What are you reading? Now - or in the past, that relates to the values of open education and conceptualizing good change in education? Perhaps it is because I am going away on a holiday that my attention has shifted to this topic - but what we read, whether from the past or from our present, shifts our thinking. In a way, reading is a magical act because we can learn from those who are long dead as well as from our contemporaries.
On my desk, awaiting my attention, one day, and perhaps on vacation, are the following books: Write No Matter What (Jensen, 2017); Emergent Strategy (Brown, 2017); Coming Back to Life (Macy & Brown, 2014); Systems Thinking for Social Change (Stroh, 2015); Restoring Sanity ( Wheatley, 2024), Leadership and the New Science (Wheatley, 2006), and Blackfoot Ways of Knowing (Bastien, 2004). I think the Macy or Stroh are coming along with me to the coast of the Pacific Ocean - systems thinking calls out to me and alongside my intuitive understanding of it I need to know what others have thought.
I read so much in my work life - as an editor for IRRODL, and as a graduate supervisor - the tsnaumi of words overwhelms me at times. A print book however, seems less daunting and there’s no temptation for my mind to search for a briefly mentioned author and pursue my thinking path rather than that of the book author(s). I love to read books - but sadly my list above are mostly unread…so I encourage you, today, to select a book, and read a bit, maybe a lot. Read something that is related to open education but perhaps not solely from the open ed community. Look for relatives in other places - walk alongside the author you choose, and stay curious. Be open.
Cheers,
Connie
This is such a fantastic post Connie, I hope we get some responses beyond clicking the like buttons (well I did that once).
I can’t say I have any reading plans specific to open education though I would like to read more (and have more open discussions) about Catherine Cronin and Laura Czerniewicz’s Higher Education For Good (especially following their Open Education at the Crossroads keynote we heard at OER24).
Not a book but I am totally thrilled to find and the-read this online essay by Maggie Appleton — On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars -
“How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars”
A link there circled me back to John McPhee whose book “Basin and Range” electrified me as a grad student in Geology. He has a string of other books I now want to read, and again on the point of writing, his Draft No. 4 On the Writing Process
Hmmm I seem to be reading on writing.
It also feels timely to read more from Cory Doctorow beyond his encyclopedic blogging- I am thinking maybe The Internet Con
A Big Tech disassembly manual, presenting a theory of internet enshittification and a way to throw it into reverse, creating a new, good internet that is a worthy successor to the old, good internet – so that the enshitternet of today is thrown on the scrapheap of history as an unfortunate transitional stage between the two.
Now that’s a grand plan! It’s commendable how Doctorow publishes openly, all his books and novels can be downloaded for free.