I love our writing group!
Posted by karen on October 21, 2011 in Uncategorized
I love the NaNo Prep group on P2PU. (NaNoWriMo is a project undertaken by thousands each year to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.)
As I had a hunch it might be, this group is everything I think P2PU is or should be about. It is not leader/instructor-led. A variety of folks are editing and adding tasks. People are accomplishing authentic, self-driven tasks. It is a well-functioning peer group through which I have learned new things, gotten support, and made new friends.
So there are clearly lessons to be learned from this experience. What makes this different from other peer learning experiences?
I think the most important thing is that this group supports a real task — writing a novel — that we were all planning to do anyway. The smaller tasks that lead up to this larger goal genuinely support the goal, and in this group, can be customized by each person to support their own project.
The group dynamic — we all self-identify as writers — is positive. We all love writing. Peer learning is a lot more fun when you love what you’re doing, individually and as a group.
We are all collaborating in the sense that we are supporting each other to write our novels, but in the end, the central task is individual. (Sometimes, collaborative tasks can be pretty contrived and that detracts from motivation, I think.)
I think some great novels will be written in November!
Part 2-Social learning
Posted by karen on October 20, 2011 in Uncategorized
The strongest participation by far in all of the P2PU School of Ed courses is happening in the discussions. (Fortuitous that we chose this logo graphic, huh? :)
There are lots of posts, comments, questions back and forth, etc. Clearly, this is where engagement is happening in these groups. This is not a surprise if you see learning as a primarily social endeavor.
And so I am reflecting on whether deep learning can occur primarily, or even solely, as a result of short format conversations.
My first gut reaction, I must say, is no. I think you need other resources as well…reading, writing, depth.
But then I think about Twitter. While I initially thought it was a bit of a waste of time, I know count it as my #1 source for professional learning. The conversations I have there are amazing. Granted, it’s not all 140 character bits. It’s also links to readings, videos, and web sites. It’s blog posts. It’s photos. And sometimes, it’s invitations to jump off and have a “real conversation” on Skype or even f2f.
Digital Is has a good collection on this phenomenon here. (Thanks, Kevin.)
So…perhaps this is a new way for me to think about designing a peer learning experience. Perhaps it could be designed as a series of very active, short discussions that then lead to deeper learning experiences. Readings, writing, activities, etc. that grow out of the discussions.
This requires a lot of rethinking, in terms of format, audience, tools, and most probably course (group) topics. I’m going to think about an idea or two in this vein to try out in January. Any ideas or willing collaborators? ;)
Part 1-Participation, course length, and readings (or “Don’t people read anymore?”)
Posted by karen on October 19, 2011 in Uncategorized
We are approaching the mid-point of the first few P2PU School of Ed courses, and I’ve been reflecting a lot on the experience so far, but not writing much so here goes.
A lot of good things are happening. We have a large group of diverse participants involved in peer learning. We’ve assembled a ton of high quality, open-licensed, sharable professional development content and resources. We’re having webinars with guest experts that are fostering discussion and learning. There have been some great moments of sharing and learning with some dedicated teachers.
The nuts and bolts of course participation always fascinate to me. Like every other online course I’ve been involved in, participation appears to be trending downward at about week 3. I hate seeing all the energy and excitement of the first couple weeks wane like this. We had a webinar about online professional development this week, and coordinators of other programs expressed the same results, which doesn’t make it any easier to take.
In the past, this prompted me to think about 2 or 3 week long courses, as well as more of a rolling enrollment approach, but for School of Ed we chose not to do either of these. (We do have one four-week course, but it is just beginning.) It seems very difficult to me to foster deeper learning or community building in 2 or 3 weeks, particularly with folks constantly coming and going. Perhaps this is a lack of creativity on my part. Perhaps the course topics could be rethought in a way that 2-3 week study groups work. (More on this in a future post.)
Another interesting data point is that participation in these courses has been very strong in online discussions, but much less strong around hands on activities, projects, or readings.
A note on readings — we tried to keep readings to a minimum because it isn’t the focus of the School of Ed. (”It’s about connecting, collaborating, and creating, not just reading or studying.”) Still, there is a baseline of reading that seems necessary to learn about something.
And yet, it seems that many folks are not reading the course content. I am concluding this based on a variety of data points, including time-on-page metrics, the fact that folks are asking questions that are covered in the readings, and other anecdotal data showing a lack of having been through the content.
This phenomenon is not unique to P2pU courses — I see it in other online courses I’m involved in and in a variety of other interactions I have. I would venture that the vast majority of emails I send aren’t read in full. I know this because I often get replies with questions that were answered in the original email.
I feel a bit like a stuffy old pundit saying “people don’t read any more these days.” :(
I’ll do a separate post on the discussion frenzy, how it plays into all this, and how it might be leveraged.
Letter to the OER community
Posted by karen on October 17, 2011 in Uncategorized
Dear open educational resources (OER) community and anyone who cares about “open”:
The term “open” is losing all meaning. It is becoming an empty marketing term like “green” or “natural.”
In the last week, I have seen all manner of things claim to be “open” or even OER that are clearly not. Instead, they are proprietary, free sites, tools, and content owned by folks who have seen what an appealing term “open” is.
I know we don’t all agree on what “open” means, in terms of whether ND or even NC is “truly open.” However, if there can be no consensus among those who believe in “open,” how can we regain any meaning of the term? A while ago, Ahrash Bissell (then of ccLearn) proposed a consensus definition: free from copyright restrictions or are publicly licensed for anyone to use, adapt, and redistribute. I don’t know if this was actually published anywhere though or if any other “consensus definition” exists.
Perhaps an easier approach would be at least to agree what open is not. It is not “all rights reserved” copyright.
If we are to remain a movement (even if it is a diverse and somewhat fractured one), it seems important that we speak clearly to call out what open is and what it is not.
I believe that sharing is good, and that open-licensed content is a great benefit to learners around the globe.
It would be sad to see all the work we’ve all done on this aim usurped by corporate interests trying to sell another widget.
Sincerely,
Karen Fasimpaur
P2PU webinars
Posted by karen on October 15, 2011 in Uncategorized
Here are streaming versions of the last two P2PU School of Ed webinars (using BigBlueButton — free, open source webinar software). Great stuff! Stay tuned for more Tuesday webinars on online learning and OER.
Teaching in Blended and Online Classrooms – Oct. 11, 2011
Additional resources:
OER in the K-12 Classroom – Oct. 11, 2011
Additional resources:
Online PD webinar
Posted by karen on October 14, 2011 in Uncategorized
On Tues., Oct. 18 at 5pm EDT (2pm PDT), we’ll be having a webinar to talk about online professional development for teachers – experiments, opportunities, challenges, peer learning and more.
We’ll have guests from several large online PD projects, but mostly this webinar will be a conversation among all of us.
The log-in for Tues. is here. Everyone is welcome. Spread the word!
Credit: theunquietlibrarian
Webinars on OER
Posted by karen on October 7, 2011 in Uncategorized
We are hosting two one-hour webinars to highlight some great OER sites. Anyone is welcome to attend. (Here is the sign-in link.)
Webinar – Where OERs Hang Out – Part 1
Tues., Oct. 11, 5:00pm Pacific (8:00pm Eastern)
This webinar will feature quick tours of two great sources for open educational resources. Participants will also have time to ask questions about these sites and how they’re being used.
This webinar will feature:
- Lisa McLaughlin with OER Commons, a network for teaching and learning materials with over 32,000 resources for K-12 through college
- Neeru Khosla with CK-12, which uses an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook” to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content
Webinar – Where OERs Hang Out – Part 2
Tues., Oct. 18, 5:00pm Pacific (8:00pm Eastern)
Following a similar format, we’ll see two more sites and tour their content, followed by questions and answers.
- Ahrash Bissell from MITE, home of NROC and Hippocampus, a project providing high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge
- Kathleen Duhl from Curriki, an online community with over 40,000 K-12 learning resources
Your Path to Math
Posted by karen on October 6, 2011 in Uncategorized
So I’ve got the Moodle 2 site set up for the math textbook remix project I’m doing as a part of two P2PU courses.
I took a look at the Common Core standards for math as they related to fractions. (I decided to focus for now on one module: fractions, rather than the whole year’s curriculum in the textbook.) A lot of this content is more 5th grade than 6th, but I’m not really labeling it by grade anyway. I think that doing so limits a resource’s ability to be best used for differentiation.
Working title:
This course is open for guest access. If anyone wants to play along with discussing or building this, drop me a note and I’ll add you as a user.
One thing I’m struggling with is the desire to focus this as a remix project (using mostly already-available open resources) vs. a more optimal design process (starting with learning objectives, looking at what would be acceptable evidence for mastery, and only then looking at what activities might be appropriate).
Webinar with online learning experts
Posted by karen on October 4, 2011 in Uncategorized
On Tues., Oct. 11, 5pm EDT (2pm PDT), we’ll be hosting a one-hour webinar to talk about online and blended learning. Anyone is welcome to attend. (Here is the sign-in link.)
Credit: Giulia Forsythe
Webinar – Online Learning: What works and what doesn’t?
This webinar will include several online course facilitator experts and will give participants a chance to ask questions about what works best in online and blended learning.
This webinar will feature:
- Matt Renfroe works as an Instructional Design Manager for Florida Virtual School, the nation’s largest public virtual school. In existence for 15 years, FLVS served over 200,000 half-credit enrollments last year.
- DeLaina Tonks is the Director of the award-winning Open High School of Utah. Open High School gathers existing Open Educational Resources, then augments with teacher-created materials aligned to state standards for their entire curriculum, then publicly releases it under a Creative Commons license.
- Jason Neiffer is the Curriculum Director of Montana Digital Academy, where he has led 75 teachers in developing, adapting and delivering over 50 courses to nearly 5500 enrollments from over 175 schools across Big Sky Country.
The intricacies of designing a platform for many
Posted by karen on October 1, 2011 in Uncategorized
I love P2PU.
But I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to understand why it didn’t start with one of the great open source LMSs, like Moodle, instead of trying to build from scratch.
I’ve come to understand (sort of) that it has to do with a preference for simplicity and ideas about what might scale massively.
An interesting breakthrough for me was the realization that different people react differently to the design of P2PU as a platform. In particular, those who have little online course experience generally really like the platform and jump into it quickly. Those who have a lot of online course experience (especially building) seem to have a less favorable reaction. This seems to apply to participants and organizers alike. Like me, many say “Why not Moodle?” As participants, they often have a hard time figuring out what to do in a P2PU course. (I’ve gotten some funny messages that have left me unsure of whether to laugh or cry.)
I’ve been thinking about the many design and development challenges, and it is clear to me that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What might work for one school or even for one course won’t work for another.
An elegant solution to this might be a solid API and a series of plug-ins that can be incorporated into various courses as appropriate.
Need a better discussion board platform, a portfolio module, a social network tool, or an RSS reader? Add the plug-ins. Like the simplified design as it currently exists? Just leave it as is.
Granted, designing an API is not an easy project, but it’s how most social tools are developed and we’ve done it before. And it’s a lot easier to design an API and good plug-ins than to try to patch together a design that tries to be everything to everyone.
Thoughts?
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