Page - 81 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

5 WhoBenefits fromthePublicGood… 85 TheUAB is a consortiumof over 130public institutions servingover 900munici- palcenters throughout thecountry.20Thispolicy,coupledwith training,workshops, and thecreationofnetworkofOERAmbassadors inover adozenhigher education institutions21 havecreated substantialmomentum. Another positive example isMinistry’s neweducational resources site for basic education.22Asa repository, it onlyaccepts resourceswhichareopenly licensed. It also includesdetailed termsofservice,whichhasbeencreated tobeaninstructional material thatcanhelpusersandcontributorsunderstandthedifferencebetweenfree, closed, andopencontent. Alsowithin the federal level, the Science Cloud Computing platform is under development by theNationalNetwork for Teaching andResearch (Rede Nacional deEnsinoePesquisa;RNP).Amongotherservices,RNPispilotingasolutionforfile sharing for public higher education institutions and government educational agen- cies in a public cloud. Even though it is not strictly an initiative for the sharing of educational resources, itdemonstrates thatcreatingpublic infrastructuresforcollab- orativeworkispossible.Thecaseisalsointerestingbecauseitdemonstrateshowthis infrastructure can integrate itself to a larger ecosystemnotonly for serversbut also forclients. It isbasedonfreeandopen-sourcesoftware (OpenStack,Owncloud) for whichtheinstitutionalsomadecontributionstothecode(RibeiroFilhoetal.,2015). These are just someof the recent initiatives that already do, ormight soon impact how educational resources are purchased, shared and created, due in great part to theactivismofpublicservants,civilsocietyorganizations,educatorsandresearchers fighting for thecommongood. 5.6 Conclusion One of our main goals with this chapter is to demonstrate that open educational resources, likealldigitaloronline technologies, arenotneutralorapolitical. If they don’t make explicit their premises, projects ormovements run the risk of finding themselves adrift, at the mercy of the winds existing powers. If technology is to provide educational and social benefits, andnotmere efficiencygains ormonetary gains, theyshouldbeconfiguredexplicitlyfortheseends.Therearerisksinapplying the “open” concept in a naiveway, especially when it’s configured by incumbent market actors. The delocalization of the production of teachingmaterials, the con- centration of profit, and the strengthening of the position of big corporations are examplesof these risks. Inaparadoxcharacteristicofglobalization,OERfrom“the center” become ubiquitous, leading to atrophy of the capacity of the periphery to produceand todisseminate itsvoice. 20Visualizeamapoftheinstitutionsandthemunicipalcentershere:http://uab.educacaoaberta.org/. 21SeetheofficialCAPESpageonOERandtheAmbassadorsat:http://www.capes.gov.br/uab/rea/. 22See https://plataformaintegrada.mec.gov.br/. It functions both as a referatory to both open and closedcontent, andasa repository,hostingexclusivelyopencontent.