K12 Open Ed

Your Path to Math

So I’ve got the Moodle 2 site set up for the math textbook remix project I’m doing as a part of two P2PU courses.

I took a look at the Common Core standards for math as they related to fractions. (I decided to focus for now on one module: fractions, rather than the whole year’s curriculum in the textbook.) A lot of this content is more 5th grade than 6th, but I’m not really labeling it by grade anyway. I think that doing so limits a resource’s ability to be best used for differentiation.

Working title:

This course is open for guest access. If anyone wants to play along with discussing or building this, drop me a note and I’ll add you as a user.

One thing I’m struggling with is the desire to focus this as a remix project (using mostly already-available open resources) vs. a more optimal design process (starting with learning objectives, looking at what would be acceptable evidence for mastery, and only then looking at what activities might be appropriate).

Webinar with online learning experts

On Tues., Oct. 11, 5pm EDT (2pm PDT), we’ll be hosting a one-hour webinar to talk about online and blended learning. Anyone is welcome to attend. (Here is the sign-in link.)

Webinar – Online Learning: What works and what doesn’t?

This webinar will include several online course facilitator experts and will give participants a chance to ask questions about what works best in online and blended learning.

This webinar will feature:

Matt Renfroe works as an Instructional Design Manager for Florida Virtual School, the nation’s largest public virtual school. In existence for 15 years, FLVS served over 200,000 half-credit enrollments last year.
DeLaina Tonks is the Director of the award-winning Open High School of Utah. Open High School gathers existing Open Educational Resources, then augments with teacher-created materials aligned to state standards for their entire curriculum, then publicly releases it under a Creative Commons license.
Jason Neiffer is the Curriculum Director of Montana Digital Academy, where he has led 75 teachers in developing, adapting and delivering over 50 courses to nearly 5500 enrollments from over 175 schools across Big Sky Country.

The intricacies of designing a platform for many

I love P2PU.

But I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to understand why it didn’t start with one of the great open source LMSs, like Moodle, instead of trying to build from scratch.

I’ve come to understand (sort of) that it has to do with a preference for simplicity and ideas about what might scale massively.

An interesting breakthrough for me was the realization that different people react differently to the design of P2PU as a platform. In particular, those who have little online course experience generally really like the platform and jump into it quickly. Those who have a lot of online course experience (especially building) seem to have a less favorable reaction. This seems to apply to participants and organizers alike. Like me, many say “Why not Moodle?” As participants, they often have a hard time figuring out what to do in a P2PU course. (I’ve gotten some funny messages that have left me unsure of whether to laugh or cry.)

I’ve been thinking about the many design and development challenges, and it is clear to me that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What might work for one school or even for one course won’t work for another.

An elegant solution to this might be a solid API and a series of plug-ins that can be incorporated into various courses as appropriate.

Need a better discussion board platform, a portfolio module, a social network tool, or an RSS reader? Add the plug-ins. Like the simplified design as it currently exists? Just leave it as is.

Granted, designing an API is not an easy project, but it’s how most social tools are developed and we’ve done it before. And it’s a lot easier to design an API and good plug-ins than to try to patch together a design that tries to be everything to everyone.

Thoughts?

Remixing textbooks

Credit: Terriko

There are some really high quality, open textbooks out there.

For the most part, they’re pretty static and text-heavy though. For a while, I’ve been thinking remixing one of them into a more interactive, media-rich Moodle course.

I need a remix project to do as a part of my P2PU OER in K-12 class, so now is the time!

Any requests?

I’d like to work on something that someone would put to use once it was done. Message me or post a comment if you’d like to suggest something.

I’m also thinking about doing something with Marzano’s classroom strategies that work content. Obviously, that would be PD-focused.

Exuberance!

I’m re-experiencing the excitement of the first week in P2pU courses! Introductions, goal-setting, comments, and posts flying around so fast it’s impossible to keep up. It’s really awesome.

Because I know the time will go by quickly, I want to get some quick, possibly random thoughts down on the P2PU School of Ed.

We have had incredible initial excitement (social media, press, etc.) about the School of Ed. Clearly, this addresses some real need. That is gratifying.
As in other P2PU courses (in my experience at least; metrics anyone?), our participants include a diverse group including many international folks and several non-educators. This is interesting in light of the fact that being a U.S. educator was a pre-requisite for all these courses. (This was a stipulation made in part because of our funding for the project. It’s something I had ambivalence about, and I’m glad that our enrollments have ended up such that we could include these folks. Our classes will be richer because of it.)
- We spent a lot of time on the “full descriptions” of these courses as a recruiting and information tool upfront. In hindsight, I’m not sure many folks read these.
- A question that is gnawing at me is about sign ups from participants who a) aren’t in the “target group” (educators), and b) don’t answer the sign-up questions, and c) don’t respond to requests to do so. If the class isn’t full, should everyone just be accepted regardless? I’m not sure.
Otherwise in terms of enrollment, we’ve had significant groups of professional development providers and educators from non-traditional schools (primarily online ones). Statistics to come, but it seems to be an “early adopter” crowd. Not surprising, I guess, though several of our topics are not technology related. (This phenomenon is evident in OER in general as well.)
We have had significantly more followers than participants sign up. (Is this typical? Don’t know. Need metrics.) I suspect that this is in part due to our courses’ relatively heavy workload and our request for a strong commitment.
Many folks who signed up didn’t complete the sign up task. I suspect that’s due to a combination of factors, including confusion with the multiple layers of questions and long sign up tasks. (Possibly of interest: I didn’t experience this in my last non-ed P2PU class.)
Surprisingly, we have not been flooded with more enrollments than we could accept (class sizes are good, but not oversubscribed). Again, this is different from my other P2PU experience. I suspect the reasons are many:
- Less than idea timing – The beginning of the school year (in the U.S.) is a busy time.
- General lack of time on the part of teachers
- Incentives – In the U.S., much PD is accompanied by payment (stipends) and/or formal credit. We offer neither at the School of Ed currently, and this is something to think about, especially if the goal is to attract more “mainstream” teachers. This is one of the things keeping me awake at night right now.
The marketing aspects of all this has been fascinating. It’s been interesting to see things like a conversation on Twitter turn into enrollments from New Zealand and groups from one school signing up together.
We are sticking with our enrollment deadlines (though stretching them out a bit until just after the courses actually begin), but I keep wondering if open and rolling enrollment could work, especially with less structured and collaborative courses than ours currently are.

Things I’ll be watching for as we move ahead:

How participation proceeds, especially around the dreaded “week 3”
Participation metrics correlated to sign-up task strength (In my past course, there was not as much correlation as I’d expected. That’s interesting, huh?)
Use and effectiveness of various tools we’re using (both in and out of P2PU itself)

There’s much more, but I’ll be continuing to write as we go and hope that the other School of Ed facilitators and the P2PU community at large chimes in too.