Friday, October 26, 2012

16 Resources for Free Images for Educators

Abraham Lincoln with Allan Pinkerton and Major General John Alexander McClernand at the Battle of Antietam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The search for quality images continues...

We have faculty who are creating course materials and in some cases, replacing Fair Use images with public domain, fair use, or Creative Commons licensed images. There are still some holes in our image searches. The links here are my most recent suggestions but I know that some of these are older than others and besides Wikipedia and advanced Google Searches (which are good), there are other sources. This is really just a representative list to get us started.

These are in alphabetical order - not in order of quality or breadth.

Archive.Org. - This is the grand daddy of all public domain archives for images, text, audio, and film. It takes a bit to get used to using the site but once you get the hang of it, it is well worth it. Lots of treasures here.
American Memory - These are history images from the Library of Congress.
Bowdoin Botany Database - These images copyrighted but are free for educators: "Educators and students may use these images as part of their teaching, research, and/or studies, but may not sell or otherwise make a profit on their use."
Burning Well - This is one of numerous archives of public domain images.
Cadyu provides public domain and Creative Commons licensed 3-d images of objects. This would be appropriate for a design class, autocad, etc.
Clipart Etc. - From the University of Florida. A maximum of fifty (50) clipart items may be used in any non-commercial, educational project (report, presentation, display, website, etc.) without special permission.
Creative Commons Search - This combines multiple search engines and gives you the results in one spot based on license chosen.
Environmental Education Station.- These are public domain photos that were funded by an environmental studies grant. These photos are royalty free and may be used without charge for any educational purpose with attribution to David Anderson.
Images in the Public Domain - Many of these are from old encyclopedias. Still useful.
Library of Congress - Most of the images in these holdings are in public domain unless specifically cataloged otherwise.
Public Domain Images - This site collects high quality public domain images.
Public Domain Image links- This is from the University of Wisconsin. Great metasite with links to many public domain resources.
Smithsonian - They encourage educational fair use of all of their images as long as you cite the source. Many of their images are in public domain unless they specify copyright information.
Web Gallery of Art- is intended to be a free resource of art history primarily for students and teachers. It is a private initiative not related to any museums or art institutions, and not supported financially by any state or corporate sponsors.
Wikimedia sometimes works...I found that the best way to search wikimedia is to go to Google and type: site:commons.wikimedia.org "search term" where “search term” equals a single word like “photosynthesis.” Notice that there is only a single space AFTER “org.” Do not put a space after the colon.
U.S. Government Public Domain- The US govt. has made it easier to find images that they have produced that are in the public domain. They are freely available and need no permission.

What are we missing? Is there a source that you use? Which of these are best in your experience? We would really appreciate your comments, experiences or suggestions below!

These are just in from Bosha Struve:

Digital Media

Behold
ClearBits - Open licensed digital media (it has distribution plans and pricing but you can get a free account).
Compfight
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Reading Room (different from the one you have posted)

Other Resource Guides

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Effective Online Teaching Techniques

These are the slides and some resources from my workshop on "Effective Online Teaching Techniques." It relies heavily on Chickering and Gamson because I like to emphasize that the same principles that make face-to-face teaching effective are the same principles that make for effective online teaching.

What resources would you suggest for teachers new to online teaching? Feel free to add to the comments below.

Anderson, Terry & Elloumi, Fathi. (2004) Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.
Boettcher, J.V. (2011) “Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online: Quick Guide for New Online Faculty.” Design for Learning.
Cain, Geoffrey B. (2012) “15 Time-Saving Tips for Teaching Online”. Brainstorm in Progress.
Chickering, Arthur W. & Ehrmann, Stephen C. (1996) “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever.” The TLT Group.
Chickering, Arthur W. & Gamson, Zelda F. (1987) “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” Washington Center News.
Codde, Joseph R. (2006) “Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” Michigan State University.
Shelton, Kaye. (2006) Online Teaching Tips. Dallas Baptist University Online Education Program.
Rubric for Online Instruction. (2009). CSU Chico

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Promoting an Open Culture with Open Access Week

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Open Access Week is upon us and this is a very important part of the OER equation. Quality OER is going to have to start with quality open research. There are so many concerns outside of the OER community that Open Access Week can address:

Where is the research going to come from for OERs and open text books?
How do we determine if OER and open research are "credible"?
How do we address publication and tenure issues with OER?

What is Open Access Week? "Open Access Week, a global event now entering its sixth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research."

Open Access in research can ensure the widest dissemination and use of that research. I would like to see institutions supporting research in such a way that closed options (commercial journals) are less attractive. OERs become "credible" and "reputable" when the materials used to create them come from respected open journals. The default for research should always be open. Our support will make them reputable!

Friday, October 19, 2012

PowerPoint as an Interactive Teaching Tool

PowerPoint is on every computer in this college and every college I have worked with. Students, faculty, and staff use and abuse it every day. Those of you who know me know that I am not particularly an advocate of commercial technology but it is a tool that is being used for teaching and learning. When I am wearing my instructional designer's cap, I have to think about the best uses of any tool. Here is a presentation I gave on PowerPoint:

Edward Tufte is a personal hero of mine. I think his critiques of PowerPoint are valid. But PowerPoint is just a tool. Tools don't make bad presentations; people with tools do. Here are some more resources from today's presentation:

PowerPoint Resources for Beginners

Basics

Microsoft's Create a Basic Presentation in PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft's Overview of PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft's Create a Basic Presentation in PowerPoint 2010
Microsoft's Basic Tasks in PowerPoint 2010

Hosting Presentations Online

Slideshare
Slideboom (includes wider audio option)
Google Drive (stores online and has embed code)

Resources from Workshop

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Closing Open Ed with State Authorization Rules

State seal of Minnesota (Wikipedia)

The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported on Minnestota's state authorization rules for distance ed that we in the California Community College's Distance Education Coordinator's group have been wrestling with as well. The state of Minnesota has told Coursera that they cannot offer free online classes in their state without authorization. I am glad this has happened because I am hoping that this will bring attention to a very complex problem that is not going to just come from Minnesota. Each state has its own state authorization rules for distance education. Getting authorized in some states can mean merely filing a piece of paper, in some states, it can cost a lot. There are serious questions about this that need to be addressed at the federal level:

Freedom of speech - If someone wants to read and interact with others for free and not for college credit, what business is that of the state's?
Commerce clause - Shouldn't the federal government step up to the plate on this just as they have done with other industries like health insurance?
Selective enforcement issues - Why choose Coursera? Has Minnesota sent cease and desist letters to other other open colleges? What about religious colleges?

The federal government has already taken the step to say that they will not enforce state authorization. They need to go the extra mile create legislation to ensure everyone's access to education. There should be federal guidelines for distance ed to prevent the capricious nature of these rules.

Monday, October 15, 2012

From Abelard to Apple with Richard DeMillo

Richard DeMillo (Wikipedia)

Today's presentation in our MOOC, "The Current and Future State of Higher Education" featured Rich DeMillo, according to his introduction, he is "a Distinguished Professor of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the seventh ranked public university in the U.S. He also currently serves as the Director of the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U). He returned to academia in 2002 as the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech, after a career as an executive in industry and government. He was Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard, where he had worldwide responsibility for technology and technology strategy. Prior to joining HP, he was Vice President and General Manager in charge of Information and Computer Sciences Research at Telcordia Technologies in Morristown, New Jersey, where he oversaw the development of many internet and web-based innovations. He has also directed the Computer and Computation Research Division of the National Science Foundation. During his twenty-year academic career, he has also held academic positions at Purdue University, The University of Wisconsin and the University of Padua (Italy)."

Apple II Plus computer. (Wikipedia)

He is the author of the book Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities (MIT Press 2011). This is the book description from Amazon: "The vast majority of American college students attend two thousand or so private and public institutions that might be described as the Middle--reputable educational institutions, but not considered equal to the elite and entrenched upper echelon of the Ivy League and other prestigious schools. Richard DeMillo has a warning for these colleges and universities in the Middle: If you do not change, you are heading for irrelevance and marginalization. In Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues that these institutions, clinging precariously to a centuries-old model of higher education, are ignoring the social, historical, and economic forces at work in today's world. In the age of iTunes, open source software, and for-profit online universities, there are new rules for higher education. DeMillo, who has spent years in both academia andin industry, explains how higher education arrived at its current parlous state and offers a road map for the twenty-first century. He describes the evolving model for higher education, from European universities based on a medieval model to American land-grant colleges to Apple's iTunes U and MIT's OpenCourseWare. He offers ten rules to help colleges reinvent themselves (including "Don't romanticize your weaknesses") and argues for a focus on teaching undergraduates. DeMillo's message--for colleges and universities, students, alumni, parents, employers, and politicians--is that any college or university can change course if it defines a compelling value proposition (one not based in "institutional envy" of Harvard and Berkeley) and imagines an institution that delivers it."

He started out by saying that "Traditional American universities are no longer the gatekeepers." I loved hearing this because most of the hand wringing I hear and read about MOOCs are about getting the model to work in such a way that traditional colleges don't have to change. Or how to redefine MOOCs to preserve the gatekeeper function. "Traditional universities are the incumbents.." He compares where universities are with newspapers. We are still using a 100 year old model of higher education that was created for a different population with different needs. He says that experiments in higher ed stopped 50 years ago. There has only been one new research university since the turn of the century.

He discussed "Three Tiers" of education institutions - Elite (70 - 75), Middle (1000's), Proprietary (100's). This model has been keeping the costs up for education. Pew found that the current model is non-sustainable. The economic realities include:

Higher education is a multi-sided market (many stake-holders with competing needs, portfolio of services, they are a platform)
Bypass economies (Services are desired by many, affordable by few.)
In a marketplace with many alternatives, the only way to survive is to have

Unassailable brand (only the Elites have global brands)
Best price (the Middle wastes money)
Best value proposition (the Middle has misjudged its value)

He discussed who will succeed over the next 100 years: defining value and architecting form. Architecting means changing your institution to balance faculty and student centrism; create the best technology; cut costs in have; meaningful measures of success; societal success.

How do the Middle colleges waste money?

Sponsored research is usually viewed as a way to expand the bottom line. A research university often spends two dollars for every one they get in sponsored research.
The way that we view capital plants - spending a million dollars on climbing walls in dorms
Intercollegiate athletics saps the moral and financial strength of the institution.

I think the cost of textbooks should be thrown in here too.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Beyond MOOC Hyperbole with Siva Vaidhyanathan

These are my notes on "Beyond MOOC Hyperbole: Why We Should Support MOOC Experimentation...Critically and Carefully." This was a presentation hosted by Dave Cormier and presented by Siva Vaidhyanathan for our MOOC "The Current and Future State of Higher Education 2012." According to the article on Siva Vaidhyanathan in Wikipedia, he "is a cultural historian and media scholar and is currently a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, MSNBC.com, and Salon.com. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. From 2004 through 2008 he maintained a blog, Sivacracy.net on which he frequently commented on media and technology issues, as well as his love of sports." This was the second CFHE12 discussion. He talked about the place of MOOCs on higher ed. He comes at this as a professor of media studies.

American Palladianism: The Rotunda at the Univ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He began by saying that "Discussing higher ed as if it were a single entity really clouds the issues" because it covers a wide variety of schools and the role and scope of community colleges or big name Ivy League schools. MOOCs will have different effects and benefits to different kinds of teachers. The real question is "what tools are best for a particular context." He does not think that discussions about "revolutions" and "disruptions" are not very useful (they are ahistorical). There is a lot of talk about MOOCs being the end of the university or the rebirth. We should be suspicious about these claims. He said that there are no simple conclusions that can be made on new tools and pedagogy. He thinks the college is "a temple of empirical reason." Hmmm... The heirs of the monasteries. He has to convince students that he is the "source of wisdom."

The discussion of MOOC mania is in a "faith" realm, not an empirical reasoning realm. He discussed the attempted firing of the president of his college, University of Virginia. Their was talk of MOOCs being one of the issues. They are now working with Coursera to offer courses. There was an email that discussed faculty teaching in MOOCs. There is a lot of panic, therefore, around MOOCs.

He is excited about MOOCs because:

They are pushing interesting ideas and work to "all corners of the world"
Could inspire people to pursue knowledge
We can learn a lot about learning
We could do great marketing for UVA (inspire people to enroll)

We need to encourage people to collaborate around the world - this is how real creativity will happen. MOOCs could help us break out new technologies and pedagogies. We need to understand that we are doing this as a "public service."

He has serious concerns about MOOCs:

Revenue/Cost savings trump education/academic values
Commercialization of the missions
Reduction of the missions of higher education into a transaction
Student ("user") privacy concerns
Taking the worst aspects of college learning as the favored methods of college learning
Assuming teaching and learning resemble the "hypodermic needle" model
Technofundamentalism
Market fundamentalism

Homer statue at the University of Virginia

Homer statue at UV (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He is worried about money and commercialization trumping education (Isn't this already happening?) He is concerned about FERPA issues. He says that the current MOOCs are "television shows" - they are a one-way delivery of content. Ironically, this is how this presentation if being delivered. Siva does not seem to be familiar with the connectivist MOOCs where interaction with students was, in my experience, the primary mode of learning.

He is complaining about the lack of public funding for education. I think that the cost should be lowered!

The work that instructors do cannot be reduced to a commercial transaction. I agree with him about concerns about thinking about colleges as a "business model." MOOCs, OERs, and open textbooks are, among other things, a response to the financial issues around education. He spent a lot of time discussing, at the end, the wonders of a brick & mortar education. I think that there are ways to develop high quality education through MOOCs, OER, and open textbooks.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Podcasting and the Attention Curve

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We were working with one of our brilliant faculty here at College of the Redwoods, Pamela Netzow, who is creating an audio annotation and guide to a very complex accounting textbook. She came in for a meeting today and the conversation turned to student attention span. There is a lot of research out there on this and our multimedia instructional designer, Dan Fiore, sent us a video by Rhona Sharpe that included the statement that "while teachers are lecturing, students are not attending to what is being said about 40% of the time, and this has been shown in numerous studies" and that students' attention spans in "passive tasks" is about 15 minutes.

This really makes breaking up an in-class lecture with activities and discussion very important. It also brings into question the whole idea of putting up entire lectures online via lecture capture software. The best use of lecture capture software, according to this research, would be to record demonstrations, short lectures, and brief presentations.

Pam's efforts also tie into some research that I had read recently about engaging students in content being an important factor in student success and retention rates.With Pam's podcasts, students will learn not only what is important for the class, but I think that this is a great way to teach students how to effectively use a textbook.

Even though podcasting is not exactly new technology, it is fairly new to Humboldt County and our students. It has the advantages of being low-bandwidth and available on a wide variety of phones, mp3 players, and computers. We will certainly report back here the results of our instructors efforts.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Jerry Brown Unlocks the Nation's Digital Future through Open Source Textbook Innovation

English: Jerry Brown's official picture as Att...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, Governor Jerry Brown signed a monumental set of bills that create the nation's first free online textbook library, an effort aimed at alleviating the burden of rising costs to students attending California's public postsecondary institutions. California is now set to become the nation's first state to create a digital textbook library free of charge for the state's most popular college courses, says the 20 Million Minds Foundation.

Introduced by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), SB 1052 provides for the selection, development and administration of free open digital textbooks for the most popular lower-division courses and overseen by the establishment of the "California Open Education Resources Council" (COERC). COERC, established by the legislation, will be comprised of faculty members from the University of California, California State University and Community Colleges to determine which courses merit inclusion. Its companion bill, SB 1053, creates the California Open Source Digital Library to house the open source textbooks and courseware.

Both bills place California first in the nation among states to combat higher education's growing price tag with open source software and Creative Commons open licenses so that students can access sophisticated tools and college-level information at no or low cost, allowing them to mitigate escalating college fee increases and save their money for student housing.

With the Governor's signature, California is set to create a competitive "Request for Proposals" (RFP) process inviting faculty, publishers, and others to develop high quality digital open source textbooks and related courseware. The materials will be placed under a "Creative Commons" licensing structure that allows students and faculty free access, and allows instructors to create customized materials from these textbooks and other courseware. Materials must also meet the rigorous standards of college core curricula, and will be reviewed and approved by subject matter experts. "This is a great victory for students and middle class families struggling with the ever-increasing costs of higher education," said Steinberg. "This is a major step toward using technology to cut costs for students while enhancing the quality of higher education in California."

"At a time when the cost of attending California's public colleges and universities is skyrocketing, Governor Jerry Brown recognized that by embracing our digital future with innovative technological advancements like open source textbooks we can save college students in California millions of dollars in escalating book costs," said 20 Million Minds Foundation President Dean Florez. The foundation has been supportive of policy measures to create quality open source textbooks for college students throughout the nation. "This is the first time government has come in with substantial dollars that match philanthropic efforts to create a library where students can access free textbooks and faculty can utilize their skills to remix, revise, and repurpose these textbooks for their students."

Funding for the bills also signed by the governor (SB 1028), appropriates five million dollars for the project from the state public college savings plan ScholarShare Trust fund to be matched by private entities and philanthropy.

Dr. Larry Green, Mathematics Co-Chair of Lake Tahoe Community College, who has been utilizing a free open source textbook for his students, praised the governor. "From the instructors' perspective, having access to a wealth of professional course materials to edit, use and share frees up time for pursuing more one-on-one interaction with students and more personalized learning," said Green. "Choosing to adopt an enhanced digital open textbook for my students spares them several thousands of dollars in combined textbook expenses and increases student success. I thank the Governor for recognizing the need to provide faculty with the tools necessary for remixing curriculum while preserving academic freedom by providing free quality textbook choices for college professors and their students."

The open source library will allow students to download textbooks for free or pay around $20 for a hard copy, and was the principle reason the signed bills received approval by the University of California.

SOURCE The 20 Million Minds Foundation

OERs at College of the Redwoods

These are the slides from my part of presentation "OER Adopter Communities: the Sustainability Factor in Open Education":

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Keeping Open Education Resources Open

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What does the "open" in "open education resources" mean? What it should mean is free to reuse, remix and share. If your open education resources are locked up with a proprietary platform, they are no longer open. If they are converted into "supplements" for a "free" text, they are no longer open. This is the fear behind those who choose a license that says "not for commercial use." That does not make it less open because you are not free to lock down someone else's work and make a profit off of it.

The reason I release materials to the wild with an open license is so that other educators can use them and benefit from them; maybe even modify them (and hey, feel free send me a copy back). I want to contribute to the education community. My intention is not to enrich some business who will repackage and "improve" on my work by locking it down into a closed system and then charging for access. The claim that I am making my work less open because it is not free for commercial use is ridiculous! That is like saying animals are only free if they are also free to be in a zoo. And the only ones who really benefit from the corporate lock-down of OERs and open textbooks are the corporations.

The Creative Commons license warning that an OER is not part of a "free culture" is an unnecessary distraction. FreedomDefined. org is not helping:
"Licenses which only allow non-commercial use are not considered Free Culture licenses. This is because in practice there are many ways that Cultural works can be used and reused which would be considered commercial. Another problem is that there is no generally agreed definition of where the border line is between Commercial and Non Commercial uses with very many cases falling in the undefined area in between. In practice Share Alike or Copyleft clauses provide a restriction on commercial profits since any reuse making excessive profits will soon stimulate a bunch of copycats which will bring prices down while encouraging even wider distribution of the works - which is the objective of the free culture licenses."
That phrase "which will bring down prices" is the funny bit here. My goal is not to keep down the prices of my work but to remove the cost barrier altogether from my work! I want it free as in free of cost to any student, now and in the future.

The claim that OERs will not benefit from corporate modification and promotion is really missing the point. That is not the only way that OERs are adapted, developed, and distributed. OERs belong to the community of teachers and learners. They should remain there. The real work being done in the OER community is by communities of educators

So why do school districts go after corporate materials that are almost, but not quite entirely, unlike open? Because they are still clinging to the old paradigm that says that if it didn't get "vetted" by a corporate press, it lacks quality, legitimacy, the imprimatur and nihil obstat of a "reputable" press. We need to redefine this legitimacy. The corporate presses have not done education any favors: the price of education is outstripping the cost of inflation and healthcare. Each semester, publishers come up with new and interesting ways to justify their $280 dollar textbooks. And the sad truth is that the instructors know these subjects better than the project managers at corporate education publishing houses. The books are not more accurate because they went through their vetting process (see OER: The Myth of Textbook Reliability). Every open textbook that I have encountered that was created in-house or by a community of scholars has been hands down superior in every way to a corporate textbook because it addresses the needs of the teachers who created it and the students who are using it, it is lower in price and more accessible.

There are new models emerging for the development and implementation of OERs and open textbooks. There are a number of models suggested by Stephen Downes in his article "Models for Sustainable Open Education Resources" that I feel have yet to be fully explored. There is also the implementation model suggested by the Kaleidoscope Project that begins with a community of scholars working on shared student learning outcomes and assessments and only then do they adopt OERs or open textbooks. In other words, open textbooks are an opportunity to have education content driven by the SLOs of the local schools, not by commercial interests.

Fretting over whether or not an OER is free to be exploited by a corporation is a huge step backward and a great disservice to the students.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

OER Adopter Communities: the Sustainability Factor in Open Education

Open Textbooks from the Open Course Library (Photo credit: caswell_tom)

Una Daly has invited you to the event 'September 25 OER Adopter Communities: the Sustainability Factor in Open Education' on College Open Textbooks Community!

Check out the entire Fall 2012 CCCOER Webinar Lineup

Time: September 25, 2012 from 10am to 11am
Location: online Pacific TIme zone
Organized By: Una Daly Event

Description: Please join CCCOER September 25, 1:00 pm Eastern to hear how three successful OER adoption projects built sustainable communities of faculty and staff to customize open textbooks and open educational resources to lower costs and better meet the needs of students at their colleges. Presenters from the Kaleidoscope Project at College of the Redwoods, Cuyahoga Community College, and Scottsdale Community College will talk about their challenges and achievements in finding, evaluating, and adapting high-quality OER to replace high cost publisher textbooks.

• Danielle Budzick, Interim Director of Faculty Development, Adjunct Business Instructor & Linda Glassburn, Assistant Professor Business & IT at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio. Danielle and Linda worked with the other Business Communications instructors at Cuyahoga college to adopt an open textbook from Flat World Knowledge and revise it to meet college learning outcomes.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Geoff Cain, Director of Distance Education at College of the Redwoods in California and an instructional designer on the Kaleidoscope Next Generation Learning Grant. Geoff worked with Biology Instructor Wendy Riggs to find and adapt open educational resources to improve student learning outcomes and replace publisher textbooks.

• Dr Donna Gaudet, Developmental Math Professor at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. Donna and her colleagues in the Math Department have been finding and adapting open textbooks and open educational resources for over two year to improve student understanding of developmental math and replace their former expensive curriculum.

PARTICIPANT DETAILS
No pre-registration necessary. On the day of the webinar, please click here to login and then press the Connect button. You may use a headset or dial-in to speak live: (888) 886-3951
Enter your passcode: 918603

PARTICIPANT CONFERENCE FEATURE
*0 – Contact the operator for audio assistance
*6 – Mute/unmute your individual line

PRIOR TO YOUR FIRST CCC CONFER MEETING, it is recommended that you:
Test Your Computer Readiness

FOR ASSISTANCE: CCC Confer Client Services – Monday – Friday between 8:00 am – 4:00 pm See more details and RSVP on College Open Textbooks Community:

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Seoul Man: Viral Videos and the Shrinking World

I have been thinking recently about Psy and the K-pop phenomena of his video "Gangnam Style" that broke out of the internet and onto mainstream television and media. This video was destined to become the Numa Numa of the year (Gary Brolsma's lip-synching of the Romanian pop song Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone) except for one thing: the world is smaller now. Or rather, the internet and other media are quickly collapsing into a single macro-market. The video "Gangnam Style" was released in July and in two months, after being kicked around Facebook and Twitter, the YouTube video has gotten nearly 181,000,000 views. I believe it took Numa Numa a year or so to hit 2,000,000 views. Which is remarkable in itself seeing that Brolsma was just a kid with a web cam. (Mike Wesch has an excellent presentation on viral videos and YouTube that discusses Brolsma's video and many others called "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube" that is really worth watching.) Psy from Korea is part of the pop industry there, but there has been little breaking out of the K-pop world and into the mainstream until now. By mainstream, I mean Psy's appearance on the Ellen Degenere's show and his appearance at a Dodger's game. That would not have been possible without Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. You can't set out to create this kind of content on purpose. Most people who are watching the video are not familiar with the Korean TV personalities and comedians in the video, they do not understand the context. They don't really need to. The dancing is funny, and the music has a catchy beat. To many Western viewers, the randomness and cultural alienation is part of its appeal.

Of course, there is a darker side to the shrinking world too. Another viral video with a definite air of cultural alienation is circulating and being used to basically dismantle the Arab Spring and as a pretext by extremists to attack all things Western. The same connections that can create a pop sensation can create chaos.

We have to recognize this change in how unpredictable information can be. Psy and his producers could not have predicted anything like the reception he has gotten. We no longer live in a world of "media outlets" and consumers. The consumers of the past are creating responses to media using the same tools that were once only available only to "The Media." We are the media. And when something goes viral, we have no idea how it will be perceived. I am not saying that we have to be careful what we put out there, but learning how these new connections are changing the world has never been more important. A theory of how meaning or dissonance is created through connections, like George Siemen's Connectivism, would be very useful about now.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Rubrics for Discussion Posts

Hierarchy of Instructional Design (Photo: jrhode)

I gave a presentation today on discussion forums. I know that LMSs are old-fashioned now in the post web 2.0 social media world, but my goal as an instructional designer is to at least get the best use or best practices out there for whatever tools are available and being used by any particular school or institution. The presentation is in about 3 parts. The first talks about why we use discussion assignments. The second looks at the characteristics and practices that make for a successful discussion assignment, and the third talks about assessment. Oh yes, there is a fourth part: we actually went into Sakai and looked at the "Discussion Forums" tool which is the old open source forum "JForum." I prefer that tool over the generic Sakai "Forums" tool because I find "Discussion Forums" easier to grade and manage. I get where things are and why. The profile in "Discussion Forums" is easier to use than the Profile tool in Sakai which is NOT integrated with the Forums tool or any other tool for that matter. But my point is that the how and why of using a particular tool, the pedagogy implied by the assignment, and the assessment of the assignment is more important than the tool itself.

Map of income distribution in Salinas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So in this workshop, I present a rubric for discussion posts. Most other teachers and instructional designers ask me about this. Why in a Facebook world do I need a rubric for discussion posts? Isn't this very mid 90s? Well, it is. Despite the "Millennial" thinking about students, we have a lot of students who do not know what the internet and online communication is really all about. I know this flies in the face of the "Net Generation" fallacy (where you take the recreational habits of the upper middle class/rich kids of your Ivy League school and try to extrapolate what is happening in the rest of the 99% world with technology and learning). I first developed my rubric for discussion posts around my rubric for blog posts when I was teaching English at Hartnell College in Salinas. Many of my students where first generation college students and the Spanish speaking children of migrant farm workers. Many of them did not have consistent high school experiences. A few had diplomas, some GEDs and many had incomplete educations because they moved around a lot. (According to the standard commercial English textbooks, these kids are ready for Shakespeare and Milton.) How are these students supposed to know what is expected of them in an online environment? Easy. You talk to them. You frame the question in terms that they are familiar with. You ask them about what the expectations we might have in a conversation in a classroom versus the cafeteria or at home. I told the students about the rubric and discussed what was in it and why and then we negotiated. Some were familiar with internet chats and wanted to know about "flame wars." We negotiated the points involved. We talked about what is a substantial reply versus superficial (like "great post"). So instead of imposing a list of seemingly arbitrary rules - the students made the guidelines their own. They now had a set of expectations for their interactions with one another and my grading. We referred to the rubric for about 5 weeks, and once we were sure that things were working - it slowly faded away. I think that is success.

I have a copy of my rubric here.

Here is a copy of my presentation as well:

Related articles:

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Implementing OERs and Open Textbooks

The Engineering Building at the University of Leicester. Designed by James Stirling.(Wikipedia)

There is still a lot of energy out there around the creation of open content and the licensing of existing content with open licences. There are many worthwhile projects out there that are interested in creating OERs such as SCORE in the UK. But how do we use these materials effectively? How can we roll out this content in the most effective manner? Who is evaluating these materials for quality? These are common questions about OERs and they point to an evolutionary history of OERs: creation, repositories, evaluation, assessment, and implementation. There are three projects worth taking a close look at even if you are already aware of them because there are common themes arising in OER implementation.

The OSTRICH Project - "The OSTRICH project, funded by the Higher Education Academy and JISC, and led by the University of Leicester, will transfer and cascade the key outcomes of Leicester’s institutional open educational resources (OER) pilot project, OTTER, to the universities of Bath and Derby." Why do you need to know about this? Because their blog provides an excellent model for implementing and assessing OERs. You can follow the evolution of their implementation step-by-step through their blog.

Kaleidoscope Project - "Project Kaleidoscope is implementing a set of fully open general education courses across eight colleges serving predominantly at-risk students. The project will dramatically reduce textbook costs and allow collaborative improvement of course design to improve student success." This project built assessment and peer review into the implementation process. The genius of the project is that it brings multiple colleges together not only to review OERs and open textbooks but to find common course outcomes and develop common assessments. This is a critical stage in the history of the implementation of OERs. This project shows that inter-institutional collaboration is a key factor in OER implementation success.

SAIDE ACEMaths Project - "The aim of the SAIDE ACEMaths project was to pilot a collaborative process for the selection, adaptation and use of OER materials for teacher education programmes in South Africa. Our latest research article entitled Collaborative Design and Use of Open Educational Resources: A Case Study of a Mathematics Teacher Education Project in South Africa by Ingrid Sapire and Yvonne Reed was published in Distance Education vol. 32 no. 2 August 2011."

OPAL: Open Education Quality Initiative - "Open educational resources, and open education more generally, are considered to have huge potential to increase participation and educational opportunities at large and to promote widening participation and lifelong learning. At the same time, the past decade has shown that openness in itself is not enough to unfold this potential. It is important to shift the focus more to the actual open practice of using, reusing, or creating open educational opportunities: open educational practice." They have published numerous case studies on the implementation of OERs.

Each one of these projects emphasizes collaboration in one way or another. Instructors are learning how to work together to reuse, remix, and share OERs through these projects, but beyond that, they are identifying the practices that will make the implementation of OERs successful.