July 2008
Ed Week article about Open Ed
Posted by karen on July 28, 2008 in Uncategorized
Ed Week recently published an article about Open Ed.
I thought it was a pretty good article (aside from misquoting me twice* and misspelling my name :). This article definitely shows the growing attention to Open Ed in K-12.
Here are some things in the article I thought were interesting:
- It’s interesting how other tangential issues and technologies get associated with Open Ed — in this article, it’s wikis. True that some OERs are created or housed in wikis but that’s almost coincidental. OERs don’t even have to be produced through mass collaboration (which is where the wiki connection comes from). Many OERs are produced by subject matter experts and cannot be “edited by anyone.”
While I love wikis and mass collaboration, I think that confusing them with OERs leads to some unfortunate misconceptions, such as the idea that OERs can’t be scholarly, accurate, or high quality. The comments after the article bring those misconceptions to light. As I point out in my own comment, there are many OERs, including FreeReading, that are research-based, quality-screened, and then “frozen” to maintain that quality. - I like the way from AAP discounts OERs. (Yes, these are the same people who, when asked about the problem of textbooks being too heavy for kids, suggested the solution of buying two copies for each kid so they never had to carry them.) Their rep then goes on to say “If digital formats are what teachers want…, textbook publishers have, over the past six or seven years, added digital materials to supplement print textbooks.” First, if he really thinks that those materials reflect the best of application of technology in instruction, I’d love to spend a couple hours with him showing him what is possible. More importantly, though, what we really want isn’t “digital formats”; it’s instructional materials that are accessible and relevant to students and that lend themselves to differentiation. We’re just so tired of trying to get publishers to address these real needs that we can’t wait any more (and our kids can’t wait) so we’re doing it through other channels. (This message is also a relevant one for Microsoft. I hear that they are not being so flip about denying the trend toward open source though.)
- I thought that some of the comments made online by readers were quite interesting. I hope that the readers of the print version of Ed Week get to see them. (This really points out how web-based journalism changes the dynamic of information delivery.) Here are a few:”Free Open Content materials help students around the world rich and poor to get access to great educational content. Our own Schools have been so economically strapped that about the only media materials that are available to teachers are Text Books and that is only because the Text book companies over the years have arranged for special funding for text books that is separate from the funding the schools get otherwise. Free and Open educational resources may one day break this expensive and inefficient monopoly.” - Herb Schuchard”The fact that textbooks are still a piece of school’s budget is a travesty. I can’t think of a more outdated educational learning tool.[and in addressing the concern about “scholarship” and accuracy]
…Open source materials are valuable not b/c they’re ‘always right’, but because accessing the information is an educational experience in and of itself. Students are no longer looking up the ‘right answers’ in a textbook; they’re doing real research, weeding through the admittedly massive amounts of data out there to find the answers to their specific questions. It’s a matter of student-centric learning, as opposed to students learning what textbook publishers deem ‘valuable.’”
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* One of this misquotes was “teacher-based” instead of “research-based” in regards to FreeReading. Here’s the other:
After talking about the kids open dictionary and the decision to put it in the public domain (something we are very proud of) …
Interviewer: Aren’t you afraid people will just rip it off?
Me: No! We hope they do. We want people to use this in as many ways as possible. That’s the whole point.
This got translated into:
“‘We’re hoping lots of people will rip it off and do what they want with it—it’s one of the most basic needed resources,” Ms. Fasimpauer [sic] said. ”
[sigh]
Tags: oer | education week | aap | wikis | textbooks
CC awareness
Posted by karen on July 21, 2008 in Uncategorized
Here is an interesting poll of K-12 educators about their awareness of open licenses and CC.
(Note that at the time I’m posting this, the sample size is pretty small.)
My own experience in surveying hundreds of people at ed tech conferences (a group that should have somewhat higher awareness than the education community at large) is similar to this; the majority (perhaps 60-70%) have no familiarity with open licenses or CC.
I’m doing my part to spread the word. I hope you are too.
Wikipedia - LongNow interview with Jimmy Wales
Posted by karen on July 15, 2008 in Uncategorized
Jimmy Wales was recently a guest at the Long Now forum with Stewart Brand. The podcast was very thought-provoking. (Summary here; MP3 here.) Here are some random notes and reflections.
Asked to speak about “vision,” Wales began by saying he is “more of a carpenter than an architect.”
The vision of Wikipedia is to “imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”
[Even though I’ve heard/read this hundreds of times, I still paused and reflected on what a wondrous statement that is.]
Wikipedia is empowering everyone on the planet to get involved.
[Wikipedia has some interesting methods to involve the non-connected world…capturing local knowledge through non-digital means, distributing database dumps, etc. “Wikipedia is the killer app for the OLPC.”]
The free license of Wikipedia is key. Four dimensions of free license:
1. Copy
2. Modify
3. Redistribute
4. Redistribute modified copies (commercial or not)
[He neglected to discuss the issue of share alike or the IMHO onerous GFDL license; to me, these are both restrictions on freedom.]
Wikipedia is a top 20 web site and has a broader reach than the NYT, WSJ, MSNBC, and others combined.
Two views of how Wikipedia works: emergent phenomenon/evolution - “wisdom of crowds” vs. community of thoughtful users. Wales espouses the second view. He claims that most of the active Wikipedians really know each other and that trust and communication are foundational values.
Here’s a great story from Wales: Imagine you’re designing a restaurant. You’re going to serve steak. You’ll have steak knives. Steak knives are potentially dangerous. So obviously you build cages around all the tables, right?
This story was told to make the point that “When you prevent people from doing bad things,… you often prevent them from doing good things.”
In addition, a philosophy of trying to eliminate all potential of bad often eliminates opportunities for trust.
This is a good point for schools to consider.
I’ve been searching for an argument to rampant school blocking and filtering that will resonate with conservative school board members and the like. This is a good one, as is Kevin Honeycutt’s point made at Edubloggercon:
“If you ask kids to do the right thing, 99 times out of 100, they will….Why are we zero tolerant with digital, when analog isn’t that way?”
Wales talks about the value of dialog over voting.
[Maybe Wikia should take on reforming the democratic process in the U.S.? Larry Lessig could head it up. He didn’t really belong in Congress anyway.]
Empowering students to drive their own learning
Posted by karen on July 10, 2008 in Uncategorized
I recently read the Reading Next report about adolescent literacy by the Alliance for Excellence in Education to the Carnegie Foundation. I think the lack of student engagement that is leading to unbelievable drop-out rates is a national calamity. I am astonished that there hasn’t been more of a national outcry. How can we spend so much on education and get such abysmal results? How is it that neither of the major presidential candidates have a substantive educational platform? How will our nation thrive (survive?) if the majority of our students are not literate, let alone versed in 21st century skills? (OK, I’ll stop now.)
In this report, the authors outline 15 major elements that are viewed as being critical for a program seeking to build adolescent literacy skills. These 15 elements are broken into instructional issues and infrastructural ones. The instructional components are things like direct, explicit comprehension instruction; content-embedded reading and writing; strategic tutoring; and differentiation. These are all research-based and also intuitively obvious.
The infrastructure issues outlined in the report include:
· Extended time for literacy (2-4 hours per day)
· Meaningful professional development
· Cross-curricular team teaching
· Strong instructional leadership
· A comprehensive coordinated literacy program
· Summative assessment
OK, these are all optimal, but with the exception of the last item, these conditions do not exist (or could not easily be made to exist) in most middle or high schools. The culture of secondary education in our country today is just not geared this way.
I think these issues – most importantly, the lack of strong instructional leadership at the building or district level – are at the crux of a lot of problems in secondary education.
Having said that though, I do not believe that we can tie our children’s education (or our nation’s future) on the infrastructure failings of the educational establishment.
What is the solution? Perhaps, it is empowering students to drive their own learning through open resources and web-enabled tools. With the right tools and strong motivation, adolescents may be able to do a better job at this than we as “educators” can.
What are your thoughts on this?
Tags: oer | literacy | Reading Next | Carnegie
Wikitravel rocks
Posted by karen on July 7, 2008 in Uncategorized
Wikitravel was recognized by TIME as one of the 50 best websites this year. Everyone who has been a part of building this site should be proud. I know I am.
COSN report on Creative Commons and Open Content for K-12
Posted by karen on July 3, 2008 in Uncategorized
COSN has published a new report that includes a chapter called “Creative Commons and Open Content: What K-12 Schools Need to Know.” It’ s a good concise discussion of the relevant issues.
It is an awesome world… or How Web 2.0 Came Through for Me
Posted by karen on July 2, 2008 in Uncategorized
I had a weird experience today. I was at NECC, sitting at the back of a big room waiting for a session to start. It was on open content, something I am very passionate about and am always looking for new information and perspectives on.
The time of the presentation came and went, and there were no presenters. I could see concern mounting, and people starting to shift around, getting ready to leave. I approached the person coordinating things and asked if they needed a “stand in.” They said sure. (There were over 100 people in the room, and I hated to see that many people interested in the topic leave empty-handed. I think OER is such an important topic that everyone needs to know about… and I’m mostly not very shy. :)
Lately, I’ve been putting up all my presentations and workshops on the web with a variety of tools such as wikis, Slideshare, etc. Because of this, it was super easy to stand up and use any Internet-connected computer to present. (Bizarrely, it was probably the first time during the conference that I didn’t have my own laptop with me.) Considering what a weird situation it was, I think the presentation went really well. This is something I wouldn’t even have dared attempting without technology. It is an awesome world we live in.
And best of all, some great new people know about the kids open dictionary and are helping up build this important tool.
Thanks to everyone who attended the session (even though it may not have been exactly what you expected :). Special thanks to Randy Orwin and Brad for helping with the tech setup to make this happen.
…and yes, for those of you wondering, I did verify that the small intestine is approximately 7 meters long!
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