karen
A hands-on online workshop?!?? Really?
Posted by karen on May 10, 2012 in Uncategorized
On Sat. May 19 at 1:oo pm Eastern, I’m going to be doing a free online workshop on “Remixing Open Educational Resources for Your Classroom” (webinar link here) as a part of the Virtual 4T Conference. CEUs are available for this session.
This 2-hour workshop will be almost entirely hands-on (and online?!?!). I’m trying a new format. It will look something like this:
- 15 minute intro – What is remixing? What is OER?
- 1-1/2 hour – Using open content (a list of resources supplied), participants will remix for topics/lessons of their choice.
- Everyone chooses a lesson or topic that they’d like to address. They will also pick a final remix format (web page, PowerPoint, ebook, movie, etc.).
- Participants can work individually or in small groups.
- There will be a shared wikispace where people can collaborate or post their work if they like (or they can use their own space).
- I’ll be available for support throughout the two hours (and by email afterward).
The idea of doing an online workshop that is primarily hands-on with “on call” support available is new for me. I’m excited about it.
I’m hoping some great remixed, shareable content comes out of this! Hope you can join us.
And stay tuned for a debrief afterward on how this format worked.
Analytics may not be the right measure
Posted by karen on May 5, 2012 in Uncategorized
David Bornstein’s excellent book How to Change the World, which is about social entrepreneurs, the citizen sector, and the work of the Ashoka Foundation, concludes with a very interesting discussion of the use of metrics and analytics to value social enterprises. He says, in part:
Citizen groups and funders should remain cautious when embracing numerical assessments. The quest for quantifiable social returns or outcomes has become an obsession in a sector that envies the efficiency of business capital markets. Given this obsession, it is important to remember that numbers have an unfortunate tendency to supersede other kinds of knowing. The human mind is a miracle of subtlety: It can assimilate thousands of pieces of information — impressions, experiences, intuition — and produce wonderfully nuanced decisions. Numbers are problematic to the extent that they give the illusion of providing more truth than they actually do. They also favor what is easiest to measure, not what is most important.
Profound.
He goes on to say that there are many areas of society in which we accept informed judgement, rather than pure analytics, as the best way to make decisions, for example, in our court system with the standard of reasonable doubt.
Rather than just using analytics to judge social enterprises, Bornstein suggests that citizen sector research analysts might be employed to assess efficacy using a variety of criteria and ultimately expert judgement.
Some particularly important points to me in this discussion include:
- By focusing on analytics, we naturally target our activities toward those numbers, not to our real goals.
- It is hard to resist gaming the analytics, again to the detriment of our real goals.
- Quality of service in the social sector is more than analytics.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but it applies to many things I am involved in right now. Online and blended learning. Assessment. Professional learning.
You can’t just boil those things down to numbers, and by trying to do so, we may be compromising our core missions.
Teaching with simulations
Posted by karen on April 17, 2012 in Uncategorized
PhET is is an incredible collection of interactive simulations for math and science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. They are high quality, research-based, free, and open licensed. And they offer accompanying teaching resources as well.
If you aren’t familiar with PhET, there is a free webinar next week being offered by the Oregon Virtual School District.
Webinar link
Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Time: 3:45 pm, Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00)
Meeting Number: 928 566 534
(no password required)
Here are just a few of the interactive simulations available from PhET.
Open Ed week webinars
Posted by karen on April 3, 2012 in Uncategorized
In case you missed them, here are the archives to two great webinars about OER that were done during Open Ed week. (Note: These take a few minutes to load.)
P2PU: Peer Learning Fueled by Open Content
More archived webinars from Oped Ed week are available here.
OER foreign language instruction materials
Posted by karen on April 2, 2012 in Uncategorized
I just ran into this open collection of foreign language instruction materials from the Center for Open Educational Resources for Language Learning at the University of Texas at Austin.
This includes videos and additional resources for a variety of languages including Spanish, ASL, Arabic, Chinese, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, and more.
New P2PU groups seeking collaborators!
Posted by karen on March 22, 2012 in Uncategorized
A couple weeks ago at SXSWedu, we had a session to brainstorm some new peer learning groups on P2PU.
The outlines for these groups have now been turned into (preliminary) groups at P2PU, and we are looking for collaborators to help build out the groups and co-facilitate them. If you are interested, sign up to participate or email us (schoolofed at p2pu dot org).
These groups will likely start in May/June.
Student-driven K-12 Classrooms
Student-driven University Classrooms
We are the 1%
Posted by karen on March 13, 2012 in Uncategorized
I’m excited about all the new things going on with sharing, especially as it relates to personal learning for teachers. There are a lot of new groups forming around the idea of open professional development, connected learning for teachers, and online communities of practice.
I recently took part in a panel on “Building a Culture of Sharing” at SXSWedu and am also involved in a P2PU School of Ed group about “Empower Your Personal Learning,” both of which have gotten me thinking deeply about this.
Here’s my big concern — those of us involved in this are a very small minority of teachers. I could venture to say that well over 95% of teachers are not involved in using the power of social networks to advance their own personal learning.
When I raised this point, someone said to me (paraphrasing), “Well, what’s the problem? Sharing is as easy as breathing.”
I don’t think that’s true. There are many barriers to sharing and engaging in self-directed personal learning. Some relate to time constraints, priorities, and personality characteristics. Some are rooted in fear or lack of agency. More troubling are those based in institutional barriers to sharing.
I would hate to see this movement go down the road of ed tech, where there is a small minority of folks engaged and benefiting, while the vast majority of teachers continue in the way that they have done for decades. Our students are the ones who pay the ultimate price for this.
So what is to be done? How do we involve the other 99% of mainstream teachers in this?
Let’s Build a Collaborative Learning Space
Posted by karen on March 10, 2012 in Uncategorized
At SXSWedu this year, I was slated to do a hands-on session to brainstorm what makes a good collaborative learning space with strong peer learning and to begin building such a thing. The goal was to get people thinking about peer learning, to introduce them to P2PU, and to see what they came up with.
I am often not very good as fostering hands-on collaboration in a conference setting, especially when people don’t know each other. Other challenges included that this session was only an hour long and that the room was set up auditorium style with rows of seats and a podium upfront on a stage.
Despite these challenges, this session went great. Here’s what we did, what went well, and what didn’t. Thanks much to Philipp Schmidt who helped brainstorm and facilitate this.
Brief discussion of what we did: I talked for about 10 minutes, introducing the idea of peer learning and P2PU. I told people they’d be getting into groups (or they could work individually if they wanted) to brainstorm tasks for a peer learning group on ___. I gave them some suggested topics:
- How can we make our classrooms more student-driven?
- How can mobile devices be used for learning?
- How can Twitter be used for professional learning?
- How can we build a digital curriculum?
- …or create your own topic
I said they could brainstorm and/or develop on paper, in a Google Doc (in which I had set up areas for each group in advance), or in P2PU. I asked people to self-group and asked for a volunteer for notetaker from each group. See below for the slides and handout I used.
Then the rest of the time was hands on. At the end of the hour, animated conversation was still going on, and I was told not to interrupt them!
What worked well:
- At the beginning of the session, I said “This is going to be a very hands on session. If that isn’t your thing, feel free to leave.” (Maybe 2 of 45 people left. I don’t know what I’d have done if 40+ left.)
- Giving prompts for groups was mentioned as something that people liked. Everyone pretty easily grouped around 3 of the 4 topics I suggested. (We dropped one.)
- Giving choices both in topic choice, group/individual, and where to brainstorm was well received.
- Three people volunteered to be notetakers. Excellent participation!
- People rearranged the room for groupwork. Here’s what it looked like:
- The Google Doc worked excellently. Here are the results. I don’t think anyone used paper or P2PU (which I figured was too ambitious for this purpose). There is something magic about using a shared Google Doc for this kind of thing – it has worked for me f2f and online and even with the most reluctant groups. Best of all, now I have captured their great thinking for further iteration.
What I might do differently next time:
- Talk even less at the beginning.
- Define additional roles beyond notetaker within each group.
- Don’t have handouts. The were unnecessary.
- Would be nice to have more time to do reports out and possibly some group discussion and iteration.
I got everyone’s emails from this session to follow up. I am certain that we will collaborate further on these ideas and that you’ll see them in future P2PU School of Ed groups.
Slides I used:
Open Ed Week webinars!
Posted by karen on March 2, 2012 in Uncategorized
To celebrate Open Education Week, I’m helping to facilitate two great webinars, and you are all invited!
OER in K-12 – Thurs., March 8 – 9am Central (15:00 GMT)
Log-in link
A panel discussion with:
- Karen Fasimpaur, K12 Open Ed
- Jeff Mao, State of Maine Department of Education
- Ahrash Bissell, National Repository of Online Courses
- Delaina Tonks, Open High School of Utah
- Jason Neiffer, Montana Digital Academy
Slides from this session:
P2PU: Peer Learning Fueled by Open Content – Thurs., March 8 – 2pm Central (20:00 GMT)
Log-in link
A panel discussion with:
- Philipp Schmidt, P2PU Executive Director
- Karen Fasimpaur, P2PU Community Member
- Vanessa Gennarelli, P2PU Community Member
- Alan Webb, P2PU Community Member
- Maria Droujkova, P2PU Community Member
Slides from this session:
A complete list of all Open Ed Week webinars is here. Recordings and accompanying materials will also be posted here following the sessions.
Spread the word, and we hope to see you next week. Sharing is good!
Open Education Week!
Posted by karen on February 27, 2012 in Uncategorized
Next week March 5-10 is the first annual Open Education Week!
Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are materials, tools, and media used for teaching and learning that are licensed for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute.
The event will take place online and in different locations around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars, discussions and live events. Participation is free and open to all. Visit www.openeducationweek.org for more information.
How can you participate?
- Participate in a webinar. Here’s a schedule of them. (Times are GMT.)
- Use some of the great OER for K-12.
- Open license some of your own content.
- Tell someone else about OER. Tweet, post, and spread the word!
Sharing is good!
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Licensing
Unless otherwise indicated, this work is licensed under a, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
