I found out during today’s lecture that our entire class will continue to have access to our course materials and course website long after our term has finished — This is fantastic news! I often think what a shame it is that online course content vanishes at the end of the semester. The school year goes by quickly and there is so much information to cram into our heads, that usually there isn’t the opportunity to explore materials in a relaxed manner. Wouldn’t it be great if we could revisit readings of particular interest to us, or continue to draw from resources presented within our online curriculum? This is one of the downsides I have been lamenting in my recent journey with online classes. Back when I did my undergrad at UBC, each course had an associated text – something tangible that you could take, read at leisure and reference in the future. I believe more schools should adapt a creative commons approach to course content. Knowledge should be easily accessible and available to all! We need to share information to those who wish to learn. Why has so much of our world become elitist, contingent on ownership? This is an issue I see bleeding into many facets of our current society. The documentary, “Remix – a manifesto”, that we watched at the beginning of the year, was a great example of the many complexities involved in ownership and creative freedom. We can also see examples of copyright and ownerships issues within farming practices: Monsanto is potent example of a powerful global company placing a monopoly on seeds and genetic diversity. I’m also reminded of similar dealings within the pharmaceutical companies. Patents put on vaccines and other medications that make wide spread availability more difficult and function to turn tremendous profit.
Time to make more of our resources part of the public domain!