I agree. It was a little off-putting in the beginning to be asked to create another account (given that these are both P2PU and there should be some integration), but I do agree, discourse is much more powerful than disq.us (the software used in the other part of P2PU). Now if only it had the ability to view things as threaded discussions 
Discourse does have this ability, in a way, but you have to click on the grey button that indicates how many replies there are to the message, on the bottom left of the message. You can also click on the area on the top right of the message that says who itās a reply to, and you can see the earlier message(s) that are being replied to. But you have to force the issue by clicking, and the replies still show up in the long post stream. Iām not enamoured of that, as I pointed out here! How replies work on Discourse
Late as per usual. Iām Sylvia Riessner and I wanted to participate in this course to test out the P2PU environment, to see if I can keep up with the participatory aspects of this course (I tend to get disconnected from big open courses too easily - maybe having to do something each week will help keep me connected?) and because Iāve been a supporter of openness for a long time. I signed up for the first open online course that David Wiley opened to the world in 2007 (?) and then participated in the first couple of Canadian collaborative MOOCs facilitated by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Alec Couros, etc.
Iāve always been curious at how the idea of openness in higher education has persisted despite the perceived threats and despite the often undiscussed costs of producing and sharing open materials, teaching openly, learning openly.
Looking forward to hearing how others are engaging in openness and what it means in different contexts.
Hopefully I can catch up and stay on course ā¦
Hello, I am Ania, from Poland. I have been teaching English to university students for about 7 years. Since the beginning of this year I have also been involved in the European project LangOER that deals with Open Educational Resources in less spoken languages. Before that I was not very much aware of the OER as such and the notion of āopennessā was somehow beyond me, but now I am very much interested in the topic.
Hello everyone! Iām Leah, the director of an open educational resources project in the higher education public affairs field called The Hubert Project. Weāre based out of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, but have partners at Hong Kong University and at a consortium of Universities across Africa.
Weāre building a growing repository of openly-licensed multimedia case studies, policy issue curations and short animated videos on policy concepts. Weāve also been doing advocacy around open ed and training around creating openly-licensed multimedia content for public affairs instructors. Exciting stuff and weāre happy to be learning more through this open course!
Iām Nate Angell from Portland OR USA. I currently work evangelizing for open education with Lumen Learning, the organization founded by David Wiley and Kim Thanos to help educational institutions scale OER use.
I have been a longtime participant in open source educational technology work, collaborating mostly in the Sakai Project and Apereo Foundation.
You can learn more about me as @xolotl on Twitterāmy preferred social media networkāand on my blog, which has links to my LinkedIn, resume, and previous work/thinking.
Iām looking forward to conversation with this global community!
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Hi P2P Peeps,
Lovely to be here.
I am passionate about many things, but most relevant for this webpage is my passion to help family and friends gain better support for lifeās tougher moments: when they lose a sibling son or daughter, when one of their family members swings through depression, eating disorders or any mental health issue, when a family member is diagnosed with a life threatening disease.
I havenāt started a project around this idea, but I have a few ideas bubbling away. I look forward to refining my ideas through this wonderful course.
I am living in Toronto, recently moving from Melbourne Australia. I have so much gratitude for this cityās abundance of social innovation projects and great non-profit work. I am loving Toronto and looking forward to having my first white winter.
Someone I really respect in the field of Mental Health is Jeff Kennett, a former Australian politician who went on to become Chairman of Australiaās mental health organisation Beyond Blue.
@SylviaR I know how difficult it can be to keep connected in large courses; I think this one is not super large, judging from the intros and the first posts on our own views of openness. Sometimes if itās a bit smaller it can be easier to connect with a few people and feel more engaged that way. And yes, we do have a couple of things to do each week that might keep you engaged, though ultimately I think itās all about connecting to other people that keeps one going in a course like this! And sometimes that works, sometimes, not, depending on what people are posting and what one is interested in. Hope you do continue on, though! Iād like to hear what you have to say about the costs of producing and sharing open materials and engaging in open ed.
@AniaSkowron I didnāt know about the LangOER project, but it sounds like a great thing. Thanks for introducing me to it!
@LeahL Also nice to hear about the Hubert project! So many interesting things going on in the world in relation to open ed that I am not aware of, and itās great to become aware of them.
If you would like to know some more about the project, here is the site: http://langoer.eun.org/. We have just publish the state-of-the-art report about the current situation of the OER market in the countries involved in the project. BTW: this was my daughter crying during the Hangout with David Wiley. I would like to apologize for that, I thought I could handle both things but apparently I didnāt manageā¦
Hello, better late than never. Penny from Melbourne, Australia here.
At the moment Iām half way through my first year of a PhD at The Australian Digital Futures Institute. Iāve been a secondary science teacher for many years, escaped classroom teaching to explore alternative professional learning opportunities for science teachers. Yes, I love āOpenā and all the fabulous learning opportunities it enablesā¦particularly in science 
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waving backā¦is there an icon or an ascii for this? (checking http://1lineart.kulaone.com/ for something) Ł©(Ģ¾āĢ®Ģ®ĢĢ¾ā¢ĢĢ¾)Ū¶
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so thatās what these things are! Iāve been seeing people use them over the years, and I never to whyā¦ The things you learn in an open courseā¦
Hello all! Iām Shannon, the second Hubert Project team member. As Leah explained, we are growing a repository of openly-licensed multimedia materials for the Public Affairs field. In addition to this work, I am also part of a team at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs that is ramping up a social welfare re-design pilot program. Personally, I am interested in how higher education will continue to embrace OER and how higher ed will evolve in the future. Looking forward to learning more from all of you!
Hi all!
A little late on this thread
Iām Simeon Oriko and one of the facilitators of this course! I co-founded a co-creation community called Jamlab thatās based in Nairobi, Kenya and weāre mostly responsible for School of Open activities in Kenya: http://creativecommons.org/tag/cc-kenya
I also work at the Open Institute - a think/do tank in the Open Governance and Open Data space in Africa. I play the role of Community Lead there.
Thanks, Ania! No worries about your daughter crying during the hangout. Such things happen with my son all the time!
Assalam-O-Alaikum to all of you and your team! Iām Mir Murtaza from Sindh, Pakistan. I am post-graduated in the field of Commerce from recognized University and willing to know about open source and open knowledge about foreign full free scholarships to enhance in the field of Commerce on international level!
Assalam-O-Alaikum dear to all of you and the team of P2PU! Iām Mir Murtaza from Sindh, Pakistan. I am post-graduated from a recognized University and willing to know about open source and open knowledge and Full Free Foreign Scholarships in the field of Commerce to enhance my skills as well as educationā¦!
Hi am Elli I am a professional writer and wanted to develop my skills in writing for social change and be inspired with new ideas and ways of expression
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