Tom's Two Cents

Eight weeks after enrolling in a course at Peer2Peer University, I turned in my final assignment today and paused to reflect. For a first pass, I felt the organization of the Copyright for Educators course was very good. The content was interesting and to the point. Participants were organized into groups based on their location, something that makes sense when dealing with regional differences in copyright. And although I was placed in a group with North American colleagues, I was still exposed to enough international copyright concepts.

The structure of the CE course was fairly straightforward. Activities were spread out over six weeks, with readings and a case study for each week. Groups were responsible for self-organizing and responding to the case study each week, as well as grading and commenting on the work of the other groups. The final week consisted of creating a case study of our own, along with an answer to that case study. I subsequently found out that these will be adapted and used in future sections of the CE course. A very clever, sustainable course design, I must say!

Work was meant to be done in groups, and each group was given a wiki page to work out the case study and a blog to post their final answers. A course chat was also provided, but organizing a weekly chat didn’t work well for my group so we abandoned it after the first week. Instead we used long email threads to push ideas back and forth. (I think the course administrators expected to harvest some ideas and feedback from the chat logs, so I got permission from my group and sent them our email threads.) The number of emails seemed to annoy one of our group members, who quickly dropped out. Perhaps an asynchronous discussion board would be more useful in future courses, given the busy schedules most people keep and some people’s apparent aversion to receiving lots of email. (I get about a hundred a day… I helps me feel loved

While there wasn’t much interaction with the admins, I don’t really think that was the point. After all, I assume it was called Peer2Peer for a reason. The admins did a nice job of setting things in motion, clarifying topics, adjusting groups and deadlines, etc. Their response times varied, but generally I think they were on top of things. I assume they have just as many outside activities going on as the course participants — if not more.

One thing that took everyone by surprise was the attrition within groups. By the third week our 6-person group was down to three, and soon that became two. But two is enough to provide for interaction, and I worked with an excellent partner. I suppose 50% or higher attrition shouldn’t come as a surprise when you are dealing with busy professionals who are learning for the sake of learning. Reality tends to interfere with such pure motives. Well, almost pure. I was able to arrange independent study credit as part of my PhD program of study, so I had some additional motivation to keep going. Had I ended up alone in my group the experience would have been totally different, but with at least one person to consult the experience was quite satisfying.

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Openness, Reviews, eLearning

Carla Federman, US History Teacher at Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School, is teaching her Cold War class with a new twist this year. She will be reenacting the Cuban Missile Crisis using 15 different Twitter accounts. You can follow the tweets at http://thea.micds.org/twitster/index.php, or if you use Twitter you can follow the individual characters here. TwHistory was the brainchild of Marion Jensen, and started with a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg earlier this summer (press release here). My colleagues at the Open University of Catalonia have been doing interesting work on microlearning with Twitter, including interesting work on using Twitter in language learning by Graham Stanley. They were even able to interview Jack Dorsey, CEO and founder of Twitter, about using Twitter in education (here and here). So what are your thoughts on microlearning using Twitter?

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Instructional_Technology, Mobile Learning, PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning, twitter

I recently signed up for an online course called “Copyright for Educators.” What is truly unique about this course is that there is no official teacher. The course is being offered by P2PU (Peer-To-Peer University). The About page states that, “P2PU blurs the boundaries between students and teachers.” I’d like to think that my PhD has been a transition from student to teacher, researcher, professional, or all of the above. But why should this be limited to a PhD program? Why not allow others to join in?

Why am I taking this course?
I have worked for the OpenCourseWare Consortium for the past two years, and the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning for two years before that. I have been involved in many aspects of the OCW movement, from managing the development, testing, and localization of eduCommons (a popular OCW software platform) to creating the actual OCW courses with professors at Utah State University. As part of the process of creating OCW courses, content must be licensed in such a way that allows it to be freely available via the World Wide Web. This requires the best possible understanding of global copyright as if applies to education. I am not new to the issues of copyright in education (and have taught units on copyright in my own high school and university courses), but I feel there is still much for me to learn in this area.

While I am still working out the details of getting credit for this course in my Instructional Technology PhD program at Utah State University, I don’t think that will be a problem. I see names like Jane Park and Ahrash Bissell from ccLearn among those listed on the team and advisory group. If the folks at Creative Commons can’t facilitate an excellent course on copyright, who can? The course outline appears well-structured. I think I’m in for a treat. If any faculty from my department read this and think it sounds interesting, I would love to hear from you. BTW, I need 1 credit of independent study

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Creative Commons, Instructional_Technology, eLearning

I will be conducting a panel session on OER access and accessibility in about an hour. It will run from 11:15am to 12:45pm CDT (UTC/GMT -5 hours). If you are not present at the OCWC Conference in Monterrey, you can connect via Elluminate web conference here: https://globalcampus.uiowa.edu/. To join the room, click on the “WiderNet eGranary Partnerships” (first link) and enter your name (no password required). This will start a java download that may take a few minutes, so please allow some time before the session.

You can also join in via twitter: #OCWC09wsaccess and #OCWCglobal2009

Here is the page that is pulling feeds together for the session: http://conferences.ocwconsortium.org/index.php/ocwcglobal/monterrey2009/paper/view/49

Panel members joining via Elluminate web conference are encouraged to sign on 15 minutes early (at 11:00am CDT). Others attending the webcast of the session are welcome to participate or listen in, but please save questions for the end. Comments may be submitted via chat during the session, but please be respectful of the speakers. In case you miss the session we are also recording it, and I will send out the link when it is available. Here are the details:

Session Focus: In this exploratory session we will discuss assistive technology efforts as well as projects to improve access to OER in developing countries. What projects are under way to improve accessibility and access to OER? How are accessibility and access challenges similar and what strategies might offer solutions to both problems?

Format: 90 minute session
Brief welcome and introduction by Tom Caswell

Panel Speakers, in speaking order (8-10 minutes each)
1. Tom Abelas (Sagacity) :: What is the future of OER within the context of the future of education?
2. Tom Caswell (OCWC/eduCommons) :: Overview of accessibility efforts within eduCommons project
3. Cliff Missen (WiderNet.org/eGranery) :: Overview of eGranery, with a focus on providing access to OER
4. Ahrash Bissell (ccLearn) :: Thoughts on content licensing considerations and their impact on global access goals
5. Jonathan Whiting (WebAIM.org) :: Introduce WebAIM efforts for web accessibility. What resources exit for those new to accessibility?
6. Dean Jansen (Participatory Culture Foundation/Miro video project) :: How does access and accessibility impact the future of  video? What is being done in these areas? Future directions for Miro
7. Bjoern Hassler (Cambridge University) :: Additional comments on video and access. Introduce Access2OER group (email list) to OCWC members. Where do we go from here?

Questions for panel members (using chat and audio)
Wrap up

Panel Member Biographies:

Tom Abelas has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, former tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in the area of renewable energy, environmental science and liberal studies. Using distance education delivery systems for over 40 years and international consultant on dist-education and e-learning. Edit the international academic journal, On the Horizon, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/oth.htm which is a foresight journal focusing on education preK->gray with an emphasis on post secondary education. On the editorial boards of other academic journals from sustainable agriculture to world peace. President/Chairman of Sagacity, Inc an international consulting firm in renewable energy and the environment.

Tom Caswell is eduCommons Project Manager for the OpenCourseWare Consortium. eduCommons is an open source content management system designed specificaly for OpenCourseWare. Tom has also worked on the eduCommons project at the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University. He is a fourth year doctoral student studying open content and instructional games at the secondary level.

Cliff Missen is the director of the WiderNet Project and an instructor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa.  The WiderNet Project works to improve digital communication in developing countries through the development of human capacity and program planning.  With over 24 years professional experience in computers, networking, multimedia design, teaching, and applications development, Missen oversees the development of the eGranary Digital Library, an innovative way to deliver the world’s knowledge to people and institutions with inadequate Internet access.

Ahrash Bissell is the Executive Director of ccLearn, the education division of Creative Commons, which focuses on removing the legal, technical, and cultural barriers to open education, digital scholarship, and the growth of the global commons. Prior to his current position, Ahrash was at Duke University, where he was Assistant Director of the Academic Resource Center and a Research Associate in Biology. He has a Ph.D. in Biology (Evolutionary Genetics) from the University of Oregon and a BS in Biology from the University of California, San Diego.

Jonathan Whiting, M.S., is the director of training and evaluation at WebAIM. WebAIM is a non-profit organization based at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University. It is one of the most influential Web accessibility groups in the nation. As an instructional designer, Jonathan has published dozens of articles, tutorials, and other instructional resources. He has also traveled extensively to train hundreds of higher education Web developers, content creators, and other professionals who develop or maintain Web content. In addition to training, Jonathan has also provided Web accessibility evaluations and reports for several higher education institutions.

Dean Jansen is Outreach Director for the Participatory Culture Foundation. Dean is currently focused on co-organizing the Open Video Conference, which is slated to take place in New York on June 19-20. The conference will be asking big questions about the future of video; for instance, how do we effectively preserve our right to free expression in a world of consolidated commercial video gateways? Additionally, Dean helped draft the Open U proposal, which would be part of a fully open, end-to-end distribution system for educational resources. The Participatory Culture Foundation is a non-profit organization with a media reform mission. They foster bottom up economies and promote openness and decentralization in the online media ecosystem. Miro, the free and open source HD video player and distribution system, is their flagship project—you can check it out at: www.GetMiro.com

Dr Björn Haßler (University of Cambridge) has been working on educational issues for the last 8 years, including research on diagnostic testing for undergraduate mathematics education, widening participation and access through ICT, as well as volunteer engagement in media production. Since 2006 Björn holds a senior research associate position at CARET, working on educational aspects of new media. He has extensive experience in teaching multimedia, both within Cambridge and internationally, and has contributed to a number of best practice guidelines, including UNESCO National Commission reports. Further information at http://www.sciencemedianetwork.org

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OER, OpenCourseWare, eLearning accessibility, OCWC09wsaccess

Do you know what I do with openly licensed YouTube videos when I think they are worthwhile? I copy the YouTube link and paste it over on dotSub.com. (DotSub can import directly from YouTube.) Why do I do this? Because YouTube isn’t very useful if you are deaf or don’t speak English.  DotSub.com allows anyone to come along and add a transcription or a translation in another language. I don’t know why YouTube doesn’t support this. It’s so easy to do. C’mon Google, what’s the harm in allowing translations like dotSub? If you don’t have time to develop it, just get out your checkbook and buy dotSub. It’s the least you can do as a huge-but-not-evil tech company.

Here’s the The Networked Student on dotSub: http://dotsub.com/view/41f08de7-68dc-4365-af4c-5733f565b9e1 Subtitles are offered in English, Czech, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler’s high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros’ Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

Edit: Rob points out in his comment that YouTube does support subtitles, but I see no attempt to allow others to contribute translations. I understand that this adds complexity and the possibility of malicious translations, but dotSub.com provides an easy translation interface and allows the owner of the video to control which users can translate.

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Instructional_Technology, PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning dotsub, PLE

A note to those who cares about Instructional Technology and improving real, live classrooms: I would love your feedback.

In their article Creating a Framework for Research On Systemic Technology Innovations, Fishman et al. describe a “usability cube” and state that its purpose is to “predict the difficulty any particular innovation faces in the adoption process (p. 52). ” This is an ambitious claim that caught my attention.

The three axes represented by the cube are capability, culture, and policy and management. Fishman et al. state, “The distance between the innovation and the origin represents the gap that exists between the capacity required to successfully use the innovation and the current capacity of the district (p. 51).” The authors claim that improving usability is a case of closing the gap. Kudos to Fishman et al. for stating the obvious — and for doing it in 3D! This may be a nice visual for some, but I question its usefulness. What have the authors told me with a cube graphic that they couldn’t have told me with three bullet points? Of course technology innovations need to address capability, culture, and policy of the target school and school district. That is basic market research. Who would design and implement a product without carefully considering the target user and the systems that affect that user’s environment? The real question we should be asking is how do we do this?

I can only conclude that this article is aimed at academic researchers who are so caught up in their own grant-funded worlds that they have lost sight of the needs that they set out to address. And yet the challenges of obtaining buy-in from faculty, administrators, and even students are not always obvious. It might be valuable to invite a marketing specialist to write about successful strategies that have been used to introduce an innovation into a school district. It would be equally useful to hear from administrators and teachers who have worked with researchers, and who could point out best practices and identify potential pitfalls. The more I think of Fishman’s usability cube, the more I can visualize the cylinders that represent institutional and departmental silos that prevent real usability and actual transfer from academic research to classroom implementation.

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Instructional_Technology, PhD, eLearning "usability cube" Fishman

I’m reblogging and expanding on a comment I left on Jon Mott’s blog post about the demise of Lively, Google’s Second Life clone. He and I and lots of others are interested in the idea of using collections of social web apps to form Personal Learning Environments in “the cloud.” Institutions are showing interest, but with obvious concerns about lack of control. While Jon’s post focused on the need for caution with cloud apps that can be temporary in nature, I think his words of caution can be applied more generally to any app that doesn’t come with clearly marked exits. Usually, these exits come in the form of standards-based content export capabilities. Look for them. Like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, robust import/export is the sign of a good app.

Now let’s look at this from a marketing perspective. If you are Blackboard, why would you ever allow anyone to export anything useful? If a customers are packing up their content that means they might be leaving. That’s like a crab trap with a big hole at the other end. That is unacceptable.

If you are Blackboard, you talk about IMS Common Cartridge compliance. But don’t do anything to make it actually happen. Take your time talking about it. Heck, you can even join the IMS Global Learning Consortium. That looks good. But don’t write any code until you absolutely have to. And when you are finally forced to implement CC, don’t give users an exit that works too well. They might use it.

Anyway, here is my comment from Jon’s blog:

Seriously, people have been painting themselves into corners ever since the invention of… um… paint. Whether you are talking about cloud-based apps or a Blackboard server nestled safely in your institution’s server farm, you can still wind up stuck… either locked out or locked in. While parts of the cloud will likely blow away, new ones will likely take their place.

The real question is “Can you get in or out of where you currently are, and can you take your data with you?” Frankly, I would rather take my chances on being locked out of a few cloud apps than locked into a single, proprietary LMS. Interestingly, I’m working with a group on an IMS CC-Blackboard converter that should get around the import/export problem despite Bb’s foot-dragging. Guess where it will live? In the cloud… with all those risky, new-fangled apps.

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PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning Blackboard, LMS, PLE

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?”

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Conferences, Travel, eLearning #OpenEdTech2008, Barcelona, conference, UOC

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

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Conferences, Instructional_Technology, OpenCourseWare, Tech Tools, Travel, Web 2.0, eLearning AECT2008, Conferences

Yesterday I spoke to Jayson and Rich from ClassTop about CourseFeed, their Facebook app that connects users to other course members and course content. This includes a shared “course wall” and “course notes,” which can be posted to and tracked via Facebook. And for students enrolled at institutions with a supported Blackboard content management system, CourseFeed provides additional course notifications from within Facebook. It got me thinking about how something like CourseFeed could be a bridge from traditional OpenCourseWare sites to something even better. I’m imagining a Facebook app that could serve as the hub of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE), the part of your social network where you can track discussions and fresh content on subjects that interest you. CourseFeed is not there yet, but I think they are moving in the right direction.

For now CourseFeed seems to be mostly about delivering course notifications for Blackboard users directly into Facebook, and the course community seems limited to students enrolled in the Blackboard course. (I tried the CourseFeed demo, but I couldn’t test it further because my own institution’s Blackboard does not yet support it.) Since CourseFeed is currently designed with an emphasis on Blackboard, the course content is not shareable for many of the reasons Jon Mott pointed out in his OpenEd 2008 presentation: Blackboard is closed, impenetrable, rigid, and ephemeral. Currently CourseFeed invitations are limited to students who are enrolled in the same course at the same institution. Others cannot join the course. And if the Blackboard course is removed at the end of the semester, it gets removed on CourseFeed as well. The students no longer have access to that course.  ClassTop has also had to move to an opt-in agreement with Blackboard institutions — meaning they have to seek institutional approval, school-by-school, before CourseFeed can be enabled on that school’s Blackboard server. I understand why they had to do it this way, but it kind of kills the potential for CourseFeed to go viral. With these kinds of restrictions, it is notable that CourseFeed has nearly 21,000 active monthly users.

Now think about what something like CourseFeed could be if it were designed without all the Blackboard roadblocks. What if ClassTop designed CourseFeed or another app specifically for course content that was already vetted for copyright issues and openly licensed? These courses exist by the thousands on OpenCourseWare (OCW) sites created by prominent institutions all over the world. If CourseFeed were designed as a way to personalize OCW courses, every course could be linked to its own permanent Facebook group. Anyone interested in the course, including students and professors from other institutions, could join and participate in these groups at any time and for as long as they wish. These connections and discussions might ultimately become more valuable to participants than the original course, perhaps even leading to the creation of additional course content or the formation of new OpenCourseWare sites at other institutions. Additional tools and apps could be developed to promote the kind of learning system that Jon Mott described as open, permeable, flexible, permanent, and free.

I believe more and more students will want to track their favorite subjects and study groups, the same way they keep track of other groups and friends on Facebook. Blackboard will never fill this need because their learning experience is both temporary and unshareable by design. (Yes, I understand why… fair use… blah, blah, blah.) But if CourseFeed directed those same Blackboard students to some recommended, related OpenCourseWare courses, they could form learning goups that would still be there after the course was over — even after graduation, when they are (hopefully) trying to apply some of what they learned. The beauty of it is that the content is already there. Thousands of courses. Any takers?

Please Note: When I refer to Facebook, I realize that other, similar sites exist internationally, including many successful clones. PLE applications could be build for any number of social networking sites that support community driven application development. Personally, I think Facebook will continue to lead in this space, both in the US and internationally. They have undertaken an excellent community-driven translation effort, which is another area of interest to me.

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OpenCourseWare, PLEs, Random Thoughts, Web 2.0, eLearning ClassTop, CourseFeed, PLE, PLEs