Stephen Downes

Open Education Week starts today and this is a calendar of more than 243 events and activities on the OEWeek Calendar. I thought it might be nice to watch the opening keynote being offered by Flower Darby (and still do, as it's an hour from now as I write) but when I tried to find out when it takes place (I still can't convert from UTC in my head) I was led down a rabbit's warren of link after link after link. This I'm afraid got my dander up and I looked at a number of calendar links that did the same - taking me to registration forms, collecting my email, advertising in-person only events, signing people up to text messages, promoting fee-based programs. Not that the organizers of OEWeek are at fault; they're doing the good work needed by all - I think it's just that members of the academic community still don't really agree on what is meant by 'open education'.