922-Session 8

You may have noticed that I have added a cool feature to the blog. You can now double click on any word on the blog and you will be prompted with more details. The possibilities for a tool like this are astronomical when using edublogs in the classroom. Any word used by the 'blog author' or 'comment poster' can be defined w/o a student leaving the page. Give it a try on this word: arbiter or any other.

I've also put it in wikidave. If you are interested here is the link to more info.

Now, regarding future assignments---Please don't wait until the last minute to contact me if you have any questions, and as with all of these projects, "Practicality Shall Take Precedent over All." That means that if you have an idea to modify a Deliverable or Final Project so that it will be more useful to you in your setting then please feel free to pass your ideas by me. (I approve most of them.)

Also, due to the constricted semester, I'm thinking of eliminatin your Deliverable #3 so you can focus upon your wikichapter. I've put a survey on our blog, please let me know your thoughts.

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There is a renewed movement underway from schools, businesses, and universities. They are giving 'Collective Intelligence' a closer look. From MIT's new 'Center for Collective Intelligence,' to businesses using wikis within their internal networks, to schools using Collective Intelligence resources and tools in the K-12 setting---we will look at all of these examples, as well as discuss their long term implications during this session.

Keep in mind while you are viewing this session that your Deliverable will be due, (I will give you instructions later on how to submit your work) soon. Additionally, keep in mind that the deadline for your Final Project is fast approaching.

As always, feel free to contact me if you ever have additional questions or comments.

DF

P.S. Summer '08 participants' comments as well as participants' comments from previous semesters here.

P.P.S. Backup copies of each week's session can be found on Authorstream.com

922-Session 6 and 7

Well, the semester is going by quickly! This week's session is another double. Again, remember that there is a lot of information to digest, so don't stress over not being able to retain it all. Keep focusing on the big picture---your Deliverables. Deliverable #2 is due by July 1st.


Both sessions are now active and ready to be downloaded. Remember you can also find a back-up on Authorstream.com Just do a search for edc922.

There were many changes made to this session over the weekend to ensure having the most current information, but please let me know if any links or readings don't connect.

Additionally, I'd like you to watch the tutorial below, or if you are a real beginner you may watch this tutorial (it walks you through it at a slower pace). It is on 'Social Bookmarking.' Our EDC921 course focuses more upon these tools and their impact on education.

We are all familiar with the ability to save favorite websites in our "Favorites" folder, but what if you were working with a team of teachers collaboratively writine your Flexbook chapter? What if you and your team were collaboratively writing the entire textbook?

What if you could benefit from the greatest sites found by other teachers? What if you could access their favorites, as well as your own, from any Internet connected computer? Check out this tutorial and sign up for an account, (optional) and help us by 'tagging' all the great sites you find with an 'edc922' label. If you are apprehensive, visit Del.icio.us and do a search for 'edc920' and you'll find all the websites used in my other course. If we all do this as we find great sites that allow us to use their material free from copyright then slowly we'll build a great pool of resources that you will perpetually be able to access. As each semester passes and I work with more and more teachers, we will all add to this collective databank. Your edc922 connection will continue to reap benefits.

Most of you should be finishing your Deliverable #2 chapter soon. Please do not wait until the last minute.

One of the topics we'll be covering this week will be understanding copyright. Some of it is redundant based upon previous lessons, but bears repeating. I know---I know it sounds boring (and it can be incredibly tedious), but I'll try to keep it relatively brief.

You may recall that I mentioned that all of my weekly sessions are licensed under Creative Commons. To truly understand what that means you have to first wrap your head around the concept of a 'Shared Culture.' To help you gain more depth of knowledge you may beginto understand it begin here with a few videos that may help reinforce:

Once you've watched that you then need to understand how it's done:

Well, I don't want to overwhelm you too much with copyright information. Suffice it to say that this is all good news for education and even better news for creating your own digital texts.

One additional resource you can use with your own textbook development would be the FlatWorld Knowledge site. They are another organization that is creating free, quality textbooks, but they are geared towards higher education:




So let's get to this week's session.

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Now that you are done with Session 6, let's move on to Session 7.

I thought that it might be helpful to hear (first hand) about CK-12's mission, so I asked the President, Murugan Pal, if he could spare some time for us. We recently connected and I showed him how to set up a presentation similar to mine using Authorstream. He has finished and you'll find his presentation below.

I had originally scheduled this week's topic to be on "News Alert" services to support your research on your wiki chapter, but I think that Murugan's presentation, along with your workload from last week and Session 6, will be more than enough to keep you busy in place of Session 7. So we will skip Session 7 from the syllabus and go directly from the blog today.

Please view the presentation below:



Uploaded on authorSTREAM by ck12

Lastly, when you begin your wiki chapter you may put it in either a Google Document or a wiki service, like: wikispaces or pbwiki. If you find you have some extra time, some of you may find it simpler to begin embedding your multimedia, links, interactive tutorials, edu-games, audio/video material, podcasts, screencasts... (as described under the Final Project details on the syllabus) while you are writing. Just do a search for your topic and term. Like, "physical fitness" and video tutorial into a search engine and you'll get plenty of results.

Good luck and as always, please feel free to contact me with any questions.

DF

922-Sessions 4 and 5

Welcome to our fourth week. Our summer session forces us to condense so I'm posting both Sessions 4 and 5 this week (and a little earlier than usual). The reality is that you probably can't internally digest all of this info in 7 days, so give them a skim and take what you need. Then just make sure you download the sessions, so that you can go back to them some time in the future when you have the time or inclination.

By now many of you are beginning to realize how much information is out in the world that you still don't know. The evolution and metamorphosis of the Internet is moving at an exponential rate. I can't even keep up with all the changes (and I do this for a living)!

Knowing that there is so much information on the Internet convinces me that this would be a good time to discuss the quality of online information.

As you move through Session 4 please keep in mind that this is all meant to support your second deliverable.

Good luck!

PS--As always, if you have any trouble with this session you may find it backed up on Authorstream.com Just do a search for edc922 and look for the appropriate session.

PPS--I just checked out our Google 'Shared' Document and it finally looks like some of you have made some changes. (You can definitly tell what Nick's contribution is--once a die-hard fan; always a die-hard fan). Check it out again, but this time, go to the 'File' menu. From there choose, 'Revision History.' There you can revisit a copy of every change that each contributor made as well as revert back to a prior version, or compare different versions. Play around with resource some more.

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AND NOW HERE IS SESSION 5

(please remember that this can be a lot of material, so 'crisis manage' and focus on the most important items and deadlines.)

Welcome to the continuation of our session on "Critical Evaluation of Online Information!"

As you continue to research, write, and revise your second deliverable you'll soon begin to realize that the challenge isn't whether or not you can find enough information on the Internet that will help you----instead, the real challenge is how to cull through all of the websites and content to find quality information that will really help you.

Well, that's why we are spending this time on the evaluation of online information. We, in the Information World, call it "Information Literacy." Read the definition here. Children won't be able to survive in the 21st century world without it.

Good luck with this session and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Dave

PS-D2 is a big project. Don't wait until the last minute.

PPS--A back-up of S5 can be found on Authorstream.com When there, just search for edc922.

922-Session 3

Welcome to Session 3--"CK-12, Curriki, and the Open Educational Resources Movement"

This week we'll stray from the usual format and work completely from this blog entry.

1. We'll start with getting our feet wet by reading an article I was asked to write on wikitextbooks. It was published in the May '08 edition of Multi-Media & the Internet@Schools magazine. You can find it here.
   
2. When you are done I'd like you to begin exploring the link below. It introduces you to "The Open Educational Resources Movement." Dozens, if not hundreds, of colleges and universities are now offering many of their courses for free. Through podcasts, videocasts, and free downloads of supplemental material a motivated person could acquire the equivalent of a degree, completely on their own and for FREE! Spend some time visiting the schools from this link and check out some of the free material available for your discipline. If you visit the MIT link you'll see that they have over 1800 courses freely accessible. It's mind-blowing and exciting, but be careful not to spend too much time there. Every time I visit this site, 2-3 hours disappear in the blink of an eye.
3. Then I would like you to watch this video taken at Google's Headquarters in '08. It focuses on a non-profit company called, CK-12.org I flew out to Silicon Valley in November '08 to meet with the President and Founder about their work. I was so enthralled that I decided to add their resources to this course to help share their work, and also to help contribute to the movement myself.

It's rather long, but if you have the patience you'll begin to see the potential.

Imagine if our school districts began 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. There's more about their plan here as well.

Now CK-12 just really began taking off around August of '08, so they don't have every discipline yet. They've really been focusing more upon the STEM subject areas first (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), for the Middle and High School levels, but they plan to broaden to other areas soon. Here's a brief demonstration to watch. And here is a demostration by the President, Murragan Pal.

Now if this all scares you a little or you feel a little intimidated---that's justified. 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 class 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.

Well, that's probably more than enough information for this week. 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.

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

Dave Fontaine

DaveFontaine1@gmail.com