Monthly Archives: August 2009

For the Folks at home: OpenEd09

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OpenEd09 was a great conference. Possibly one of the best I have been to.

Sharing is very powerful. In Leigh’s circle, people have sought to develop stuff, posted it as a work in progress to find other people working on similar things just down the road. Bingo: collaboration, synergy, time saving and dare I say it, saving time and feeling better about things. Oh and doing a better job.

What is an OER (Open Educational Resource)?

Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

* Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
* Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
* Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

The term comes from a UNESCO conference in 2002.

There is a LOT of work in developing countries at the moment, building synergy between institutions. Resoures currently being used are worked up and improved. or new resources created. Often funded by some group.

Some think this is a new form of colonialism. leighblackall.blogspot.com/2009/08/looking-into-sky-open-ed-oh-nine.html

A quick history of Open Education (from one perspective)

Norman Freisen: wikieducator.org/Open_Education:_Precursors

I presented on day one: openedconference.org/program/program-schedule-at-a-glance
I’ve summarised some of the material in some posts here and here.

OK, of what value was this conference?

  1. Conversations. I learned a lot about processes for dialogue and moving on thinking. I’m convinced of the unconference model. We just don’t get it in New Zealand. We have a great opportunity at the next e-fest conference, with an unconference day, based on open space approaches. But what are we doing? Starting it with a keynote.
  2. Personal. This has been quite remarkable. There was the inner core of mainly guys, but they were generally very approachable. (I’m not sure I’d go so far as the post here: …  to come when I find it)
  3. University back home: there is a lot I have learned. I think this whole open ed idea is a thing of the heart. You need to have some sense of connections. Once you do this, things become quite different.
    OK then: how to engage in this at an institutional level? or a department level? or a team level?
  4. Global. Still thinking.
    I’d like to go to China or Bangladesh.  I have a proposal.
  5. Local. New Zealand wide? Christchurch wide? Too much competition.  But it may be possible on a micro level.

That’s it for now.  If you want to meet: Friday 28th, 12.00pm at Okover house.  But check in with me in case the venue changes.

Twittering at OpenEd

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I’ve been a very very itinerant dabbler in Twitter.

Twitter emerged at the OPenEd conference complete with conference tag: #opened09.  Not as a trickle, but a steady stream.  I wondered a little at how people kept up until I saw they used some other applications.  Moving into using TweetDeck instantly quadrupled my productivity and ease of use of Twiter. In other words, if you dabble just using the regular Tweeter interface it takes too much time and there are too many overheads.

But when and how do we learn about these new things?

  1. There is a discipline in following up on a piece of new technology
  2. You need to make some decisions on how beneficial it is, or is not going to be, and we often don’t get this right
  3. It took this conference as a catalyst to properly lure me into this.

Aside: The buzz word is microblogging.  I stumbled on this little romantic piece about twittering from Richard Smith who we met last Saturday: Is twitter the latest thing? Or is it an ancient thing, writ new? I argue the latter.

It seemed to me there was not much blogging about the conference during the conference, and that many people were putting their energy into tweets and personal conversations. Probably a good thing. Here is Tony Hirsts’s post on visualizing Twitter and the connections at the conference:

ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/preliminary-thoughts-on-visualising-the-opened09-twitter-network/

Long term I’m not sure how I will cope with Twitter.  There is such a flow of information, the responses and the follow up often are so fragmentary.  But we shall see.  I’ll get a plug in on this blog.  Which one? To be decided.

But, during the conference it was stimulating, sparking off many side conversations.  It favours the quick typists, then the people who can think two things at once, or quickly change from a moment, send their tweet and then return.  Several observations:

Lost gems: Some passing comments seemed to just disappear into the flow of posts. Others got picked up and retweeted. I notice in the help documentation the abbreviation RT for retweet is not regarded as a standard Twitter phrase but is extremely popular.

Democracy (or not): In some respects, some voices are louder than others. On the other hand, there is a democratization process at work and a comment from somebody, even a non-attender of a conference via Twitter, can help bring a new thought into the conversations.

Unfinished conversations: Just like some things can get lost, some things can be just unfinished. An example of this, in particular, is the final session on Thursday with David Wiley looking at the quality of OERs. The question of voting, metadata, personal recommendations, tags and so on was completely unresolved at the time, and there were a lot of half-finished conversations.  There were a large number of diverse threads to this particular discussion. Personally I was finding it difficult to decide what to give my attention to. Often it came down to a case of what was personally interesting to me at the time, versus what might have had specific long-term value for my work situation back home; after all they have helped to fund this trip.

The serious blogging came after the conference.

Using the Blackboard

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A comment from Maureen Bell at HERDSA led to an impromptu list of things teachers once learned:

  • Divide the board into sections
  • Hold the chalk at the horizontal
  • Use the same colours for headings and subheadings each time
  • Underline with a squiggly line rather than a straight line (because nobody can draw a straight line)
  • Keep a section for first appearance of terms, vocab
  • Throw the blackboard duster at a student
  • Rub off section by section so slow scribblers can catch up on copying what you wrote 10 minutes ago
  • Have blackboard monitors or helpers, beacause kids love erasing and clapping out dusters
  • Colour in a new blackboard with side of a piece of chalk, then erase normally to ³prime² it for use
  • Fun fact: chalk is not actually made from chalk rock (calcium carbonate), but from calcium sulfate in its dihydrate form, gypsum.

From an e-mail Mike Dickison www.giantflightlessbirds.com/

After OpenEd (1)

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After conference. I am too tired to write much with any coherence, plus I do not have any decent internet access.  Lots of thoughts.

Yesterday, the last of the conference, a trip to Whistler.

Last night tea with Randy, Patricia Schmitt and Christine Geith, all with a Wikieducator connection.

Today is Saturday, we took the Ferry to Bowen Island for a meetup with Peter Rawsthorne www.rawsthorne.org/ after some canoeing (6 hours, I didn’t think I was up to it so I’m hanging around the organic market waiting for the bluegrass music festival to start). This is 20 minutes free internet in the library.

Close to being like paradise here.

A(nother) university with blogs

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UMW: a university with blogs

umwblogs.org/

“No parameters, just engage honestly with what you are doing, thinking about” – Jim Groom, in his OpenEd session.

2900 users in 2300 blogs.  People given their own spaces.  Jim’s Blog.

Case study: “I want my students to build a literary journal”  literaryjournals.umwblogs.org/ They did it.

Random links: Flickr blog shots | The Blog story |

A great conference

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This is probably one of the best conferences I have ever been to.  Has a good mix of emergent and formal.

Some emergent conference planning principles:

  1. Provide minimal paper, and no conference bag.
  2. Minimal paper=conference programme in pocket size form.
  3. Provide wireless.
  4. Have a comprehensive website with things you need to know.
  5. Don’t provide food. Just park the conference near a ton of nice places to eat.
  6. Give 90 minutes for lunch.
  7. Have 15 minute breaks between all sessions. (45 minute sessions @OpenEd)
  8. One result is that conference organisers can potter round in a relaxed fashion and talk or catch up with people.
  9. Have fresh coffee and cold drinks on tap.
  10. Have an unconference stream.

It is the first time I have BEEN at the conference with microblogging.

Twitter feed has been fun. So: you can ask a question about where to go, what’s best, what’s happening – as well as comment on what’s happening, what’s significant.  There is probably more, this is just so I don’t forget.

Day one: finished presentation

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The THEME: OK, getting our teaching resources better, more current, less stress on the teachers who do the writing, having better lives.  OER may help.  What are the questions?  Where thiungs go well, WHAT FACTORS ARE IN PLAY?

Afterthoughts

Used the wrong title for my session: it’s really all about the power of micronetworks.  Maybe the key factor in the way ahead.  The benefits to the participants that are benefits of the heart, the morale.  As well as efficiency and focus.  And quality.  And learning.

I’ve rarely felt quite so nervous before in a presentation. First, I was way out of my comfort zone.  My expertise in OER and is very embryonic, my track record is small and my approach chaotic.  PLUS:  Microblogging.  I could see at any given time 5 or 6 typing.  Including Stephen Downes. There were 400 new tweets in 45 minutes:

Twitter: after I was absent for 45 minutes.

A few of these were about my session, from the audience.

Can entities like ccLearn OpenEd REALLY provide the technology for the communities to support? Will it be easy enough?  They have some small communities.  Will the system work?

One question was about the micro-network vs the organisation.

Stephen Downes tweeted: Downes #opened09 – role of micronetworks (community of communities) in OER… vs. large nets, broadcasts… small nets propagate, large nets grow

Jon Mott: jonmott @Downes: micronetworks are consistent with Shirky’s discussion of barriers to organization & coordination.

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: The prospect of further audience heightens sensitivity to the quality of one’s own work #opened09

jonmott Chirnside: Little, informal networks for sharing & making personal recs=effective OER adoption strategy. #opened09

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: Resistance to releasing teaching resources result of disproportionate attention on research v teaching #opened09

As usual, I learned more anyone I suspect, what with the thinking, the writing, the paring down to 17 minutes.  My methodology is a little chaotic, pragmatic and local.  How much do I also need to pay attention to the bigger issues of the Global, the International, the BIG repositories.  I was please to follow Arash.

Conference, day zero

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Tuesday: FINE

Edited Phillipas 40min exam programme, slept in, laundry, cabbage rolls for breakfast, (Chitako is an awesome cook), bus, library, missed Randy sadly.

Then off to the afternoon session with Downes and Wiley.  Two guys talking for 3.5 hours. I had little awareness of the breadth of the issues around commercialisation, not in theory, but in practice, and being faced now.  I’ll try to find something more concise than the audio stream.  I have a lot to learn.

Things to check out; connexions, ccLearn.

From David Wiley: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan.

Home, snack, out to man the Chilli Wagon at a local park with the guys I met on Sunday.  Served up 120 pieces of Banana Loaf to accompany chilli and buns.  Fascinating, and an interesting experieince.

Home, just feeling a little nervous about tomorrow, phone call to Christchurch, skype with Raewyn.

OpenEd preconference day

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Plan to meet up with Randy Fisher today.  I know what he will ask me about.  I really should shift my stuff to wikieducator and kill off akowiki.  Got some questions as well.

OpenEd: already too much to think about.

Random sessions of particular interest

1. John Mott: PLE’s and LMS’s: “Traditional LMSs are not open. PLEs are. But there’s a gap between the two that poses problems for higher education. While PLEs promise significant improvements in student engagement, flexibility and transparency, institutions are struggling to manage student enrollments, gathering of student work, conducting assessment across various PLE spaces, maintaining secure student records (compliant with FERPA guidelines), etc. ”

Hmm.  What do I think of this?  One person I’d like to chat to.

2. More on this topic: “It is vital that education realizes the informatics ground has shifted.  We can now realize the pedagogical and information-architectural limitations of the CMS, and so choose wisely when to use it.  We can devote our energies to using social media more widely, but also more effectively.  A greater participation in Web 2.0 means more use cases, further discussions of practice, and further development of our collective knowledge.” Brian Alexander’s session.  Social media is Killing the LMS star.

I still like the secure home base as a lunching ground.  The wild west of just everything public is still a bit much for me.  Maybe my students also.  These two sessions look really well balanced.

More sometime.

In Vancouver on Day 2.

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Sunday: RAIN

Wandered along another part of Commercial Drive.  Supposed to be a carless day, but no, commercialism and realism  has won.

The cars were back on Commercial Drive yesterday, after four weekends of street closings, and Ed Wilkerson of Magnet Hardware is thrilled and relieved.

So is the owner of Café Abruzzo two blocks away and the staff at Caffé Roma across the street. And they’re all hoping that the remainder of the experimental city Summer Spaces program on their street gets cancelled so their business can get back to normal on what is usually one of the city’s liveliest streets.

“It’s just not working,” said Mr. Wilkerson, who lost a quarter of his normal 300 customers the last four Sundays, during the program that banned cars for the day. “Basically it’s a waste of time.”

The problems: walking three blocks from car parks, diverting the buses, not advertising (the romantic view, this was supposed to be a local event) . . .

This part of town is fascinating.  I spent some time trying to buy a copy of the Cook the ‘Hood recipe book.  One store that features in it did not even know the book existed and that it said on the door the book was for sale.  Cookbooks are a bit out of fashion, but this is a little different.

Morning: Vancouver Eastside Vineyard.  Really cool little church.  How many places have the Sallys, Baptists & Vineyard in the same building, sharing facilities and advertising.

Afternoon: Found the Chinese restaurants I noticed were missing on Commercial Drive in Upper E Hastings.

Bought 8 CD’s for $16, all local artists, no-one at the Co-op radio stall had heard of most of them, got them on gut instinct.  Bought a cheap camera from London Drugs.  (“Any colour you like as long as it’s pink”). Pizza.  Walked & sat in cafes for four hours.

Evening: thinking about my contribution ot the OpenEd conference on Wednesday.  The conference list is here.  The sessions here.  I’m going to learn a lot I can see.  How do you REALLY explain Open Education?  I’ve tried several times when people ask “Why are you here?”  I’m really a beginner, a good basis to come to a conference.

I’m sharing a session with Arash from ccLearn.  While we have not talked in detail yet, things will I think be OK.  I think what I am saying is probably pretty basic for others coming.  I wonder what part of my life and thinking OER will assume?