922-Session 6--Personalizing, Customizing, Remixing, and Localizing

Welcome to Session 6!  

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 health education.  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.  For those of you looking for Health and PE material, there should be plenty there if you haven't found success yet.

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.)  For those of you teaching English, I found this  and many more resources when you scroll through the list here.

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 Literature and Health.  (They even give you directions about how to put it into your wiki or webpage). Just be aware that there is also some copyrighted material here as well, so in that case you'll have to just link to it directly from your eTextbook.

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.  Chariho already seems to be moving in that direction, so instead just focus on developing as much of your eTextbook as you can before our next face-to-face meeting which will be in the CHS Library on 4/14 @3:15pm. 


Good luck this week and as always, have fun!
DF

PS--I've added a screencast below to help guide you through the process of adding multimedia to your eTextbook.

How to embed multimedia into a CK12 page

A few of you have asked for a little more detail on how to embed multimedia into your eTextbook, so I made a little screencast to walk you through the process.

If this doesn't work for you, or if you are still running into obstacles, I'd be happy to schedule a teleconference and we can go through some procedures together.

Session 5--What Happens When You Merge Your Curriculum and a Wiki?

Session 5---Curriki.org

Wow has time flown.  We are now almost half-way through this course, so we should take the opportunity the week before April break (4/14) 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 Chariho High School's needs. Let pragmatism prevail!

We still have over three weeks before 4/14, so don't stress out too much. 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 Jessica and see if we can schedule that same room in the CHS Library from 3:15-6 for 4/14.  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. I had the good fortune to be speaking at a conference in DC in the Spring of '09 and that lead to a great networking opportunity.  I was lucky enough to be asked to join a cohort of six education professors from around the nation.  We were hired by Curriki to develop a series of online PD sessions on OER's (licensed under CC) that could be integrated into any teacher preparation program.

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 before next Tuesday.

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:
Spring '13
Summer '12

Session 4-eBooks--CK12

In Session 3's 'Readings' in the syllabus, I had you read a little about CK-12. (Based upon a comment from one of you last session, you can get carried away exploring its resources.) They currently have mostly STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subject material, but have now begun adding Humanities as well.

There are a few of you taking this course that teach in the latter subject areas, but if CK-12's model holds true, then they will have textbooks and workbooks in your disciplines w/i the next year or two.

Now you won't be taking this course in a year or two, so I'd like you to spend some time this week poring through CK-12's resources and practicing with the interface, so when that day comes you'll be the first one in your school to be using this great tool.

Let's start by watching this brief intro. video that my friend Neeru put together recently to introduce herself and CK-12.





Now, in case you didn't get a chance to do the readings from last week or need a refresher, give their, 'About Us' page a skim now.  When you've finished I'd like you to read the most recent news articles about them..

You should be pretty excited and inspired about the possibilities at this point.  I was when I first learned about them in 2008.  I reached out to Neeru to explore building a collaboration and she flew me out to Silicon Valley in November '08 to meet with her, and her co-founder, about their work. I was so enthralled that I decided to add their resources to this course to help share their vision, and also to help contribute to the movement myself.

Imagine if our entire state began to use open education resources (OER) to 'collectively' write our own textbooks and curriculum material, and then began sharing them with each other. Sounds beyond reach doesn't it? But some systems and State Dept.'s of Education are trying just that. Read about Virginia for example. (and that was six years ago!)  There's more about their plan here as well.

Now CK-12 just really began taking off around August of '08, so as I mentioned above, they don't have every discipline yet. But, like I said, they plan to broaden to other areas soon. Here's a brief demonstration to watch.  When you're done watch this one they had an intern pull together:

Introducing CK-12 Foundation's Digital Learning Tools - #2 from CK-12 Foundation on Vimeo.

Now if this all scares you a little or you feel a little intimidated---that's justified.  Some of you mentioned in your comments from the last session that you were apprehensive about 'publishing' your material until you reached a certain comfort level.  That's to be expected.

I'm sure that you have a lot of questions. The biggest concern I hear is about the quality of the information. We'll go into more detail about that in the next few sessions, but for now think about how many teachers stray from the textbooks in their classes and instead use quality, credible information that they have screened using their professional judgment.

Now think about how much information teachers have in their heads. If they took the time to write it out, and share it freely with the world, we would have a tremendously powerful tool.  I'd like you to spend the rest of your time trying to play with CK-12's Flexbooks. See if you can find one to use in your educational setting, and as I mentioned before, don't write it off so quickly b/c they don't have anything in your discipline or grade level just yet.  The practice today, will pay off tomorrow.

To be perfectly honest, most people just access and use these Flexbooks, rather than make changes to them to personalize things for their educational setting, but Id still like you too tutorials linked here.

So, for those of you that think you have topics w/i CK12's database, please begin to experiment and collate your flexbook.  Review the video tutorials a few times if you need to and remember, you can add additional content to these over time, perpetually improving upon your eTextbook.

For those of you that can't find content here, please focus your attention back on OER Commons (from Session 3) and begin to collate material, connect the content to CCSS, that you can use for your digital chapter or book. Keith and Jack, I'm hoping that you will contact each other and find some common ground to build a collaboration. Remember, your over arching goal for taking this course is to create a digital chapter, multiple chapters, or even an entire eTextbook to support your discipline.

Good luck and as always please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Past participants' comments:
Spring '13

Dave Fontaine

DaveFontaine1@gmail.com