Genius Hour as MOOC?

A few of us have been talking about the idea of fostering cross-generational participation in cMOOCs lately, and as I think about this my mind keeps coming back to the idea of Genius Hour as a MOOC.

For those unfamiliar, the idea of Genius Hour (also sometimes called Google 20% time) is to give students some dedicated time to pursue their own passions. Whenever I think about Genius Hour, I think “Why don’t we have this for teachers too?”

So how about a MOOC where people of all ages are encouraged to identify and pursue a topic they are passionate about? It could be an inquiry project, a maker project, or something else of their choosing.

The advantages of doing this as a MOOC are:

  • Taking place over a fixed period of time bounds the project and makes it more approachable. (“course”)
  • Having access to many others, including hopefully some with similar passions, allows collaboration. (“massive”)
  • Being in an open space allows delightfully unexpected synergies to occur. (“open”)
  • Participants could do this from anywhere. (“online”)

As a learner, I would delight in participating in something like this. In fact, my head is buzzing with things I might pursue in this way.

So what do you think? Does this idea have legs? Want to start something like this?

OER and open learning

I’ve been a part of a several online discussions lately about “open learning” and OER. It’s increasingly apparent to me that these are two very different things and that there may not be as much overlap as I once thought. (I have often maintained that OER, even when used in conventional ways, leads to open learning.)

Another realization is that while open learning seems to be picking up steam (e.g. Connected Educator activities, Connected Learning, etc.), OER seems to be of less  interest. I wonder if OER is too cutting edge for mainstream educators who are risk adverse and not innovative enough for those on the leading edge.

Here’s an interesting exchange on this:

oer

When did OER become equated with blackline masters?? I could elaborate on how OER spans many media and can be used for the most innovative learning imaginable, but the perception here that OER is the same old-same old is what is important (and this comment comes from an innovative educator who I greatly respect).

Particularly in K-12, where there is no one “buyer” who might be attracted to the cost savings (the purchasing morass of the educational-industrial complex in K-12 leaves no one feeling the immediate benefits of savings), this leaves OER in a tenuous spot.

And so, as I periodically do, I wonder if OER is a solution looking for a problem in K-12. (Note: The online learning space is a notable exception to this.)

This also reminds me of an activity we did at an OER advocates meeting during which everyone shared a particularly memorable and meaningful learning experience they’d had. As participants shared out, it struck me that not one story involved instructional resources or materials; instead they all revolved around community and relationships.

Thinking about youth in cMOOCs

The cross-generational learning experiences that I’ve participated in have been uniquely powerful. This is leading me to think about how we might include more youth in our connectivist learning MOOCs.

My question is – what would incentivize youth to participate?

In many ways, this is the same question I am often asked about getting educators to participate in opt-in, no-pay/no-credit learning experiences.

And just as with educators, I am not looking for extrinsic incentives, such as stipends or course credit. I think those kinds of rewards detract from the rich self-directed learning that happens in opt-in cMOOCs.

With educators, my answer to “why should I participate?” centers on the learning itself. We participate in these connected learning experience because it has value to us and adds to our own personal learning. So perhaps that is the answer for youth as well.

I’m wondering though if there is a way to draw a more direct line to this for youth. Perhaps a connection to something like Genius Hour or some other highly flexible school project. (Is this too close to doing the MOOC for course credit? I’m not sure.) Perhaps a tie to certain passion-based affinity groups (e.g. art, cooking, etc.).

I’m thinking out loud on this. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Introducing the K-12 OER COP!

K-12 OER Community of Practice

I’ve been working for the last couple of months on a new project: a K-12 open educational resources (OER) online community of practice.

It’s not really done yet. In fact, it may never be done. Which makes unveiling it publicly a little scarey, but here we are.

This project came out of a realization that while many in K-12 now know about OER, not that many are actually using it. As a believer in peer learning and support, I thought that an online place where teachers might collaborate on this could be helpful. (Along the way, a group of us debated whether the world needed one more online community and other design issues, all of which was very helpful in thinking this through.)

A premise for this project is that we’re hoping to provide utility for those who are just getting started with OER, not necessarily those already entrenched in using it. As such, you won’t find a lot of information on license nuances, repositories, metadata, interoperability, or similar issues. Instead, we’ve chosen to start with these areas:

(Are these the right categories? I don’t know, but they’re flexible to be changed as needed.)

For each of these categories, we offer a few resources to get started, a discussion board space, and a collection of related tweets, posts, etc. from the web.

What can you do to participate in this?

  • Visit and join the community.
  • Post to the discussion boards.
  • Suggest blogs or folks on Twitter that we should follow and include here.
  • Tag your own related posts with #oer and/or #k12opened.
  • Make suggestions for how we might improve the site and make it more useful to those just getting started with OER.
  • Tell your friends!

I am excited about embarking on this new adventure and hope you’ll join us!

Open is more than a technicality

As open has gotten “popular,” there have been some disturbing trends in how the label has been applied.

On a few recent occasions, I’ve run into content that is advertised as open and Creative Commons licensed. But in trying to locate that content, I’ve been unable to locate to find it, though I was able to find a for-sale version.

In two cases, I knew the folks responsible for developing the content and asked about it. I was told the content was in fact available under an open license but wasn’t publicly posted in that format.

Wtf?

Berlin wall
credit: Eric Gilliland

In one case, the content had been produced in partnership with a commercial publisher who didn’t want to make the open licensed version available. (When I asked if I might post the open licensed version on my own site, I was discouraged from doing so.) In another, I was told that I could get private access to the open licensed content.

This is a worrying consequence of the dual licensing schemes that have been proposed. While I’m not necessarily opposed to dual licensing, I would hope that hiding away the truly open version of the content isn’t tolerated.

I hope that consumers and funders are watching out for this. It doesn’t serve the open movement or especially learners.