Brainstorm in Progress

Thursday, October 20, 2011

OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability

Image via CrunchBaseJoin us for a webinar on October 31 hosted by SoftChalk.

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/962111696

How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?

These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Title: OER Session 4 - Funding OER: Sustainability
Date: Monday, October 31, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

Friday, October 14, 2011

Six Factors Driving Online Enrollments

Image by proper dave via FlickrThis was the article that I wrote for the Times-Standard's Tech Beat:

Many students are taking online classes at College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. Even though online learning is called “distance learning,” the majority of our online students are from here on the North Coast. Research, and our experience at College of the Redwood's Distance Education department, has shown us that despite the fact that online learning takes more motivation and commitment on the part of the student, online learning is an increasingly popular option. Why is becoming a more popular option? Here are six reasons that we believe are driving student online enrollment:

1. Flexibility
Online students can work on their courses and listen to lectures between jobs, appointments and other classes. They can access their course materials 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Course work can be done around family schedules, and students can study on their phone, laptop or anywhere else they have an Internet connection.

2. Accessibility
For some students, such as those in wheelchairs or the blind, attending courses on campus can be challenging. Some students use adaptive technology, like screen readers, to assist them in class. In an online environment, the other students and the teacher may not even know that the online student has a disability. In turn, that can make online classes more attractive to students with special needs. In addition, students who are non-native English speakers also get the benefit of being able to review an online lecture multiple times or review complex concepts at their own pace.

3. Reduced cost
Attending courses online saves the students money by eliminating the expenses of gasoline, bus fares, and parking fees. Some instructors use online, free text books (such as College of the Redwood's Math Department) to further reduce the cost of attendance. If instructors are accepting papers online, students and schools alike save money in printing costs.

4. Engagement
Students in online classes tend to communicate more thoughtfully. Some students find it difficult to speak in class. Posting to an online discussion forum allows students to take their time and formulate their thoughts in ways that the face-to-face classroom environment may not allow. In our experiences with teaching online, we have found that we actually know our online students better than many of our face-to-face students because of the social dimension of online learning. Students often find that online classes provide more personalized attention.

5. Networking and technology skills
Online classes give students real world skills. Students who take online classes become more proficient and comfortable with using computers. Through assignments, discussion forums and group projects, students can learn to connect with one another online and with information in meaningful and useful ways. These 21st century skills are increasingly in demand by the workplace. Some students prefer to learn in the same medium they are using for managing information and communication in their life outside of school.

6. Online learning creates options
Students who take online classes know they have options. If a student needs to take a class that they need to graduate, they will be able to take it online if they have to. Students who take online classes are more likely to take classes in order to update their professional skills further into their careers. They will have the ability to take advantage of online training and “webinars” their future employers or universities may offer.

One of the problems with online learning is that students have spent 12 years or more learning how to be face-to-face students and never learn about the time management skills needed to be an online student. Fortunately, more students at College of the Redwoods are taking advantage of the free, two-week, fully online orientation to distance education called “DE 101.” If you are interested in learning more about online learning, or a CR student interested in DE 101, email Geoff Cain at geoff-cain@redwoods.edu.

Geoff Cain is the Director of Distance Learning at College of the Redwoods. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Redwood Technology Consortium. Want to know more about technology and education? See Geoff's blog at http://www.geoffcain.com.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Bridging the Digital Divide with the Aakash Tablet

India's new tablet computer, the Aakash, is the world's cheapest tablet computer. It will be known commercially in the West as the UbiSlate. The Aakash tablet computer is a project, much like Negroponte's OLPC project, that is meant to bridge the digital divide - that gulf that separates the technological wealthy and the electronically disenfranchised poor. It will sell in India for $50 and elsewhere for $60. Many in the West may ask why such a poor country like India would be interested in computers for their citizenry when there are pressing problems such as starvation and a lack of medical care. Well, those are two really good reasons. Unlike the West, these tablets are not designed just to consume videos, music and status updates on Facebook. With a wifi network across India, users will be able to access agricultural data to help them grow crops, or provide health care workers access to medical consultations with experts from the urban centers. India's National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology plans to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities on the subcontinent in their e-learning program using the Aakash. India will subsidize half the cost of the tablet for it's students. The tablet is meant to support video and web conferencing. It is ironic how much poverty can drive innovation. From what I have read, these tablets are designed for durability and harsh conditions; perfect for Junior High in the West!

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Stay hungry; stay foolish...

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Bill Strips DOL Grants of OER Provisions

Image via WikipediaGot a note this morning from Cable Green via Kim Thanos. Kim says that if the Kaleidoscope grant was funded under these restrictions, we could not have proceeded with the course developments. The bill to be discussed appears to remove any support for OERs (open education resources).

DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA) will be hosting two web-chat sessions for the public to provide feedback on the first round of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program competition. This is the program that just announced the first investment of $500 million in community colleges with the OER requirement on new course/content development. The program is slated to invest $2 billion in total.

It is important that those in support of federal open investments participate in this event. Whether and how any further open investments are made in this program will be determined, in part, through public comment sessions such as these.

ETA invites interested individuals to participate in either of the TAACCCT Grant Program public comment sessions, scheduled for:

• Tuesday, October 4, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT
• Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:00-4:00pm EDT

To join the public comment session, please use the following link to access the session you are attending: http://www.dol.gov/dol/chat.htm. Note that this link is for both sessions.

A transcript of the listening sessions will be available to the public at www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT after October 12, 2011

The TAACCCT program is designed to meet industry needs while accelerating individual learning and improving college retention and achievement rates. The overall goal is to increase industry-recognized credential or degree completion rates of participants. Projects were encouraged to use online or technology-enabled learning to achieve these objectives. DOL is implementing the TAACCCT program in partnership with the Department of Education.

For more information about the TAACCCT program, as well as a list of grantees awarded under the first round of grants, visit: www.doleta.gov/TAACCCT

Please attend both sessions. We need all voices on the table.

Thank you,
Cable

____________________________

The House Appropriations Committee just released the draft fiscal year 2012 Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) funding bill. The legislation includes funding for programs within the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and other related agencies. Included in this bill is the following provision, which would appear to strip the ability of the DOL to support any further OER investments:

"SEC. 124. None of the funds made available by this Act for the Department of Labor may be used to develop new courses, modules, learning materials, or projects in carrying out education or career job training grant programs unless the Secretary of Labor certifies, after a comprehensive market-based analysis, that such courses, modules, learning materials, or projects are not otherwise available for purchase or licensing in the marketplace or under development for students who require them to participate in such education or career job training grant programs."

The text of the bill and accompanying announcement can be found online at:

http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=262231

The language can be found on page 37 of the bill.

There are several steps that Congress would have to take before this language would be approved, but first it has to move through the subcommittee and full committee. A subcommittee markup has not yet been scheduled.

Current subcommittee members include:

Republicans
• Denny Rehberg, Montana, Subcommittee Chair
• Jerry Lewis, California
• Rodney Alexander, Louisiana
• Jack Kingston, Georgia
• Kay Granger, Texas
• Michael K. Simpson, Idaho
• Jeff Flake, Arizona
• Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming

Democrats
• Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut
• Nita M. Lowey, New York
• Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Illinois
• Lucille Roybal-Allard, California
• Barbara Lee, California

==================

Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons
(e) cable@creativecommons.org / (m) +01 360-790-3114 / (s) cable.green
(t) @cgreen / (b) OER
(b) power of open

Saturday, October 01, 2011

Concept Mapping with Compendium

Image by ryan2point0 I do a lot with concept mapping. I use it in my work as an instructional designer and I use concept maps in writing fiction and technical work, and I am really interested in Compendium right now. What is Compendium? It is more than just concept mapping software. "Compendium is about sharing ideas, creating artifacts, making things together, and breaking down the boundaries between dialogue, artifact, knowledge, and data." Compendium is a free concept mapping software package by the Compendium Institute, a group formed by Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University of UK, Verizon, Center for Creative Leadership, and others to promote the compendium methodology. "Our own particular interest is in visualizing the connections between people, ideas and information at multiple levels, in mapping discussions and debates, and what skills are needed to do so in a participatory manner that engages all stakeholders." What is really exciting about this is the techniques they are exploring with collaborative concept mapping:

"Extending Compendium's support for personal sensemaking, we have a particular interest in what we term collective sensemaking, and have developed a technique called Dialogue Mapping, and its extension, Conversational Modelling. Our experiences with these techiques for capturing and managing -- often in real time and under pressure -- the perspectives in meetings that emerge in open discussion or in collaborative modelling, lead us to claim that Compendium offers innovative strategies for tackling some of the key challenges in managing knowledge and making meaning:

improving communication between disparate communities tackling ill-structured problems
real time capture and integration of hybrid material (both predictable/ formal, and unexpected/informal) into a reusable group memory
transforming the resulting resource into the right representational formats for different stakeholders.

There is a tremendous amount of useful tutorials, videos and articles on the method at the The Compendium Exchange.

I am interested in seeing how this software holds up against CMaps which is what I currently use. I have used Gliffy and Inspiration occasionally for group projects but I am always on the look out for open source solutions. Especially one like this that asks the users to be thoughtful about what kinds of connections they are making to and with the information they are using.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Another reason textbooks are so expensive!

I came home from work today and going through the mail, I found an piece of mail from Bedford/St. Martin's. It is a full color brochure, printed on thick card stock advertising their book, Approaching Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. It says "Jump right in... the literature's fine!" I used to teach English and I have never seen a more expensively produced brochure for a textbook. I hope instructors are thinking about this very seriously. Every time they choose one of these commercial textbooks, they are choosing the high cost of direct mail advertising that gets passed along to the students. How can publishers justify this? I last taught at Hartnell College six years ago. I have sent notes to the textbook reps and they all still contact me. They are wasting time and money (the students' money) chasing down someone who is not teaching English at the moment. There are so many better models than this. There is Flatworld Knowledge, open textbooks from places like College Open Textbooks, there is Creative Commons, and Shakespeare has been free on the Internet since 1993!

I post alot about textbooks here and what I would like to do is to use this space to share some of my favorite open education resources and open texts for English. I will tag those postings as "English."

If you have some favorites, post them in a comment here or email me.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW

Join us as we continue the OER webinar series where experts are demystifying the world of open educational resources (OER). This month's session will feature OER development models and creation tools. Next month a panel of OER experts will discuss the sustainability of OER projects and the issues surrounding funding. Sign up for these sessions today!

If you missed one of the previous sessions, you can easily get up to speed by checking out the archives:

• OER Session 1 – Defining OER: The WHAT and the WHY
• OER Session 2 – Finding and Using OER: The WHERE and the WHEN

OER Session 3—Creating OER: The WHO and the HOW
Who is developing OERs? Who should be? How are they doing it? How can standards allow OER content interoperability? How can standards assure quality? How can I get started? How can I find the tools for creating OER content?

These questions, and more, will be answered by Rob Abel from IMS Global and others. In addition we will discuss different models for developing OER materials and demonstrate various authoring tools for creating OER content. Models for OER development will include work by the math department at the College of the Redwoods. You will also see how Jacqui Cain from Tacoma Community College, as part of a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation grant, re-purposed Sherlock Holmes stories to create a full online course in Remedial English.

Wednesday, September 21 3:00pm ET Register (Free)

OER Session 4—Funding OER: Sustainability
How do OER projects and programs get started? How are they maintained? Where are funding resources? Can OER projects work without external funding?
These questions and more will be answered by our panel consisting of Cable Green (Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons), Paul Stacey (Director Communication, Stakeholder & Academic Relations; BC campus), and James Glapa-Grossklag (Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning College of the Canyons). Each will take their unique stance on issues of sustainability and open standards, various funding approaches, and success stories involving everything from individual efforts to consortia based programs.

Monday, October 31 3:00pm ET Register (Free)

The OER series is sponsored by College Open Textbooks, Connexions, IMS Global, MERLOT and SoftChalk. Follow the conversation on Twitter by using the hashtag #OERseries.

Creative Commons Positions: Senior Project Manager & Senior Project Analyst

Image via CrunchBasehttp://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/29046

Creative Commons is seeking highly motivated and organized individuals to fill two positions: Senior Project Manager and Senior Project Analyst. Both positions are full-time with full benefits. Both positions will key members of the team supporting Department of Labor TAACCCT grantees.

Ideal candidates have contributed to open source, open education, open licensing, and/or other open content projects, are proficient in required technologies, and possess at lease two years of work experience. Joining CC means getting the chance to interact with motivated staff and a brilliant international network of affiliates and community members.

Please feel free to share these jobs descriptions as far and wide as possible. We will be accepting applications on a rolling basis until we find the right candidates. Please be sure to indicate the job title you are interested in applying for in the email subject line, and send to “jobs@creativecommons.org”

Application Deadline: Friday, 7 October.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Distance Ed: No Significant Difference (Even Fictionally)

Hermann Hesse, Nobel laureate in Literature 1946

Image via WikipediaI am reading Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" aka "Magister Ludi." The perfect novel to get my mind off of work. The novel is about a student who navigates the labyrinthine academic and quasi-spiritual institution of the glass bead game. Throughout the course of the novel, our maverick hero even rises to become the Game Master. What is the game? There is not really a lot of information in the book about the game, but it does talk about how themes in one discipline, such as astronomy, and another, like music, is proposed and the participants set about to make connections. (Is this the first Connectivist novel?) The more elegant the connections, the better. I think the novel is really about our hero's relationship to institutions. Well something interesting happens: there is instruction and lectures around the games each year that lead up to the big match. The hero of the novel gets sent to a Benedictine monastery for a while but asks his superiors if he can still listen to the lectures over the radio and send his completed game in via post. He does. And guess what? He wins. So in other words, there was no significant difference between the outcome of the contest between those who participated face-to-face and those who participated virtually. In this case, 100% of those who participated virtually did better than those who participated face-to-face.

Even though I am only half kidding around here, Hesse has always been a favorite novelist of mine, I could not have survived my teens without Steppenwolf, Journey to the East, or Siddartha. I like to think he would appreciate my playfulness.

Laborare est ludare...

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Open Learning and the Next Generation LMS

Onderwijsdagen 2007 - Keynote - Stephen Downes

Image by moqub via FlickrWe have been talking at work about what the next generation of LMSs (learning management systems) should look like. In the education blog world, LMSs are considered pretty old fashioned because they tend to be proprietary silos, built on old code (by committee), and do not empower students to facilitate their own learning. Once the class is over, the LMS shuts the door behind the student. We agree with all of that. We find it particularly hard to get really meaningful information in and out of most LMSs. We are all in favor of "personal learning networks" - the way LMSs generally attempt to integrate Web 2.0 or social networks is pretty laughable. It is usually misunderstood and bolted on as an after-thought. But LMSs can be important to institutions because they provide a consistent interface for students who may not have any experience with technology. I got the idea to email Stephen Downes about this because I have been reading his blog and newsletter since I have been involved in teaching and education. I asked him what he thought the next generation of LMSs would look like and he was gracious enough to send us this response:

"I guess my short answer to the query is that I think the future LMS will look like what gRSShopper will look like when it's done. Because I've been developing gRSShopper for the distributed and open model of learning for some time now, in other words, exactly where I think institutions should be going. Of course I'm not a great programmer so gRSShopper is far from complete. But it gives a bit of a model of what the future LMS should look like.

In particular, gRSShopper supports a distributed environment, This allows the institution to aggregate student content from wherever it's posted. gRSShopper also supports syndication. So content can be distributed by email or RSS into pretty much any environment. The idea is that the LMS isn't a destination that people have to visit, but rather a clearing house that manages content aggregation, indexing and redistribution.

This is what I've been building out on gRSShopper - but because web 2.0 has migrated away from standards and toward proprietary APIs I need to do a lot more to extend it. But any LMS should be working with remote content minimally with RSS/Atom, DC, LOM, iCal, FOAF, and various other standards, as well as the Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and related APIs. gRSShopper is a tool for managing things like MOOCs, and should support open online course content.

In addition, student access is ideally managed witgh a personal learning environment (PLE). This is a bit like a gRSShopper for idividuals, but with better management for personal accounts on remote systems. It would also have a more robust player - it would be a PLE that plays cartridges, not LMSs (though PLEs should report to LMSs any results). PLEs contain permanent records for student - all bookmarks, references and readings, created work, etc., is stored (or indexed, if stored in the cloud) locally, so the student can always retrieve it.

That's a short answer. A long answer would be consideraly more in-depth, but along these lines."

We would love to gather more ideas from others. If you have some thoughts on what you think the next generation LMS should look like or not look like, send us an email or leave a comment below.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Digital Native Mythology

Image via WikipediaI was glad to see some research this week on the so-called "Digital Native" in the article "Open University Research Explodes Myth of 'Digital Native.'" The whole idea of a "net generation" is ridiculous - the idea that because you were born after a certain year, you have some latent super-powers as far as technology is concerned. What the research shows is that it depends more on money, class, and access then on when you were born. Much of what is written about digital natives and the net generation is true only for the upper-middle classes and above or in areas where there is consistent access to technology. There is a whole body of literature that has grown up around this so-called generational relationship to technology and it is just hogwash. I agree that there are skills that we need around technology, I will even call them 21st Century Skills if someone wants to engage in buzz words. I love that the Open University is actually researching this rather than engaging in the anecdotalism that passes for research in much of education. Some of the more astute observers in this area include folks like Howard Rheingold who sees that though youngsters have some skills in technology, they still need to learn the critical thinking and focused attention skills required to engage in technology in a meaningful way. We do have to teach the current generation differently than the previous - not because they have wicked mad tech skills but because without the focus and discipline required to make sense of the media, they become mere consumers of media - passively disengaged in the world.

More on this can be found at http://www.netgenskeptic.com/

Friday, August 19, 2011

Time says commercial textbooks are a boondoggle

They did not use the word "boondoggle" but in the list of 12 Things You Should Just Stop Buying that also included homeopathic remedies for the flu was new commercial textbooks. The article suggests that you shop online for used or electronic texts. The only exception, according to the author, Martha C. White, was if you could not find one or if the instructor was the author. I would further add that students could also shop for classes that use open textbooks!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Flash Robs and the Darker Side of Human Nature

Image via WikipediaAfter weeks of Twitter fuled violence, rioting and crime, the British government is considering shutting off social networks. With similar problems, the mayor of Philadelphia is appealing to youths shape up combined with increased "stop and frisk" policies. Just as networks like Twitter and Facebook can be used to create art and topple governments, it turns out that they are good at quickly, nearly spontaneously organizing gangs of criminals. The same technology that is used to form learning networks is the same technology that youths are using to organize robberies. I have links to the relevant stories at the bottom of this page. I originally wanted to join in on the rhetorical fun and talk about the "darker side of social networks" but this is really, once again, a case of the media missing the point. It is not the technology: the same press that publishes the works of Ghandi also can publish "Mein Kampf." The same phone technology that can announce a Nobel prize can direct a terrorist attack. Guess what? The problem is not the technology and stopping the technology will only spur further innovation and technological change that the authorities will understand even less. Attempting to close down communication is a lot easier than addressing poverty, unemployment, and the escalating crime rates. The technology is already here to monitor twitter and track who is tweeting and what they are tweeting. I am not condoning this, but it shows you how far behind the curve the British and Philadelphia are that their own police are not using Tweeps Around type software as a crime radar. Twitter is basically an open channel. Why aren't there flash mobs to prevent crime? Why do the police still look like they are barely above the phone-box-on-the-corner level of technology? But before they attempt to boot-block communications, I hope they do something about the roots of these crimes and address the needs of these desperate communities.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Making Sense of Public Domain

As more material becomes identified by governments, libraries, museums, and other institutions as "public domain," instructors and administrators will need help in understanding what is out there and the significance of some of the archives. They will also need help in learning how to use them effectively. This is where The Public Domain Review comes in. "Public domain" is any work that is not copyrighted, has an expired copyright, or that is considered public property. Copyright expiration dates can vary from country to country but tend to be 50 to 70 years after the death of the author. These materials are free to use and re-purpose, even commercially. There is a University of California website dedicated to copyright with a good over-view of the laws and definitions around public domain. The Public Domain Review provides examples of the kinds of materials in public domain from various archives of public domain materials on the net including:

The Internet Archive - One of the largest collections of online public domain media.
Wikimedia Commons - Wikipedia's image bank.
Wikisource - An online library of over 233,000 texts.
Flickr Commons - Contains images from people, museums, libraries and other institutions labeled "Creative Commons" (an open license alternative)
Project Gutenberg - This contains thousands of public domain texts.
The Library of Congress - via its American Memory site.

The Public Domain Review is accepting submissions of articles. They are looking for articles about items in the collections but they are also looking for articles about how to use the materials in the collections. This is a good opportunity for teachers, instruction designers, and artists to reconnect students and the public with the historical record of our culture. I would like to see lesson plans developed around public domain materials, much like what we are doing with the course development around the Kaleidoscope grant (a grant that seeks to implement courses using openly licensed texts and learning objects).

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

3 Reasons Why OERs are Better Than "Free"

I see a lot of emails, Tweets, and blog postings that include free materials from both corporations and individuals included in lists of "open education resources" or OERs. I always have to let people know that I am not anti-corporate: I am using a corporately produced computer and posting to a corporate blog. So why so picky about licensing? Because open licenses mean sustainability. We have a good basic definition of OERs from Stephen Downes: "Open educational resources are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone." Notice that there are no limitations there of any kind. It does not say you must be a member, ask permission, or be vetted by the Ted Talk people (which are great and basically free but not openly licensed). So what is the big deal? In online learning, some instructors like to be able to package the learning materials with a course. This is not always possible on commercially licensed products (yes, I said "product" and that is another issue). If the materials are licensed using Creative Commons, that takes care of those issues. Creative Commons licenses allow us the

1. OERs can be remixed and republished
Look closely at "free" textbooks or materials that are not openly licensed. Typically, you are not allowed to reproduce the text in any way. In some cases, you may be able to print it out or link to it. In many cases, downloading it and uploading again to another server would be considered a violation of copyright and way beyond the bounds of the Teach Act.

2. OERs do not disappear
OERs do not graduate, retire, or accept contracts. OERs do not move to other colleges or get bought out. Regular readers of this blog have had to join me in mourning the passing of a lot of really great tools on the internet - Drop.Io was one. If it were an open source program, someone would still be using and developing it today. I am still using Delicious Bookmarks but holding my breath as it has been sold. One of my favorite textbooks on Semiotics was free for years on the internet and I knew many people that used it. It was bought out by a publisher and it only exists at Archive.Org's Way Back Machine as a fond memory. I have seen teaching materials dissapear from the internet when If something is really worth teaching, it is worth putting an open license on so others, long after you have retired, will get to benefit from your wisdom and influence.

3. OERs are adaptable to your community
Why should your students have to adapt to your material? Shouldn't that be the other way around? The entire time I have been in education (even as a student), I have been dealing with instructors who say "We will use half of this textbook and everything else will be taken from the four other books you had to buy." Why? Because it would be a copyright violation for the instructor to bundle in only the pieces he or she is actually going to use. This is the same for free materials on the internet - if you can't adapt that "free" resource, you have to continually add to the reading list.

When I first got into teaching, I never had to ask for syllabi or materials because the teachers I worked with believed that a textbook was not a course and hand-outs and tests were not teaching. Teaching is what one does. The spirit of collegiality impelled them to share and help a new teacher. I hope that I have carried that spirit forward as well. But in these days of copyright happy corporate culture, I am using the Creative Commons license to again let others know that they don't have to ask.

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Hewlett Packard Funds University of the People Research Students

Image via WikipediaHP is funding research projects with the University of the People, a tuition free open university. I am not sure about your end of the internet, but I haven't see much out there about this story. This is going to be one of the most significant stories in open learning of the year. There was a story about it at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Long after the "real" colleges finish debating whether open universities, free universities and alternative schooling is effective or "valid," the graduates of these programs will be taking their portfolios into the workplace of major corporations. With open universities, MOOCs (massively open online courses), and other alternatives in education coming out of a combination of traditional schools and social networks, the education landscape is changing. This is no longer about creating free content. This is no longer about credentials, although students can go to the University of the People and get a bachelor's degree in computer science online at little cost. There is a $50 application fee and small fees around the grading of tests. They also offer Associate degrees in computer science and Associate and Bachelor's in Business Administration. What makes this story so significant is that the president of the college Shai Reshef, is not just interested in getting people educated but getting them jobs as well. The real revolution in education is not going to take place in the usual universities, it is going to happen when the highly motivated, self-directed learners from places like Wikiversity and U of P move into management of corporations. University of the People also offers general studies courses which I like because their students still get a chance to study history and the world around them.

Friday, July 29, 2011

OERs: Creating Assignments with Public Domain Documents

Image via WikipediaWhile working on the Kaleidoscope Project (assisting faculty at eight colleges develop courses that implement open education resources or open textbooks), I have run into interesting instructional design challenges with creating assignments using materials that were written a hundred years ago. Typically, instructors will take assignments out of a teacher's edition of a textbook or from supplemental material. When they do that, they often trust that the publisher is aware of the learning outcomes of the course or subject. This is not always a safe assumption to make. We are not limited to using older public domain texts, but there are instructors using them. If one wanted to create an course using openly licensed materials, there are modern textbooks, essays and openly licensed journals that can all serve those purposes. If one wanted to use nothing except materials written in the past four or five years, it could easily be done. Such projects are becoming more and more common. Ironically, there are English textbooks out there that are still using excerpts from Toffler's Future Shock (1972) when discussing technology, so the openly licensed textbooks have opportunities to make vast improvements.

But there are cases where instructors want to take advantage of the vast wealth of public domain texts. This seems like a non-issue in most areas of the humanities where we still traffic in Plato, but the question comes up; how do we make it relevant? How do we make it new? The funny thing about that is that students have to do that all the time. They do this whether we want them to or not! One of the ways that we understand a piece of writing or new knowledge, is by applying our previous personal experience, what is happening in the world around us at the time, and combine it with what we have learned before. From this constructivist approach, the teacher's assignment is to give the student

opportunities to apply personal experience and previous knowledge to new information. We can add to that by facilitating the connections the students can make to one another and subject matter experts via twitter and other social networks. But given a public domain text, let's say an essay by psychologist Otto Rank, a teacher could ask the students, based on their personal experience, if Rank's description of interpersonal relationships is valid. What recent news stories seem to support or refute his theory? If the students are reading works by other writers, they can be asked how the theory differs from that author. If they are using a discussion forum (and they should be) then the students have the opportunity to share their experiences and benefit from the experiences and readings of others. They should also be encouraged to follow experts in the field on blogs and twitter and to participate in broader discussions outside of class. In other words, we make sense out of the world through our interactions, and these may be interior or exterior. We are connection-making animals. Learning does not come from a text by itself no more than a textbook is a class.

What techniques do you use in your classes to help your students connect to the broader issues? Feel free to email me or use the comment link below.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Jacques Tati: The Art of NOT Managing Technological Change

Image via WikipediaI just watched Jacques Tati's "Play Time" this weekend. I have been a fan of his ever since my dad took all of my brothers and I to a theater in Seattle one summer while there was a double feature of "Hulot's Holiday" and a Buster Keaton film. There was something about the man that we found almost uncontrollably funny. I thought for a number of years that it was because we were also Jerry Lewis fans and we had a soft spot in our heads (as many children do) for slap-stick. I had the good fortune of revisiting his films in college at the old Rainbow Theater in San Luis Obispo in the 80s and the films hold up - in fact, I think that "Jour de Fete," "Mon Oncle," and "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" are just as funny and particularly relevant for today. For those of you who do not know the Hulot character, he is a man who embodies all the simple bourgois comforts of the old France while comically navigating the modernism, technology, and American consumerism of the new France. His films contrast broken down villages, children playing in the streets, and Paris from the dog's-eye-view with the slick, industrial Mies Van Der Rohe graphite cube architecture, televisions, traffic jams, and plastic wrapped food. The modern world of Hulot is filled with loud machines, the hideous buzz of neon and florescent lighting, and the sterility of Bauhaus. Much of the humor comes in the misapplication of technology by a society that is just as stuck as Hulot in the past. Tati is an extremely talented and funny mime. His films do not depend on dialogue at all. And despite Hulot's challenges with the modern world, he is often playing loud Jazz on the radio or record player to the dismay of the clean, modern society around him. The Hulot character approaches technology and modern ways with childlike wonder, sometimes with amazement or just confusion. He is not afraid of technology; he just does not have sufficient knowledge or experience with which to interpret what is happening in the world around him.

And we see this relationship to technology and change everyday in the press, in government, and especially in education. Those are three fields where the professionals in all three of those arenas are the least prepared for rapid change. Each one of those fields depended on its students and initiates to have both feet planted in the old way of doing things in order to get ahead in their respective fields. It is the clowns outside of these fields that are the answer. Comedy asks us to take a look at ourselves and our expectations of the world around us in startlingly new ways, and, yes, to laugh at ourselves. There is sometimes nothing funnier than someone interpreting new technology to us in the language and world-view of the old. I highly recommend at least "Mon Oncle" to be required viewing for anyone going into journalism, politics, or education.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Finding Creative Commons Videos on YouTube

We are in the middle of helping faculty develop courses for a grant that requires that all of the content be openly licensed: Creative Commons or public domain. YouTube is making it easier to find such content: