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Today I took part in day one of WikiEducator’s Open Content Licensing for Educators Workshop. This is an asynchronous workshop designed for educators and students wanting to discuss and learn more about open education, copyright, and creative commons licenses. So far I’ve found the first day of the two-day workshop to be fascinating, and not surprisingly I’ve been thinking more about open education.

A major principle of open education is the belief in giving educators the opportunity to share and remix knowledge and materials. Traditional copyright law often attempts to stop the sharing and remixing of materials by gating intellectual property behind pay-walls. Increasingly, however, educators are using the internet to create communities centered around the free distribution of knowledge. In my current job as a public elementary school ESL teacher in Korea I make use of such an online community almost every day.

Waygook.org is an open education community for ESL teachers living and working in South Korea. It’s name comes from the Korean phrase way gook in, literally meaning “out land.” This term, commonly used by Koreans to describe foreigners, has been adopted by many ESL living in Korea as part of their identity.

Waygook.org is a community-driven series of message boards that allow ESL teachers to trade teaching tips, lesson plans, and advice about living in Korea. After signing up for a free account, any member who has made five posts or more can post and download lesson plans, teaching materials, or ESL games. The site has only recently implemented the five post rule to cut down on bandwidth costs. Writing five posts is a small price to pay for the wealth of content Waygook.org offers.

In my opinion this site represents everything good about the internet. It gives people living in a foreign (and often intimidating) country a community to share knowledge and turn to for help. Every day more experienced members help newer members with problems ranging from bad contracts, to using Korean washing machines, to where to find Western grocery products. Personally in my first few months of living in Korea, Waygook.org was my only source for information about living and working in Korea.

In addition to creating a sense of community among ESL teachers, Waygook.org provides a wealth of teaching materials. Since many ESL teachers in Korea have no training or experience with teaching, the site provides invaluable lesson plans and teaching advise. Users are encouraged to download lessons and materials, remix them, and post them back on the site for others to use. It’s not unusual to see one elaborate PowerPoint game be used as a template for dozens of different games covering dozens of different topics.

Waygook.org makes my life easier every single day that I live in Korea. The site shows the amazing potential of open education to create communities and share knowledge. Even if you have no real interest in teaching ESL in Korea, it’s worth visiting Waygook.org to see it as a model of a well-working open education community.

I’d like to write more about Waygook.org, especially about how many of the teaching materials on the site relate to the gamification of education, but I’ll save that for another day. In short, I see open education as an integral part of the future of education regardless of level – schools from ranging from elementary to universities have much to gain from embracing open education.

Open Content Licensing is still going on, this run of the workshop concludes on July 3rd, but it will likely run more workshops in the near future. If you have any interest in open education, I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating.