.html [accessed 28th November 2018]

(We don’t cite Wikipedia, we write Wikipedia, there are no authors… provided here as a resource only…)

Lady Catherine Bruce of Clackmannan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Catherine_Bruce_of_Clackmannan [accessed 28th November 2018]

Marie Lamont: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Lamont [accessed 28th November 2018]

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