Tom’s Two Cents

The OpenEd Tech Summit meetings held in Barcelona yesterday and today are over. As I head back to my frozen home in Logan, Utah, I will think more about what made this gathering so memorable. Perhaps it was the small meeting size, or the excellent choice in participants. There were many opportunities to network and “feed my Facebook.” Eva did a fantastic job coordinating every detail. I especially loved the walking tours of the older parts of Barcelona.

The collaborative work on the future of eLearning was enjoyable and engaging. Our group took a bold step in collaborative, community driven accreditation by giving Debby Knotts a certificate in Multidisciplinary Transnational PowerPoint Management Within Collaborative Working and Learning Teams (Typist). Paul Kirshner and my other colleagues in Group D made a point of asking for another OpenEd Tech Summit in 2009. All I can add is an impatient, “Are we almost there?”

Thanks to all who participate in this seminar! I hope it was helpful.

Some great ideas and links were shared today as we discussed the components that make up Web2.0. Here are the presentation slides. Also, here is a link to my class website (wiki) for preservice elementary school teachers: http://lab-inst.usu.edu/groups/inst4010/. Another great place to learn more about Web2.0 in learning is David Wiley’s Blogs, Wikis, and New Media for Learning OpenCourseWare course.

And here are links to some of the most interesting sites that were shared:

http://chinswing.com/ (A versatile audio sharing site — love it!)

http://livemocha.com (A social language learning site — where was this when I was a French teacher?!)

http://zamzar.com/ (Online file conversion tool — very cool)

http://www.edu20.org/ (An interesting Learning Management System, or LMS)

http://www.toondoo.com/ (Reminds me of ComicLife on the mac)

http://edublogs.org (A blogging platform just for educators. Sue Watter’s blog is particularly good)

http://teachertube.com (Similar to YouTube, but focused on education)

http://merlot.org (A peer reviewed learning content repository)

An example of embedding/reusing content:

We also talked a bit about OpenCourseWare. Here are a few examples, and links to learn more:

http://ocw.mit.edu (MIT’s OCW)

http://ocw.nd.edu (Notre Dame’s OCW)

http://ocw.usu.edu (Utah State’s OCW)

Start an OCW Interested in starting an OpenCourseWare at your institution? Start Here!

eduCommons A Free OpenCourseWare Management System

I got back from an Open Education conference in Dalian, China a couple days ago. Dalian is the most popular tourist city for the Chinese, but you’ve probably never heard of it. Funny how little we know about other countries. Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures of both Beijing and Dalian. Here are some links to some Flickr albums I made from my China photos:

Dalian, China - 2008 Open Education..

Beijing, China - Forbidden City and Houtongs

Great Wall of China

“Temple of Heaven” Beijing, China