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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Dictionary goes live — come play!
Posted by karen on June 23, 2008 in Uncategorized
The Kids Open Dictionary builder is now live!
Please try it out and enter a word or two. Whatever you do doesn’t have to be perfect; others will jump in and refine as we go.
In case you missed it, this is the first completely open, public domain-licensed dictionary designed with kids in mind. We intend for the final product to be used by a variety of OER producers, web sites, book publishers, hardware manufacturers, teachers, students, and others.
In a lot of ways, this is one of the most needed components for many OER projects and is a great mass collaboration project. Please join us!
Tags: dictionary | oer
License info for images - metadata
Posted by karen on June 20, 2008 in Uncategorized
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to record information about an image’s license, attribution, etc. In the past, I have used not-very-efficient techniques such as recording this info separately in a text file and sometimes trying to include it in the file name.
A friend recently recommended storing this in the Properties Summary. (Right-click an image; choose properties; click Summary tab and Simple.) What a simple and useful idea. I am going to start recording the following (slightly modified from CC suggestions; see below):
- License: [include license and license URL]
- Attribution URL:
- Attribution name:
Here’s an example. (You can download it to view the properties.)
That reminded me that I’d heard that Creative Commons suggests a standard for metadata. They suggest something called XMP — Extensible Metadata Platform. In reading more about this, it appears that you need special tools, both to create and to read this. (I’m not entirely clear on this though; I spent almost an hour looking for an example image and couldn’t find one. If anyone knows of one, please post a link.) Possibly not very feasible for the “mass” audience. The good news is that doing this makes content machine-searchable as open content.
For now, I think I’m going to stick with using properties for this.
What other ideas do you have?
Tags: oer | metadata | licensing | images | photos | clip art
What is most important about OER?
Posted by karen on June 12, 2008 in Uncategorized
I am facilitating a series of hands-on workshops to help educators to learn about the value of OER. What topics do you think are most important to spread this movement? Licensing issues? Available resources? Wiki editing skills? Open source tools?
Tags: oer | licensing | wikis
Kids dictionary goes beta!
Posted by karen on June 8, 2008 in Uncategorized
We’ve released the beta of the kids dictionary builder. Yay! The tool is a sort of combined database and wiki, with functionality to “freeze” final definitions at some point and output the actual dictionary in a variety of formats (ebook, web, PDF, etc.). It was written in a combination of mySQL, PHP, and Python.
If you would like to help beta test this or participate in the building (even writing one definition will be a helpful contribution), you can sign up here or send us an email.
There have been a few days this month when I’ve wondered if creating a free, open kids dictionary was an overly ambitious project, but mostly it’s been very rewarding, and I have high hopes that lots of people will participate, and we’ll produce a great tool for anyone who wants to use it.
The dictionary builder will launch more publicly in late June. So stay tuned for another update then.
Tags: dictionary | kids dictionary | oer | open
When share alike doesn’t work
Posted by karen on April 29, 2008 in Uncategorized
In discussing licensing options for open education items, I suggest that the CC BY license is in many ways the most open license. While share alike sounds like a great option, because it prompts sharing down the road, it is sometimes overly restrictive. It’s not always easy to envision how this might the case, so here is an example.
I am working with a school district to create a series of movies that highlight vocabulary and essential questions in their social studies curriculum. The essential questions come from their textbook, and the publisher has given permission to include these in the movies. Because this material is copyrighted, however, we cannot “share” the movies we are creating beyond this district (or others to whom the publisher has extended permission). As such, we can’t include any share alike images. This eliminates a lot of great material.
Tags: oer | licensing | creative commons | semantic web | share alike
Sight word videos
Posted by karen on April 18, 2008 in Uncategorized
I am working on creating some sight word videos from the word lists at FreeReading. (If you haven’t seen this site, it is a phenomenal resources for early literacy.)Before I crank out more of these, I’m looking for input from early literacy teachers.
- How is the music? Too distracting or ok?
- How is the timing?
- Does the “pointing finger” idea work?
Any input anyone has is appreciated. I’m hoping to produce a whole library of these to match the FreeReading lists over the next few months.
Tags: reading | literacy | freereading | free | oer
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