922-Session 7--Creating an OER from Scratch and Midterm Project Screencasts

I thought that we'd start with an inspirational video of students that seem to 'get-it'.

Now let's start with a 'comment' from Angela, (a teacher who took a version of this class a few iterations back) :

Angela Tarr said...

... 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:
Spring '13 here
Summer '12 here
Spring '12  here
Summer '11 here

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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--Below  you will find some of the details for last year's cohort.  You may also see some of their screen recordings from the link above.

• 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.

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