Tom's Two Cents

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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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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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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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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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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