Making ebooks with NWP folks

Last week, I had the privilege of facilitating a short session on making ebooks as a part of the National Writing Project Annual Meeting. As with all NWP-related activities, this was great fun.

We started out by brainstorming possible uses for ebooks in learning environments (see ideas below) and then went through some specifics of making ebooks with Calibre, a free, open source tool that outputs a variety of formats of ebooks. (Handout here. Feel free to redistribute and reuse.)

One of the things I really liked about this informal session was that we were able to discuss a variety of related topics that have a broader impact on learning, including:

  • The benefits of sharing under an open license, like Creative Commons
  • The potential of make-your-own curriculum
    (One cool idea that came up was assembling student writing anthologies to use as reading samples. “We pay a lot of money for anthologies like this, and our students’ work is just as good or better.”)
  • New distribution options that this kind of technology opens up
  • Disruption in the publishing industry
  • The pros and cons of different authoring platforms, especially as it relates to proprietary vs. open
  • The intersection of technologies like this with one-to-one programs

Some ebooks were made during this session, and many inspiring ideas for future projects were mentioned. If you have your own ideas or self-published ebooks you’ve made, we’d love to see a link or comment posted here.

I would also love to see an ebook anthology of the great work in Digital Is. Would others find this useful? (Maybe if someone else doesn’t jump on this first, I’ll put it on a to do list of my own.)

Thanks to everyone who took part in this and to NWP for inviting me.

 

 

Online maker space – An open invitation

I’ve been toying with the idea of an online maker space for a while. Now, thanks to a Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, I am going to be able to dedicate some time to this.

I’m looking for a few schools who would be interested in committing to participate in this. Participants will be able to help shape how this proceeds, and the requirements are few. Specifically, I’m looking for:

  • A group of students (13 or over to simplify the online participation aspect) who want to participate
  • At least one adult coordinator at each site who will also participate
  • A willingness on everyone’s part to create and share their creations with others (what we create will vary; see below)

This could be done as a part of a formal class or it could be done as an optional extracurricular type activity.

Initially, I am thinking of this as a 8 week or so “unit” but it could certainly expand or contract to suit your situation.

What will we make? Folks who opt to participate will have a lot of input on this, but here are some options to consider:

  • Short digital stories (photos, writings, drawings, audio pieces, videos) ala the DS106 Daily Create
  • Apps and/or digital environments (possibly using Scratch, Minecraft, etc.)
  • Food*
  • Agricultural projects*
  • Gadgets* (could be Arduino, Lego, robotics, etc.)
  • Materials projects* (could include artwork, woodworking, fabrics, cardboard, rocketry, inventions, etc.)
  • Other ideas you bring

* Any material costs will need to be covered by the local site.

We will most likely select a few of these to focus on initially, but each participant will also have ample choices for what they want to work on.

What are the goals of this project? To encourage learning through the lenses of making/hacking/playing. To learn from each other. To be creative. To build a sense of agency. To have fun. To think about next steps for how this might be expanded.

I am open to any and all suggestions regarding this. Please post a comment here or email me at karen at k12opened dot com with ideas and/or inquiries of interest in participate.

K12 Online – a great learning opportunity

If you don’t know about the K12 Online conference, you should! This year’s conference starts today, but you can participate any time.

The K12 Online conference is a progressive professional learning opportunity to engage educators worldwide around 21st century learning. Participants can watch pre-recorded sessions any time they wish. This conference is asynchronous, free, and online and takes place from Oct 22-25 and Oct 29-Nov. 2 with a pre-conference keynote on October 15. The 2012 theme is “Learn, Share, Remix” — very relevant to open learning!

This Wed., Oct. 24 at 9:00pm Eastern Time, the Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT) podcast will feature a live discussion about the K12 Online Conference in general and the Visioning New Curriculum keynote that went live today. We hope you can join us for this event.

In addition, Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) has an asynchronous discussion group to talk about all the K12 Online Conference videos, and we’d love to see you there as well!

On Nov. 2 at noon Eastern time, the #connectedpd Twitter chat will be having a discussion of K12 Online as well.

Oh, and my keynote on Visioning New Curriculum , with some discussion of open resources, is posted here.

I hope you can participate in some of the activities around this fabulous learning opportunity!

Openness beyond licensing

This Twitter exchange prompted me to write about something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — openness beyond just open licensing.

For a long time, I’ve been feeling that there was something bigger and more interesting about OER and the open ed movement beyond just free, shareable, redistributable resources.

We have an opportunity to open and share our practice and our learning in new ways that are incredibly powerful. It started for me at Wikipedia. I’ve seen it at P2PU. I’m sensing the huge opportunities at YouthVoices. It’s palpable at DS106.

And it’s not so much about what the instructional materials are (or even if there are any). That matters less and less. It’s about how we make things together. How we share. How we learn. Together.

(This all relates to the video I’m working on for K12 Online…which I now want to redo completely. Guess it’s too late for that, which by the way I should get back to now.)

New curriculum visions – more discussion

I was a part of a thought-provoking discussion about curriculum tonight with Terry Elliot, Paul Allison, and Paul Oh.

A big take-away for me had to do with the nexus of power and how we can use our connections with other teachers not only to collaborate and learn but also to empower ourselves as professionals. Trust is also a critical piece of this as Paul A. pointed out. Leadership needs to trust teachers; we need to trust each other and our students.

A vialogue version that you can add your comments to is here.