Stephen Downes

George Siemens quite rightly rails against the watering down of the term 'open' in education. "According to Wiley," writes Siemens, "openness is not an ideological concept, like democracy, but rather a functional or utilitarian construct: like a door or window being open or partly open... [but] It's like saying being alive is a gradient. We are more or less alive." We need "some good ol' radicals in open education," he writes. "You know, the types that have a vision and an ideological orientation that defies the pragmatics of reality. Stubborn, irritating, aggravating visionaries..." Well, maybe. I could use the company.