February 2008
Licensing discussion and the whole libre thing
Posted by karen on February 20, 2008 in Uncategorized
I participated in a group conversation today about Open Ed (part 1 and part 2). It was interesting. The first part of the conversation was really about copyright education, not open ed. When the conversation finally got around to open ed resources, the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to license compatibility, CC-BY vs. SA/GFDL, etc., the whole “libre” issue, etc.
As the participants were talking, the call facilitator text’d “For most people, this discussion will go WAY over their heads.”
I replied, “You are right…However…the ‘open’ culture community is forcing this debate. Frankly it’s driving people away from the open movement.”
When asked to elaborate, I shared my view that forcing a specific vision of “open” on others that is not inclusive is likely to fracture the movement before it even gets going (especially in K-12). I have become more and more frustrated by this issue.
I’m increasingly moving toward David Wiley’s suggestion that “we need a Educational Productivity Pledge along the lines of the following: Every time you feel tempted to engage in a discussion about free/libre issues, create some educational materials instead. Imagine where we might be now if we could all find the strength of character to adhere to such a pledge.”
And I am leaning more toward hosting my open content on my own server. (Still undecided though.)
Open Ed Hands On Activities
Posted by karen on February 15, 2008 in Uncategorized
As a part of my interest in building awareness for OER in the K-12 community, I’ve been doing presentations at various ed tech conferences. I have been very happy with how enthusiastic the audiences have been about this topic. (Most of them have not heard of OER before.) Not only are they excited about “free stuff,” but they really understand how OER could provide a alternative to traditional textbooks and software.
Several groups have asked me to expand my one-hour presentation to a half- or full-day hands-on workshop. In doing this, I’ve set up the hands on activities posted here. These are designed to be short activities that folks can do in a short time to get familiar with wiki editing, licensing issues, mass collaboration, and curriculum sharing.
As with the presentation materials, this is all licensed under CC-BY-SA, so feel free to use and adapt for your own workshops or other uses.
And if you have ideas for other short, easy-to-do activities to get folks excited about OER, I’d love to hear from you.
Group collaboration on curriulum
Posted by karen on February 12, 2008 in Uncategorized
Curriki has a new group feature that I’ve been playing with at a few Open Ed workshops I’ve been doing.
If you’d like to see it, visit the K-8 Math Collaborative Project I set up. After you join the group, go to the Curriculum tab, choose a level, and add a few word problems or other resources.
K-12 Open Content CD
Posted by karen on February 8, 2008 in Uncategorized
K-12 schools have some unique circumstances that can make using OERs a challenge. Among these are concerns about inappropriate content (prompting the need for a pre-screened “frozen” version of materials) and extensive filtering and blocking systems that make accessing some open sites impossible.
As such, I am going to start work on an Open Content CD for K-12 educators. Most likely, this will either be a free downloadable resource or perhaps nominally priced ($5?) to cover shipping. (I’m worried that this will make it “commercial” though, which will restrict the content I can include. On the other hand, a free download will likely be large and may limit its usefulness to some teachers. A dilemma. Any thoughts?)
If you are interested in this idea, take a minute to complete a short survey so I can get ideas about what would be most useful to you.
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Licensing
Unless otherwise indicated, this work is licensed under a, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
