I thought the article, “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure.”, as well as the video, “No More Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences.”, were both very interesting and had nice, thought provoking concepts.

I was interested early into the video when he began speaking about the “Three Recursive Practices”. Everything he touched in with this topic hit home with me. Education is very structured, with a right and wrong answer. Unless you are in an art class, there is not much room for creavity. Even then its based on whether its “good or not”, when art is based on personal preference.You read, study then are given a test which then goes into a file somewhere, never to be seen again. This gives you a grade, and thats it. Nothing to really show as your own. Nothing to “curate”, as you will. Nothing to share.

This is why the internet is such a driving force and why it expands as quickly as it does. People have a desire to have something that they can say “Hey, I did this” and they want to show it off. This sharing of work leads to other things, such as others becoming inspired and coming up with their own work. This work is then a muse for someone else. Its a cycle.

The Three Levels of Openness were also very interesting for me and made great points. I love the idea of having “learners open to learners and teachers open to learners” in an open world format. This definitely does open communication more and I personally feel much more likely to share my short comings in this type of classroom. Being open to the world means being exposed to everyone, not just those in your physical classrooms. If I am honest about my strengths and weaknesses, the amount of help (and the amount of improvement) I would get could be staggering. It helps me to realize who I am and what im good at. For example, working on this website I have realized that I am an extremely curious person. Upon my blog being activated, I was immediately in word-press and cpanel messing with everything from appearances to plug-ins and sub domains. Did I understand everything in these sections completely? Not at all, but throwing myself in the mess of it is a great way to learn.