I thought that we'd start with an inspirational, opening 'comment' from Angela, (a teacher who took a version of this class last summer ) :
You can read the rest of the class's comments from last year, here and from the Spring '12 semester here.
Angela Tarr said...
Somehow I managed to survive. I was not a very good teacher those first few years; I struggled. After ten years of teaching, I asked to switch to another grade level when a teacher in my department quit. (Not retired, quit.) The other teacher who taught this grade level in my department shared everything. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. She said she had already done the work, why should I start from scratch? She and I had very different styles, so I wasn’t totally comfortable using her exact plans and assignments. (Since I was working on a master’s and had two young children at the time, she suggested that.) I adapted most of her materials to suit my teaching (and learning) style. Her gift of a place to start other than ground zero was huge for me. I could go to her and ask questions, observe her in the classroom, get help.
When I moved into the library five years ago, I handed fifteen years of materials over to my 22 year old replacement. I volunteered to do anything she needed me to do to get her off on the right foot. I answered questions, came to her classroom a couple of times to present introductions to units, anything she needed. In her first year she was better than I was at five or six years of experience in the classroom. I’m not taking the credit for her success; she works hard. I will pat myself on the back for giving her some tools to work with to get rolling. She’s the classroom teacher I wish I could have been.
Isn’t this what OER is all about? Sharing? Learning from the experience of others? Why should we start from scratch? (Unless we want to, or the learning situation is better served by doing so.) Granted, I didn’t have the internet when I started teaching. I could only share locally. Now we can share globally. We have amazing tools to work with. We need to use them. Our districts need to let us.
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This week we'll be covering how to create an OER from scratch. Once again we'll be accessing Curriki's "Open Educational Resources Integration" project. For this session we'll be accessing the module created by Dr. Michael Searson, the Executive Director for the School for Global Education and Innovation.
Mike created a CC licensed module aimed at both pre-service and in-service teachers. His module will be particularly useful to you b/c you may very easily use it to guide yourself when you are training, or educating, others on OER's. I've just gone through his module again and updated any dead links that I could find, but please let me know if you can't access something. You may find all of the links in our syllabus under the Session 7's details.
Good luck and have fun!
DF
PS--Please also place your brief description of your midterm assignment under this entry's comments section with a link to the site where you have the presentation, so that the rest of us may view it.
Details and requirements are in the syllabus. (If you have a suggestion for modifying this to better suit your setting, then please pass your idea by me first.) Please complete it before Session 8 which starts on 7/10.
36 comments:
I did a Prezi, a new presentation style for me, so please be forgiving. I decided to try and convince my administration on the benefits of OER, with a focus on CK-12. The link is here: http://prezi.com/ifuzp7sdmw11/advantages-of-oer/
I can't edit my comment, but let's see if I can at least make my link active for you. You can find my Prezi here.
Hopefully, that HTML will work. since I can't delete or edit the comment, I don't want to leave people with gibberish. *g*
Here is the link to my midterm assignment. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BtJjs_tvMUKevUiA2CBS6sr4GYl7KxTBUYRH56ekT2E/edit
Here is a link to my midterm project. It's my first Prezi, too, so it might be a little rough around the edges.
http://prezi.com/7a8ghltbqr_p/oer-proposal-2/
Susan, I love how you're involving the students in preparing to present to administration and staff. Your outline sounds like a wonderful idea, and very doable. You're school is so lucky to be able to be one-to-one with laptops in 5th grade - that will be a definite advantage with the OER.
I also like the idea of making the students more responsible for their own learning. My husband's high school had gone one-to-one with iPads, and he started doing that this year. It was something his students really responded to. I think it really is the wave of the future. Teachers becoming the guides and mentors, rather than the font of all knowledge.
Josh, very nice presentation. You included quite a bit of great information about the OERs, but my favorite was the chart on copyright. That was a wonderful addition to the presentation - a gentle reminder that you can't just snatch and grab arbitrarily, even with OERs.
Hi everyone. I have my Prezi done. I share it with you with the caveat that I do not yet feel like an expert on any of this, far from it. I am still learning the ropes as we all are. My presentation outlines what we have learned as I understand it thus far. Josh, I apologize for using a youtube that you also used. To me, it was the best, short example of wiki use in education. I think Professor Fontaine will be seeing a lot of repeated information in our presentations, as we are all pretty much on the same page. Please enjoy. :-)
Kathleen
Test:
http://prezi.com/puj6etflshlx/the-benefits-of-oer-and-digital-content/
I hope I did that right. I guess you all will have to copy and paste the address into the browser. Kaline, I would love to know how you made the neat blue link "here" on your post. :-)
Hi, Kathleen. I'd be glad to show you how to do a link. It's just a little HTML code. I'll use your Prezi URL as an example:
[a href="http://prezi.com/puj6etflshlx/the-benefits-of-oer-and-digital-content/"]whatever words you want to use as a link go here[/a href]
If you replace the brackets with <>, you'll get this: Kathleen's Prezi
For the mid-term my wife and I collaborated, she designed a PowerPoint presentation to inform our staff about OER’s and I followed up with a brief set of instructions. These instructions introduced OER’s, summarized the pro’s and cons of OER’s and finally had imbedded links to get directly to 4 different OER sites. Each link had a very short personal summary of the usefulness to the average elementary teacher of the site. At the beginning of the year teachers do not have time to do a lot of research so any new thing that is sent to them must be user friendly and have an immediate use in the classroom. The PowerPoint has embedded links to Curriki and OER Commons to demonstrate the power of the resources. Marilu chose not to narrate the PowerPoint as she wanted real time interaction with the admin during the presentation – you can look at the notes section to see what she will be talking about in general terms.
Links for sharing (we are new to this so bear with us if they aren’t quite right yet)
OER Instructions https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OOVSE2oxLGxSTwLOdhjYxvPsbs8zAS0piHFNh5YDyvM/edit
PowerPoint
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GLi-UyKpzRfBjQGbUrSIM5To7D7orXBO95ESsUJCaiE/edit
Thank you so much, Kaline! :-)
Very nice job on your prezi Kaline. I am still learning that and get frustrated sometimes with it having a mind of its own! I like your graphics and pictures.
Could you explain that linking thing one more time? Do you type in a href and then the link? What about the <> brackets. Sorry to be so dense.
Reading the syllabus notes for session 7 it asks we have 3 reasons why we think it is important to integrate new media into the classroom, so here goes.
Students maybe more interested if we use social media. For example students who are shy to raise a hand in class maybe more comfortable using Facebook, You-Tube or Twitter to express their feelings.
New media can lead to better communication between students and teachers. We can answer student questions, post homework, send messages and updates, share web sites and other multi-media content. Using a blog site is a good way to give participation points and have the children comment in their own words on the content.
Using new media in the classroom helps prepare those students for their future in the workforce. It is a disservice to the kids if we do not introduce and teach them to use new media in a responsible way. Many of the new media social sites are already being used successfully in the workforce we need to keep our students up to date as much as we can. Many teachers do not use new media because they don’t know how and are intimidated by it. Schools need to use their PD times to teach the teachers so they can help the students.
Kaline, if you read this is there any chance you can rewrite how to make a link directly from the comment to the presentation. Being technologically challenged I didn’t understand all the steps involved when you helped Kathleen. Loved your prezi by the way, well done.
Simon & Marilu,
I enjoyed your OER instructions and powerpoint. I think it sometimes harder in the elementary setting to convince teachers to try new technology tools.
I also really liked the prezis that several people have posted! I must admit, I attempted to use prezi, but ended up giving up and sticking to my boring google doc! I will have to try again because it certainly makes the presentations more visually appealing, and since I will be presenting first to students, the more engaging, the better!
It is really helpful to be able to view everyone's midterms, as I, like Kathleen, still feel far from an expert on any of this! Having all of these resources from so many different perspectives really help!
Some very nice presentations. One of my stats students used a Prezi for their midterm project. I like the flow better than a PowerPoint presentation. Some great ideas!
Why should new media be integrated into classroom curriculum?
1. We live in a digital world. The students in my class are already "wired" for the experience. The video links were actually a little disturbing. Kind of makes me rethink what we are doing in the classroom and how on Earth will 90% of school districts be able to afford a move toward new media.
2. Students already have access to a lot of the information we teach in the classroom. If it was properly organized for them, they could read the material in advance. I would use class time to facilitate discussions of their thoughts and guide practice (what used to be homework) in class. Flipping the classroom.
3. Take advantage of social media. The students are on Facebook while trying to do our homework. They are already collaborating with friends to do the work we assign. They work more collaboratively than I ever did. I used to grab the rotary phone and call someone if I was confused. Now they can message a friend or perhaps blog some concerns. At present they email me and I respond as fast as possible through my phone. My school does not have a policy about social media like other districts. I would love to use it but there is no way I want to be "friends" with my students. I do not want to have to report things I read or see on a student Facebook.
All these reasons are just a few of the reasons I was so interested in this course.
Sorry for not being clear enough before. I'll try to break it down a little more.
[a href="URL HERE"]TEXT YOU WANT HIGHLIGHTED HERE[/a href]
So, if I wanted to create an active link to, say, Amazon, I'd copy and paste Amazon's URL between the quotation marks, and type something like Amazon into the highlighted text part. So, it would look like this:
[a href="http://www.amazon.com/"]Amazon[/a href]
It's important to remember, with HTML language you have to be very precise, so every bit of punctuation and every space is vital. I've done it exactly as it should look above, except I used [ ] instead of < >.
If you want a real, active link, just substitute each [ or ] with < or >. If you do, then the above code will look like this once you post:
Amazon
I hope this has helped, and been a bit clearer than the first time. If anyone has anymore difficulties, feel free to ask here, or you can email me at kaline369@yahoo.com.
I agree with other comments about integrating new media. I'll throw out one that is big for our district right now, cost of text books vs going to a digital option and finding content through sites like CK12 or Curriki. Our district has announced that they are not planning on purchasing any new textbooks at all, they believe that we will be able to realize substantial savings by moving to iPads and digital content. I can see issues with teachers being totally overwhelmed by the amount of content that is available. I can also see issues with start of the year and trying to get resources downloaded to student devices. If most of the school is trying to do major downloads all in the first couple of days of school, is this going to be a huge bandwidth issue?
It has been mentioned many times along the way, but one of the big reasons for moving to new media vs traditional textbooks is staying current. Right now physics teachers could be integrating content about the Higgs Bosun and social studies teachers could be adding content regarding several of the recent Supreme Court decisions or the current state of the presidential contest for this fall. However, many of our teachers feel that they are losing time to plan and collaborate. I would see a need to find a way for teachers teaching the same time to get together to plan out new content. There is no reason for each teacher to be doing the work on the same issue, when working together they could share the workload across the department.
I do think that the new media does open up the door to greatly increase student engagement. Robert mentioned that students are already wired, they are used to using digital devices. We may have all seen students who would look at two copies of the same book, one older and one updated with a cool looking cover. I have had students who will wait for the copy with the new cover be returned rather than check out the older copy, even though I point out the fact that the content is exactly the same in both editions. I have had a similar experience with students who want to wait to download a book, even though I have a physical copy available. The challenge here is going to be one that teachers have dealt with for a long time, how to you keep students on task and working on the classwork rather than playing Angry Birds? I know how quickly students can minimize tabs when I walk around to check on progress in the computer lab. If students are using their own devices, it will be more difficult to monitor what they are doing!
I decided to create something we could use for the 1-1 computational model committee to address the concern over copyright laws. At the last meeting we had, there was much concern about creating our own resources and textbooks. After participating in this course, this is much more feasible than any of us had imagined. What I wanted to do was convey the ease of material and even if the school committee does not adopt the 1-1 model, I plan on sharing my information with all staff when school starts again. This would be the initial discussion presentation. You will notice video and lots of pictures so the audience can see the implications of the new media options. Hope you enjoy!
http://prezi.com/q8ohp0pqbw3g/whats-the-bright-idea-about-oer/
Amy brings up some interesting topics.
1. "Cost savings." Your school board will really have to look at the potential cost savings. I doubt there will be any at first. each student will need a device. Is the district going to lease those devices for students? Teachers will still need to be paid for the time devoted to creating and validating these new texts. I think in the long run savings may be attained but not immediately.
2. "Buying each student an iPad." I know we are going to venture into this area in the future with the class but the state of Rhode Island has actually started a process/contract (not sure the proper name) that will allow districts to buy Lenovo laptops. They did not go with the iPads. Personally, I find the iPads to be rather restrictive.
3. "Teachers losing time to plan and collaborate." If districts move this way, there will need to be an increase in the amount of time teaching professionals are able to work together...that does not mean working every weekend with colleagues either. I would hope districts would have these conversations through the collective bargaining process and make time in the day to create a lot of this content.
Just my two cents. :)
Here is the link to my Prezi presentation for my midterm assignment. I too am a novice at Prezi, but I have to admit, it was fun!
http://prezi.com/xaxjdsxgshpa/textbooks-and-open-educational-resources-at-fryeburg-academy-2012/
First, nice job everyone on your proposals! Good luck presenting them to your administrations, if/when the time comes.
Here are three reasons for constructing curricula within the OER environment, with a noted challenge. First, students think you as a teacher are doing a better job by using material that is on the Internet. (As they think everything is better if it is presented on a screen). However, do parents, other teachers, admin, school board members, or trustees (at private schools) see it that way? Some adults may think the more authoritative, accurate, appropriate material should only come from books. But really, if the teacher is evaluating the information, updating and adapting it to the classroom, and distributing it, they are doing a better job, for they are engaged with the material too.
Second, a big plus for using OER’s for content is the Creative Commons license that the original content creator puts on their work, enabling it to be adapted and used any way one would like to. Not only are the resources free, but they are not weighed down by copyright law. In a regular classroom this might not be a problem as use of material can fall under fair use, but many teachers have blogs and wikis, or Facebook pages. Putting content protected by copyright, on the Web, could cause a legal problem. The real challenge is finding material that is appropriate to use for the class. And if you can’t find it, you may have to create it, which does take time.
Third, OER’s are quite social in nature, offering opportunities to collaborate with people in your school, state, or another country. A teacher who is collaborating, creating, using, and sharing is a valuable resource and community member. This is a personally enriching and satisfying experience. The challenge is to get teachers out of their comfort zone, and enable them with time and pay to participate.
Now for the 3 reasons why new media should be integrated into classroom curriculum. First, I have to say, even though I have seen it numerous times through the years, I still get goosebumps when I watch the “Vision of K-12 students today” video. First, the fact that kids will indeed have jobs we haven’t even thought of yet should be enough of a motivator to get them using new media, and teaching them good digital citizenship to go along with it.
Second, everyone needs to learn how to be a good consumer of information. Back when there were no computers and most information came to us through subject specialists, editors, reviewers and publishers, people did not need to worry quite so much about evaluating a resource. The information also came at us at a manageable pace. And there was not quite so much of an angle or bias. Doing a Web search these days, it can be hard to tell what is fact and what is a sales pitch, especially for students. Instead of not using new media, we should embrace it and teach our students to habitually evaluate and analyze everything they come across.
Third, I don’t know about you all, but I learn when I have to teach something. We should all be using new media in order to learn about it.
Hi Everyone, I have enjoyed your presentations (mine to follow). I wanted to finish the session 7 questions first.
3 reasons to integrate new media in our curriculum: (1) our students are digital learners. I remember a professor I had that would say, pardon the vernacular, “We need to teach them where they at”. Today’s students learn in sound bites, clips, videos, snippets of writing. This is just information to them and they can often access, accumulate and assimilate it without our help or direction. What they need to know is what to do with it. Problem solving and reasoning skills are becoming the basis of our new curriculum. (2) It lets us stay connected. Students blog about how to approach a problem. Students use a wiki to create study guides. Students form a facebook group to manage the workload in an AP class. These are things that – give us insight into what the students are thinking about our work. (3) The potential for collaboration is tremendous. I teach in a school where students come from 43 different surrounding cities and towns. Speaking from experience – when your kids can’t drive group projects are overwhelming; parents have to facilitate driving to meetings, students have to remember to make arrangements to meet, teachers have to determine what to do when a student was logistically challenged and, so, did not participate. It’s a headache for everyone involvle. Doing group projects on-line using collaborative sites like dropbox makes it easier for everyone involved and I get a better product from the students ( because they can focus on the work).
Hi Again, Here is the link for my prezi. It is a little long, sorry!
http://prezi.com/u-cpayrxkz9r/copy-of-etexts-an-oer-solution/
I'll load the link for my presentation at the end, but give you all some background and respond to Robert's comments. My district has tendency to start initiatives without a large amount of planning. They decided last spring that we transitioning to a one to one model with iPads over the next three years. The district created two new classes at the high school level, those classes will pilot the iPads. However, the district will not be purchasing textbooks or any digital content. So we are scrambling to come up with content, which is a large part of the reason that I signed up for this class! We also had half of our science department resign late this spring. The new hires will all be teaching the new classes, but they are not all hired yet and I have yet to meet any of them. The good news is that our math department has the other new class and they will happily charge forward with any new technologies, explore them, and share them with the rest of the building. (Go math department!)
As far as savings go, the district is only considering the cost of textbooks for 6 or 7 classes for each pupil vs the cost of the iPad. The district will only allow the same amount of time for curriculum development over the summer that they have in the past, any additional time is considered to be part of a teacher's professional responsibilities! This is why I believe CK12 will be a huge success in our district as a starting point, the teachers will have something to work with right away and can locate, develop, and share additional content as the year progresses.
I agree with Robert, I would much rather have seen a laptop initiative rather than the iPads, I also believe that the iPads are restrictive. Part of finding the money for the iPads was not upgrading the computers in our labs, they will be seven years old this school year and they run like seven year old computers that have had heavy use from teenagers for the last seven years. Alas.
And going on to the teacher collaboration time, unfortunately here in Wisconsin, we no longer have any collective bargaining rights. Many of the school boards are dictating what teachers will be doing as their professional duties, and that is the final word.
The upside though is I am already in contact with science teachers from the other high school in our district and the math department and we are going forward with some of the content. I set up a tentative flextext for science already and we are meeting next week to work on content, where I plan to share my presentation. I don't have plans yet to meet with our administration, our principal was in training for two weeks and now is on vacation and we lost both of our assistant principals this spring also!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-1DpKLAAb-bO5VbjGB5mvlOIxF1RyZr3mpbEtIgOTEU/edit
Leslie, I totally agree with you, "As they think everything is better if it is presented on a screen." Then when you add in interactives and links, you can really hook in students!
I am interested in comments regarding common planning time - or any planning time to accomodate the changes to OER. Has anyone had any experience in "problem posing"? A very broad question is asked - and students are asked to solve a problem. That's it - no instruction just jump in. It is suggested that it is more successful when the teacher does not know about the topic either. The learning is collaborative - students and teacher. It's seems a little bit of a free fall but it intrigues me. It also correlates to some of the suggestions when using blogs and wikis. Just give it to the kids and let them run with it.
I made the following PowerPoint for mid-term presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SJOLoI5CDTff1LAO0Ruc-mpEiAj6_RH7wiG4MdRVHGs/edit
I really like other people's Prezis, but I thought I'd start by making sure I have all the information in order and use a tool I already am familiar with for my presentation. I didn't want to put too much information on the slides, so much of the detail is found in the speaker notes, which can be accessed through the options icon.
I found this assignment to be a great way to pull what I have been learning together to share with my colleagues when school starts in the fall. I think that the tools we've been learning about will be helpful for some of our current initiatives.
Three Reasons for Constructing Curriculum within an OER environment:
1.Kids seem to enjoy learning much more and think he’s doing a better job as a teacher.
2.Multimedia resources are available for free on the internet.
3.Ensures that curriculum is still available for teachers to use when a teacher leaves the system.
Three Reasons Why New Media Should Be Integrated into Classroom Curriculum:
1.New media enable teachers to better tailor instruction to a variety of learning styles.
2.Our students are digital natives and an antiquated educational system is no longer sufficient.
3.Students need experience and education in using new media in order to be work and school ready in our current world.
Simon,
I agree that many students already know how to use new media and our job is to teach them how to use it appropriately. I also think that by the time they are in the workforce, there will be totally new tools and media available. One of our most important jobs is to teach them how to think. So much of our previous education has been focused more on regurgitating and performing for teachers. Collaborating via the use of OER is a great way to move forward to prepare our students for the future.
Mary Ellen, our PYP model at the elementary school incorporates/mandates common planning time. However, the reality is not as good as the theory. There are still issues with how to get release time for teachers and the fact that during common prep times other commitments can get in the way (parent meetings, student discipline issues, admin work etc.). I do know of schools that do a late start one day a week and that is "sacred" time for PD and planning.
I don't see my 3 reasons so guess I am having some posting problems (gmail says someone from Hungary has been trying to access my account... so here goes again:
1. Students need to be ahead of the curve for media and technology - as mentioned by several people, we have no idea what jobs/careers our students will be doing and they need to be prepared.
2. It is motivating - old time text books are staid and dated even the new ones. Interaction and multimedia are the way our current students are used to gaining most information.
3. We do need to teach our students how to be consumers of information. I am often surprised at how naive our international students are when it comes to information from online sources. They believe it is true because it is on the screen in front of them. We also need to teach students (especially at the elementary level) how to find appropriate resources. Students cutting and pasting from sites is the same as back in the day just quoting the encyclopedia but not understanding what was read/said. There are good leveled resources out there but in this age of SO MUCH information we need to help our students pick and choose solid, appropriate materials.
For me, integrating new media into the classroom is essential. As teachers, we must keep up with the changes and advances in technology to keep up with our students. They are extremely tech savvy, and highly interested in the latest developments in technology. I's a motivating factor.
Using OER has a huge benefit in that time-strapped teachers do not need to completely reinvent the wheel, but may tweak it to more accurately fit their lesson/population/geographical location.
Finally, OER is free and generally current!
Beautiful presentations, everyone!
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