K12 Open Ed

I did two well-received sessions on open content for education at NECC this year. (Curiously, while there were many sessions on open source software, these were the only ones on open content.) I was thrilled with how enthusiastic everyone was about the information and resources shared.

Here are the session videos and materials.

Open Educational Resources: Share, Remix, Learn

Full video, slides, and hands on activities here.

Open-Licensed Content: The Missing Piece

Full video, slides, and hands on activities here.

These materials are all licensed under CC BY. Please feel free to reuse, share, etc. and help spread the word! Thanks.

I’ve been talking a lot to folks lately about the idea of open textbooks beginning to replace conventional textbooks, allowing both for more differentiation and for vast sums of money to be redirected toward more useful things (like professional development and customization).

People have asked me how they can start getting involved in open textbooks. Here are a couple ideas. First, go explore Wikibooks and especially Wikijunior. There are tons of open textbooks here that you can use, edit, contribute to, customize, or even create your own.

If you’re looking for a project to get your students involved in, look at the international collaboration In Our World: Portraits of Communities across the Globe. This text will be written by students around the globe with each class creating a chapter to tell about their community. What a great way to facilitate students writing for a genuine audience, while collaborating with other classes around the world. This project begins in August. If you’d like to participate, you can contact the coordinators at Old Dominion University by emailing jkidd AT odu DOT edu for more information.

Another bigger way to get involved in open textbooks is to talk to your district curriculum and instruction folks about open education and the potential of open textbooks. As our curriculum leaders begin to see the advantages, this movement will really start to gain steam.

[Textbook photo credit: caryatidxx / Emilie from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/dearlydeparted/3657275396/]

Like Flickr, Picasa allows users to assign a Creative Commons license to their photos. Until recently, you couldn’t search for CC licensed photos, but now that has been added!

When you do a seach, just click Show options on the left side. Then click Creative Commons in the options and you can choose which type of license to filter by.

(To apply a CC license to photos you upload, click the edit button under Photo reuse to the right of your photo. To set CC as your default, to go your Settings and click the Privacy and Permissions tab.)

Thanks go Picasa and Google for adding this!

I’ve been thinking about open licensed photos and model releases. True, licensing and model releases are separate issues, but the discussion is relevant if you want to use open licensed photos that have people in them.

Some open photo repositories don’t deal with this at all (e.g. Flickr and Wikimedia Commons only sort of, while others (e.g. OpenPhoto.net) don’t include pictures with people.

I tweeted a question about this and Creative Commons pointed me to Joi Ito’s Free Souls Model Release. Great resource. And, of course, this is CC licensed so we can adapt as needed. Thanks, Joi!

I am really excited about two hands-on sessions I’m facilitating at NECC in DC this year. They both concern OERs, a topic that I am very passionate about, both for the opportunity to differentiate instruction and the potential to replace expensive and inaccessible textbooks.

In these sessions, we’ll be exploring open licensed photos, clip art and music; looking at open wiki-based textbooks; using an an open licensed kids dictionary; and creating and improving other OERs. Here are the times:

Open-Licensed Content: The Missing Piece
[Formal Session: Open Source Lab]
Monday, 6/29/2009, 8:30am–9:30am WWCC 152 B

Open Educational Resources: Share, Remix, Learn
[Formal Session: BYOL]
Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 12:30pm–1:30pm WWCC 151 B

I’ll also be in the 21st Century Media Center Playground on Mon. from 12-2 showing mobile technology tools that can be used to differentiate instruction and in the Open Source Playground (Mon. from 2-4 and Tues. from 2-4) showing open content and talking about how you can use this free resource in your school.

Hope to see you in DC!