June 10th, 2010
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I’ve been doing this ed tech thang long enough to remember the beginning of the “Learning Object Repository” thing, and watch it evolve into the Open Educational Resources movement. It’s a good thing.
At the recent etug conference, I attended a session where the idea about the difference between GIVING and SHARING was raised. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
Giving, I think, is lobbing a bunch of stuff over the fence. Reams of content: there you go, there’s all our stuff - have at ‘er. This approach is what got this party started, and so this isn’t meant to be a disparaging comment. But I think we need to evolve the practice.
Sharing, I think, is making useful stuff available in a thoughtful, easy-to-access way. Thinking about what might be of USE to the broader community (what do we have in common?). Keeping it up to date. Including help/suggestions/ideas for implementation, pedagogy. There are certainly people moving in this direction, and people like BC Campus who are supporting people to move in this direction in real ways. It makes so much sense.
Sharing is harder, of course. My hope for the future of OERs is we all share fewer, higher quality things well. Such loaded terms (fewer than what? what’s quality? what’s “sharing well”? ) I know, I know. But it’s my hope, dammit. And I have faith that we can work it out. We Education people are used to dealing in things that are not an exact science.
June 10th, 2010
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Colleague and chum gotcurls wrote today about feeling the love for her professional community – ME TOO! How lucky, lucky, lucky we are to work with people and in a field so diverse, creative, interesting, supportive, fun….well, you get the idea. I don’t want to get all misty on ya.
The etug conference was just GREAT. The theme was “3 Cups of T: Teaching, Technology & Transformation”. But I’ve been calling it “3 Cups of Awesome” because it just WAS.
And because I got distracted by a shiny thing or a comment from the audience while I was saying thanks and goodbye at the end, I want to give a special blog-o-riffic shout out to LEVA LEE, who is just the most talented, smart, knowledgeable, gracious, thoughtful and tireless wonder woman behind the scenes – Thanks Leva!
Not sure if it’s because I’m a gardener or not, but gardening metaphors always seem so apt. I’m thinking about metaphors for community right now because of an activity we’re doing in ISWO where we all gather images and words to represent community. I pushed myself past the first (garden-related) metaphor that came to mind, and came up with popcorn.
Now, first I have to tell you, I’m a traditionalist in the popcorn realm. No microwave bags in my house – it’s all about the pot, the oil, the cold naked kernels under a clear glass lid, and watching for the first brave ones to explode. And then the satisfying cacophony as the rest of the kernels erupt into their potential.
That’s kind of what it’s like at this point in the course: we’ve laid the groundwork, provided support for people to get a strong jump on the course…and we wait perched over the glass lid.
And the first brave kernels are exploding already! The course hasn’t officially begun and I’ve already been inspired this community in its very early days. There are new technology things I want to try, and new people I’m looking forward to getting to know better.
It’s going to be a great 4 weeks. Even if this metaphor takes corny to a new level. badum bum.
April 28th, 2010
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Two things are happening which should get me blogging more regularly again: 
- I am co-facilitating the ISWO (Instructional Skills Workshop Online) – it’s an intense, 4-week online course about online facilitation. And this time, we’ve added a blogging component.
- My copy of Digital Habitats has arrived!! Awesome! (See previous post – this could be on my list of Things Awesome: “when amazon.com order arrives!”). Anyway, this book will give me lots to think about, I can tell already.
So, about the course blogging. As an instructional designer who works for a university that has a LMS (Moodle) which has a lot of great tools to support a variety of learning activities (except the blog, unfortunately, is meh) – why add an external blogging component?
There is lots written about this; I don’t need to be convinced of the educational potential of blogging. It’s more the logistics. There is an instructional design pro/con thing to weigh here – on one hand, blogs are a great tool for reflection, they have a life outside the course (i.e., the blog belongs to the blogger, they can take it with them and continue engaging in reflective practice, it evolves as they do, etc), and hopefully, people will hook into and experience the benefits of the network as they connect with other bloggers.
On the other hand, they are outside the course. This means we all need to go find the blogs, and all the discussion/sharing no longer takes place in the course/forums. Part of me says, “so what?” This happens in f2f classes – people talk and think outside of class hours (we hope). Still, the “one stop shop” argument is a strong one for busy people who want all the course stuff in one place.
However, I am confident for a few reasons:
- we have plans for making the blogs easy to find (Moodle rss block and a list)
- the blogging activity is framed as a tool for personal reflection and learning. We ask for one reflective post about their learning per week, but aside from that, they are invited to do (or not) whatever they want. And there are forums, wikis, polls, surveys, quizzes, etc, in the course for topic discussions/activities and practice facilitation by participants (the heart of the course) – so lots of reasons to be in the course.
- my experience with “required” blogging in a course (cck09) was really positive. I liked that I “had” to do it, and got a lot OUT of doing it. There is something powerful about publication of your ideas; you try a bit harder
- but MOST importantly, we have a dedicated blog steward. A live person, who is a passionate, dedicated educator who is excited and knowledgeable about blogging and PLNs, who will support the blogging activity running parallel to the course.
Can’t wait to see how it all turns out!
April 28th, 2010
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CBC interviewed Neil Pasricha today – the man behind the Book of Awesome 
and the http://1000awesomethings.com/ website.
The “awesome” things are simple, free quirky little joys we can encounter every day (e.g., bakery air, putting on warm undies right from the dryer, picking up a Q and U at the same time in Scrabble). Sure, it might seem corny. But whatever, we need stuff like this to balance out the endless barrage of bad news in the world.
But more to the point, it encourages us to be (optimistic) observers. And grateful.
So, how can you lose? Awesome.
