Tom Caswell

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  • Effect International: Building Schools, Reshaping Luck

    I usually blog about open education and instructional technology, but I want to share a great campaign to help build schools and create sustainable educational programs in developing nations. The organization is called Effect International.
    Effect International has built a school in Bihar, India and is looking to build additional schools plus expand to Nepal.
    The Goal: To empower the community to maintain their own education systems.
    Effect International uses 100% of public donations directly on projects. They support their operational costs through private donors and board members.
    We can build a school for 25K for 250 children.
    We can put one child through school for a year for $25.
    The Reshaper Campaign. 
    We’ve keyed the motto, “Reshape Luck” therefore we felt it was appropriate to call our annual donors “Reshapers” A reshaper is a person that donates $7 a month. In one year this person will put three children through school. More information is available on their website: http://www.effectinternational.org/

  • How To Protect Your IP Through Open Licensing (Thoughts on Pearson’s OpenClass LMS)

    Pearson’s new OpenClass LMS hit the Google Apps Marketplace today. While this has already been covered in several places, I’ve had many discussions about the wide array of learning management systems out there, and the one question that comes up repeatedly is “how do we know they won’t just get bought by someone else?” It’s a trust issue.

    Pearson’s sustainability model for OpenClass it isn’t clear at this point, and that makes building a relationship of trust difficult. In contrast, the for-profit company Instructure is gobbling up market share with their LMS, Canvas. Instructure has made two smart moves Pearson could learn from: (1) Their code is open source — not so much to invite outside development, but more as a defense against the LMS IP being sold to the highest bidder. (2) Instructure has made their sustainability model clear. They provide enterprise-level services for Canvas, which allows them to continue to invest the Canvas platform.

    It’s ironic that openness has emerged as a way to protect IP from corporate takeover, but in a very real way this is what Instructure has done with Canvas. And institutions who have had their LMS bought out from under them will think twice before exposing themselves to that risk again.

  • Going Open: Lessons Learned from the Open Course Library

    Scott Dennis and I presented at NorthWest eLearn in Vancouver, WA last Thursday and Friday. As usual, I threw my slides on SlideShare before the presentation. On Sunday I got an email telling me my prezi was “hot” on SlideShare. 5300 views later I am wishing I spent a little more time on those slides, but glad so many people have been exposed to the great work being done by the faculty of the Washington State colleges. The first 42 shareable courses of Open Course Library will be available on October 31, 2011. These course materials have already saved WA students hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we’re just getting started. Can’t wait to share it at the 2011 Open Education conference next week.

    View more presentations from Tom Caswell

  • WA Representative Chris Reykdal at the Textbook Rebellion

    WA Representative Chris Reykdal supporting textbook affordability at the Textbook Rebellion #txtbktour11 chrisreykdal

  • Digital Badges For Lifelong Learning Competition Announced

    From the Digital Media & Learning competition website:

    This Competition focuses on building digital badges for lifelong learning. The Competition is designed to encourage individuals and organizations to create digital tools that support, identify, recognize, measure, and account for new skills, competencies, knowledge, and achievements for 21st century learners wherever and whenever learning takes place.

    Some notes from Jackie Hood:

    Mozilla and MacArthur emphasized that this is an international competition.
    Stages of the badges competitions $10,000 to $200,000

    • Call for content
    • Call for badge design (sets or systems)
    • Matchmaking between content and design winners – one month of collaboration off-line and then a 2-day f2f including a pitch

    All must be part of the Mozilla badge infrastructure or interoperable with it: See http://www.dmlcompetition.net

    Research competition $5000 to $80,000: Interest-driven learning.
    Not everyone loves the idea of badges: the panel moderator summarized these objections that showed up in tweets as “trivializing education” and “a badge for everything including showing up”. See #dmlbadges [for discussion via Twitter].

    I’m not surprised to hear about objections to badges. Established models of education and credentialing are being challenged. To anyone satisfied with the existing paradigm this is not a happy thing. Meanwhile my 10-year-old nephew is watching lots of Khan Academy videos on his own time, trying hard to earn the Moon Badge. Bring it on!