Well, it has been a pleasure working and collaborating with all of you this past semester. You've made considerable progress with your digital textbooks and I'm sure with some more time they will grow into more than just classroom supplements.
For those of you that are visiting for the first time, I've put together a short video to summarize what this semester was all about.
You'll find links to all of the teachers' screencasts and eTextbooks along the left-hand margin.
This has been a unique pilot project, so thank you for your willingness to experiment in this 21st century endeavor.
On the 15th expect to present your completed work (aka 'Final Project') to me, your course peers, Mr. Ruscito, the Superintendent, and any other interested parties. I have made lots of personalized changes this semester to suit the needs of this cohort, so don't focus upon the Final Project requirements on the syllabus. Instead use the information below for this semester. Your Final Projects will be due by Midnight on Friday, May 10th. You will create a new screencast and place its link (please triple-check to make sure it works) under the Final Projects posting on this blog. Additionally, you will prepare a 6-8 minute presentation that will be given live on 5/15/13 in the WHS Library from 4-6. The live presentation will be very similar to the Final Project screencast, but will provide more opportunity for discussion, demonstration, and Q & A from the audience (Principal, Superintendent, URI representatives...). Both the screencast and the live presentation should include the following:
A demonstration of your finished project (at least finished for the time-being b/c most of these projects will continue to develop over the next year)
The practical uses you foresee for your students and yourself.
How you envision this project will evolve over the next school year and over the next 5 years.
The potential benefit to teaching and learning, as well as the financial benefit to the district or state, as a whole.
Include directions for anyone watching about how to find your project on their own. (what is the url, site it was uploaded to, saved location...), so that the world can benefit from your work.
Lastly, please add any other important details that you feel should be mentioned or shared.
Additionally, for anyone that may be interested, there may be several opportunities to continue to share your experiences, after the semester closes.
Holly Walsh, the Instructional Technology and eLearning staff member at RIDE, has expressed some interest in seeing your finished projects and possibly having some of you present them with me at the next "Innovations through Technology" conference that RIDE sponsors on October 5th, 2013. Also, Senator O'Neill, the Chairman of the Joint Legislative Commission to Study the Use of eTextbooks in RI, has expressed interest in hearing about the Final Projects that you have developed. I would like to thank all who participated for allowing me to lead you through this process and I look forward to continuing our collaboration in the future. Once again, I our last face-to-face class is scheduled at WHS, in the Library, on May 15th from 4-6pm.
Please double check all links to ensure that they are working. Once I review your Final Projects, I will send you a confirmation and grade.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. I've been fielding questions as they come in.
Welcome to the 'beginning' of the 'end', but not the 'end' of what has 'begun'! This semester I've tried to guide you through what some people consider very complicated topics:
Navigating through Open Source content,
Digital books,
Mobile devices...
Through my "Internet travels and wanderings" while researching content for this course, I've come across countless resources that I knew were useful and valuable, but as the semester progressed, I was never quite sure where some of these items would best connect under a certain week's themes. Therefore, throughout the semester, I collected many of these resources (from webinars, to videos, to readings) that I thought would be interesting to most of you with the hope of getting the chance to show you before the semester was over. Well, this is our last session, so it's now or never. (After all, your Final Projects are due by midnight EST Friday, 5/10 which gives you two weeks to pull everything together.) Let's tentatively plan on meeting for our last f2f meeting on the following Wednesday, 5/15 (3-6). This has been a unique pilot project, so thank you for your willingness to experiment in this 21st century endeavor. On the 15th expect to present your completed work to me, your course peers, Mr. Ruscito, the Superintendent, and any other interested parties. I have made lots of personalized changes this semester to suit the needs of this cohort, so don't focus upon the Final Project requirements on the syllabus. Instead use the information below for this semester. Your Final Projects will be due by Midnight on Friday, May 10th. You will create an additional screencast and place its link under the Final Project posting on this blog. (available by Wed. 5/8). Additionally, you will prepare a 6-8 minute presentation that will be given live on 5/15. The live presentation will be very similar to the Final Project screencast, but will provide more opportunity for discussion, and Q & A. Both the screencast and the live presentation should include the following:
A demonstration of your finished project (at least finished for the time-being b/c most of these projects will continue to develop over the next year)
The practical uses you foresee for your students and yourself.
How you envision this project will evolve over the next school year and over the next 5 years.
The potential benefit to teaching and learning, as well as the financial benefit to the district or state, as a whole.
Include directions for anyone watching about how to find your project on their own. (what is the url, site it was uploaded to, save location...)
Lastly, please add any other important details that you feel should be mentioned or shared.
Additionally, there may be several opportunities, after the semester closes, for anyone that may be interested.
Holly Walsh,the Instructional Technology and eLearning staff member at RIDE, has expressed some interest in seeing your finished projects and possibly having some of you present them with me at the next "Innovations through Technology" conference that RIDE sponsors. Also, Senator O'Neill, the Chairman of the Joint Legislative Commission to Study the Use of eTextbooks in RI, has expressed interest in hearing about the Final Projects that you have developed. Once again,I would like to have our last face-to-face class at WHS on May 15th from 3-6pm.
==================================== In this, our concluding session, I've included this potpourri of remaining resources that I know to be powerful, useful, and practical. These resources never made it into this semester's weekly sessions either due to the sheer size of the workload per week or b/c I just couldn't find the best fit for them. So, knowing the value of these items I couldn't very well not share them with you. That's why I've added this compilation in Session 11. As I stated above, your Final Projects will be due by midnight of May 10th.
============================================== Let's start this week with a video explaining Project Gutenberg. (If an ad comes up, make sure you skip it.)
by Michael Milone, a research psychologist and educational writer at Renaissance Learning. He asked students in two fourth-grade classes located in the Upper Midwest to read up to six books from a selected list of a dozen popular fiction titles that included Eleanor Estes's Ginger Pye (Harcourt, 1951), Gary Paulsen's Lawn Boy (Random, 2007), Mary Pope Osborne's Sunset of the Sabertooth The 31 students—who read a total of 135 books, 69 on the Kindle and 66 in print—were asked to alternate between reading half of the books on the Kindle and the other half in a bound, printed format.
Kansas State Dept of Ed. This webpage contains open access resources and digital textbooks that are available within the public domain. They are not copyrighted and may be customized, modified, or combined with other materials. Enjoy these resources! It was a pleasure working with you this semester. The enthusiasm in some of your posts was contagious. Through the years I've worked with plenty of districts that didn't encourage their employees to strive and reach for new goals. I hope this course has convinced you that over the next few years we're going to see exponential growth in the use of eBooks for all purposes. Education won't be far behind, and you, the participants of this course, will be the leaders of this movement.
We'll start this week with a brief video on Carnegie Mellon's "Open Learning Initiative", then transition to a Curriki unit on "Creating an OER from Scratch".
I hope that video gave you a brief snapshot of what the future will look like soon. As the ability of technology to aid teachers increases exponentially, very quickly we will all begin to see practical models like this integrated into K-12 schools. The potential is mind-boggling, so I thought that this video would help inspire you and give you a little extra fuel for the next few weeks.
The focus of this session will be on a unit from the OERI project in Curriki. It's called, "Creating an OER from Scratch". Most of the links can be found in the syllabus. This session will include:
Exposure to an array of OER resource environments;
Recognizing the value of creating and publishing curriculum within an OER environment;
Constructing relevant curriculum using a well-defined model;
Appropriately integrating technology into your curriculum;
Studying the techniques of publishing to an OER environment; and
Publishing a curriculum module to Curriki.
I know that many of you may have plans for the April vacation next week, so I'll move our deadline to post your responses to S10 until Wed., April 24th. That should give you some time to enjoy the vacation and still have a few extra days when you get back to create your next screencast. This screencast's link will be posted under S10's entry below and will include an update on what you have done since the last screencast (several weeks ago) and also describe what goals you would like to reach regarding your digital chapter(s) by the end of the semester. (Midnight, Friday, May 10th)
You can't talk about eBooks and Digital Content and not address Apple's dominance in the tablet arena. There's no doubt that their current market share (51% in 2012) is a force to be reckoned with. I've taught this course a few times before, but its content and focus has shifted a tremendous amount. What was important and trendy in the 2010 Spring semester is very different today. The first iPads didn't hit the shelves until April of 2010. No one could have predicted the explosive growth, so given this information I've decided to spend the bulk of this week on Apple's iPad and the new iBooks product. In March of 2012 Apple came out with their newest version of the iPad. Some call it the iPad 3, but that's not official. Learn about it here, but I warn you, you'll probably want to buy one after this:
Then see some of the engineers demo the product:
And lastly, here are some of the additional features:
Now let's transition to their most recent publicity hype for the new iBooks project called the Apple Education Event read about it here. Let's remember though that as interesting as this sounds it's all just a big commercial. Apple's in the business of making money, so you won't find many mentions of Open Content. The first 10 minutes are just talking, but the demonstration starts around minute 10.
Now a few of you may be interested in learning how to create books using Apple's iBooks Author tool. It may be too advanced for most of you, but if you ever want to learn how you can always come back to our class web blog here and refresh your memories. We hear about that here.
Now if you wanted to find textbooks for your iPad then you can see an overview here:
We've now seen the promos, infomercials, and Apple employee demos, so let's balance things out with some outside reviews, analysis, and feedback. First let's start with a webcast recording from Edukwest entitled: "What do iBooks mean for the eBook/eTextbook industry?"
Summary: The eTextbook industry got a big publicity and market education boost with Apple’s announcements in 2012. What it didn’t get was the market revolution it could have.
You can take a break now! Go for a walk and clear your head. I'm sure that's been a lot of video. When you come back I'd like you to read, "The new iPad (2012) review" from iMore. They have a nice breakdown of the pros, cons, and overall assessment.
=============================================================== Next you can use the following three sections as a go-to guide to help you answer most of the faq's.
I hope I didn't drown you too much in everything 'iPad'. And if you didn't finish practicing embedding some Google Forms into your digital textbook (assigned under Session 8), then please try to complete it asap.
We have two more weeks until RI school's April Break, so let's try to add as much material as we can to our eTextbook project before then and maybe we can take a week off from this work for vacation.
This week we are focusing on eReaders. Our session is embedded below and broken up into three parts, but if you'd like to download the entire session to your computer then you can do that from this link.
The syllabus has recently been updated so be sure to view it and check out this week's new required readings. In your comments this week on our blog, please share your thoughts and experiences about your e-book reader preferences, and also do your own research (try to visit a store and test a few out, sometimes you need a push like this to get you some hands-on experience) and include a nugget of info that I didn’t cover this week to share with your peers. Next week we’ll delve into the merits of using these devices for education. There is a lot of info here comparing and contrasting. Don't get too worried if you can't retain it all. Just save these links and use them for future reference and take plenty of notes.
Additionally this week, I'd like you all to practice embedding forms into your digital books/chapters. There are more details below Session 8C below.
Getting digital content for your chapter was only the first step in making an eBook. Its strength is compounded when we add elements to help differentiate instruction. Elements like videos, edugames, hyperlinks, images, and forms. That's right--'Forms.'
It's really one-dimensional unless we add interactivity, so this week I would like you to practice embedding a Google Form into your digital chapter. You've all created an account with Google (either gmail, blogger...).
There are step by step screenshot images walking you through how to create a 'Form' using Google Docs here. Just read pages 52-63.
If you'd also like to see a screencast of how to create, a Google Form and embed one on a wiki page, then you can see that below. This a great video if you put your chapter on a wiki page, but don't stress if you put it somewhere else. The concept is the same for other online platforms. As always, feel free to contact me with any questions along the way.
Lastly, once you've mastered the 'Google Form' embed and placed one or two into your digital chapter, I'd like you to post a link to it, so that the rest of the class can go to it and fill in your 'form' as your 'test students.'
... I feel the need to share. I just had an aha moment. To explain to my staff the basic idea of what OER is all about, I’ll give my own experience as a new teacher for an example. When I started teaching at 22, I had no clue what I was doing. I was assigned a mentor, who said, “I’m down at the end of the hall; holler if you need me.” That was my mentor program. (It’s now much more specific in the requirements of the mentor and mentee.) The only other teacher who taught the same courses I did would not share. A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. He wouldn’t give me anything other than generic advice. (Don’t smile until Christmas. Don’t let them walk all over you.)
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.
You can read other past teachers' comments below:
Summer '12 here
Spring '12 here
Summer '11 here
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--I noticed that some people placed their midterm project screencasts under S6 and some under the "mid-term updates" session. It's obviously best if we put them all in a central location, so if you could all make sure that you place them under this S7 entry in the comments that would be great. Just to reiterate, please include the details below in your mid-term assignment:
Each course participant will create a 5 minute screencast using a recording tool like Screenr.com or Screencast-o-matic.com demonstrating to the class what eBook project you have completed so far. Here is an example.
The demonstration should walk us through how to find your project (url), what content you have included so far up to this date, which specific course or courses it will support, and your plans to expand and improve upon it over the next two months.
I thought that I would take a moment during our Spring Break to clarify some of the updates and changes that we discussed during our last f2f meeting about course requirements and expectations.
Usually the mid-term is to create a informative presentation geared towards your Administration. You can see some examples from past semester participants here.
Given the unusual dynamic of having all of our participants from the same site-based cohort we decided to modify our mid-term requirements. Please find expectations below due before Session 7 (3/18/13):
Each course participant will create a 5 minute screencast using a recording tool like Screenr.com or Screencast-o-matic.com demonstrating to the class what eBook project you have completed so far. Here is an example.
Demonstration should walk us through how to find your project, what you have included so far, which specific course or courses it will support and your plans to expand and improve upon it over the next two months.
Not sure if I missed anything that we discussed, but if so, please feel free to chime in your two cents in the comments below.
Welcome to Session 6!
Before we get into the content of this week's lesson, I thought I would speak a little about the Midterm Project. There are more details in the syllabus, but in general you are to create a presentation (using the tool of your choice-a few are listed on Wikidave here) The over-riding goal of this assignment is to convey the power, influence, and benefits (for your particular setting) to your organization if they begin to embrace OER's and incorporate more Digital Content. More details can be found at the bottom of the syllabus. As I have stated in the past, I want this to be as pragmatic as possible for you, so if you have an idea that is outside of the description, and if you think that this would be more useful for you, then just pass it by me first for pre-approval.. Other than that, there aren't any restrictions on the direction you take this, just make sure that it is practical for your setting. You'll post a brief description of it under Session 7's blog posting as well as a link to where we can view the presentation (if anyone finds this too difficult, then I can walk you through it depending upon which presentation tool you use) and it will be due before Session 7 (3/18/13).
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This week we will be discussing a topic I'm sure you are all interested in. "How do we really customize this content to serve our local educational community?"
Before we address that I thought that I'd take a moment to address some possible gaps. A few of you have asked for some more examples of 'open' content for the humanities or cooking. OpenLearn is a site of free, open courses all CC licensed, so the material can be copied and shared, and you can create derivative works from them as well.
I just did a quick search for Spanish lessons and material and received these results. And these for French, so it may be worth exploring. (I use Chrome, as opposed to Internet Explorer or Safari, so it was nice when I was exploring the lessons in foreign languages b/c there was a button to translate the page. Worked pretty well from my layman's perspective.)
Another great site to access and borrow from is OpenTapestry. Give them a quick skim. One of our topics for this session is the 'personalization' of Digital Content that you cull/borrow. Read about OpenTapestry's personalization on their 'about us' page.
They have lots of CC licensed material to support all disciplines (This link takes you to just the courses available. They also have lots of great 'open content' for ELA. (They even give you directions about how to put it into your wiki or webpage).
They also have plenty of resources for those of you teaching World Languages. Here's a brief video introduction. It's a little dry, but gets good during the demo around the 30 minute mark. And here's just a cursory search for 'cooking'.
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Next we are going to continue with following along with the "Integrating Open Educational Resources in the Classroom" material created by my team of professors for a Curriki Fellowship. This session will walk you through the personalization, customization, and remixing of OER's to suit your specific goal or curricula. Let's start with Dr. Cynthia Gautreau's introduction video here. (I know she says it's the third module, but I thought that it would fit best in our S6.)
When you've finished with that I'd like you to then go through her module here. You don't have to complete every assignment here, but I would like you to reflect on questions 4a, b, and c that you will find here.
Please go through the material diligently to ensure that you gain a comprehensive level of knowledge with this content.
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Now, I debated whether or not to add this one, but sometimes my material can get rather heavy. This video is the polar opposite. Once you get through the silliness, the content is actually accurate. Who's hungry for some CC Cake?
Lastly, the dreaded mid-term. As I've mentioned repeatedly throughout the semester, my motivation for teaching this course is to have educators gain the most practical information and resources available for their particular setting. Additionally, you've all noticed that I've been keeping tabs on the workload each week b/c I realize that you all have 'day-jobs' so the last thing I want to do is overwhelm you.
So in the past I've given an in-depth mid-term assignment, but the workload was heavy. In place of that this semester I'd like you to still focus on the goals of the original midterm, but strip it down and simplify it. The over-riding goal of this assignment is to convey the power, influence, and benefits (for your particular setting) to your organization if they begin to embrace OER's and incorporate more Digital Content. More details can be found at the bottom of the syllabus. As I stated above, I want this to be as pragmatic as possible for you, so if you have an idea that is outside of the description and if you think that this would be more useful for you then just pass it by me first for pre-approval..
Our Spring Break is during the week of 3/11, so we should take the opportunity the week before that (3/4) to meet again f2f for our second of three meetings. There we can go over coursework expectations for the rest of the semester, practice some hands-on content creation, and collaboratively modify the mid-term assignment to best suit Westerly High School's needs. Let pragmatism prevail!
Please arrive with either a solid outline of what topics you'd like to realistically cover in you digital chapter or the beginnings of what you have already begun to create. (For those of you that have not gotten comfortable yet with how to start, please arrive with specific goals about what would be the most practical for your setting and we'll collaboratively get you moving in the right direction.)
This shouldn't be an overly-stressful course, so please feel free to ask questions, make mistakes, and communicate your obstacles, so that we can make this the most productive learning experience possible.
I'll reach out to Deanna and see if we can schedule that same room (227) from 3:15-6 for 3/4. Now let's get started with S5!
Let's first watch this 5 min. video on the shift to Digital and Open Textbooks.
Now, on to Curriki. A great place to start is to hear about the history and mission behind the site. One of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, joins Curriki CEO Kim Jones to talk about their efforts to make learning materials free and open to everyone on the Internet.
Now there's no sense in re-creating the wheel, so I'll follow a similar procedure to Session 4. Watch the videos below, pause them regularly, and try to re-create the instructions. When we're finished you can explore on your own.
Let's start with, "Viewing a Resource in Curriki"
Now let's look at what members can do with resources.
With all of these resources available and at your fingertips, you'll need to be assured that your access the best and highest quality information, so let's next learn about, "Reviewed Resources."
We'll skip the screencasts on how to rate and comment on resources for now, b/c that's a little more advanced, but when you're ready you can view it here.
Now it's time for the fun part---finding useful stuff. Let's start with, "Search Basics."
There are few things more frustrating than searching endlessly for a resource and not finding what you're looking for, so our next video will walk you through the "Advanced Search" options and filters.
Most of the benefits to using OER's can be increased exponentially by working collaboratively with a group of your peers, so the last video we'll watch will be on how to access and create 'groups' in Curriki.
I've always been a big proponent of pragmatism in teacher training, so for the rest of your time this week I'd like you to spend time exploring these resources and looking for material to suit your specific educational setting. Please keep track of your thoughts and reflections and post them under S5's entry.
For those chomping at the bit for us to cover eReaders and tablets---your time will be here soon. Here's some of the latest data:
Have fun!
PS-Here are the comments from past teachers that took this course: Summer '12
