K12 Open Ed

Idea #2 – Open license your online photos.

This is especially easy if you user a service like Flickr that includes a Creative Commons licensing option.

In Flickr, you can change the license of any photo you’ve uploaded by clicking the edit button next to the rights and then selecting an open license. (See below.) You can change your default photo license settings by going to You -> Your Account -> Privacy& Permissions-> What license will your content have.

If you don’t use Flickr or another service that allows easy open licensing, just include your license (e.g. Creative Commons BY) in your image notes.

Because generous people like you are willing to share, Flickr has over 90 million open licensed photos available for all of us to use.

(This is part of an on-going series on what you can do to help grow the OER movement.)

Thinking more about the idea of creating a high quality curriculum resource that is open, I have focused in on writing as a subject matter. Why? First and foremost, I love writing and think it has the ability to transform lives. Beyond that, it transfers to all other subject areas and grade levels, and success in writing is correlated to success in many other endeavors. Writing is fun and rewarding. Technology can greatly enhance writing skills for many.

So here are some specifics. These are very preliminary. Please chime in with your thoughts by commenting or emailing me. (I hope to have a collaborative prototype up by early next year.)

The Open Writing Space

Project goals:
To inspire a love for writing and to help writers of all ages develop their craft

Target audience:
Writers of all ages, from elementary school through adult, both in formal and informal contexts
(I’m envisioning modules that could be used in elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms; sections that could act as online courses for adults; private areas for personal writing; springboards for personal writing; community space for writing and reading clubs; and more.)

Random ideas for modules:

Inspiration

• Video vignettes from authors, casual writers, teachers, kids,and others talking about writing
• Writing prompts
• Reading to write (online book clubs, RSS feeds of relevant readings, etc.)
• Real life writing tasks
• Blogs
• Writing portfolios

Craft

• Writing process exercises
• Developing a voice
• Grammar/style handbooks
• Traits of writing
• Online writing assessment
• Character development
• Writing dialogue
• Non-fiction writing

Licensing:
All content in the “community space” will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution.
All content in people’s “personal space” can be licensed however individuals choose. (This content won’t be in public view unless users choose to publish it.)

Questions to think about:

• What tools are best suited for this? (Elgg? Drupal? Moodle modules for online courses? What Open Source online writing tools are available?)
• How do we deal with kids under 13?
• Who would be useful partners in this project?
• How do we make sure this is a useful and used resource (marketing)?
• What parts should be built first?

Would you like to be a part of creating this, and/or is it is a resource you could use?

Over the years, I have worked on a lot of large educational technology projects across all grade levels and subject areas. Many have been grant-funded; some have been funded through instructional materials or other school operating budgets. Most have involved a large number of teachers and students using technology in combination with extensive professional development and hardware and software purchases. Some have dramatically affected the teachers and students involved; others not as much.

On average, these projects are generally sustained for two or three years. At some point, they all seem to run out of steam, either because of an end to the funding, staff turnover, lack of political will, shifting trends, or mere entropy. All of the investment in these projects seems to evaporate without lasting benefits (except for what I optimistically hope is some long-term effect for those who participated). It is disappointing to think back on projects from 10 years ago and realize that none are still going. That seems to be the way of education.

What is enduring in education? Textbooks (or more generally, curriculum). This segment of education receives a huge amount of funding and is omnipresent in schools. Specifically, individual textbooks can stay in use for 7 or more years. Generally, textbooks can be found in almost every classroom and school in the world. It is hard to imagine school without textbooks. However, in recognition of the need to differentiate instruction and engage students, many of us believe that textbooks are less relevant to education than ever. If it weren’t for the political force of textbook publishers and departments of education, surely textbooks would have been cast aside by now because of their lack of efficacy.

What if some of the money, time, and effort that goes into the many fleeting ed tech programs or the long-lasting, but ineffective textbook resources were redirected to creating high quality curriculum resources that were open and accessible to everyone?
By being digital and open to everyone, these resources could have a greater impact than small, local projects that lack sustainability. By being digital, collaborative and customizable, these resources could be more engaging and more effective than most textbooks.

I would like to kick off a project to facilitate something like this. (More specifics to come.) If you are interested in participating, please contact me. I would welcome any ideas or help you might contribute. Some specific ideas for collaboration might include:

• brainstorming ideas
• identifying funding sources (I’m thinking of a combination of funding sources to include grants, school participation, and in-kind contributions.)
• contributing content

Let me know if you think this idea has “sticking”power.

Steve O’Connor> wrote a thought-provoking post “Is Open Source too difficult?” in response to the formation of the K-12 Open Source Community on ning.

I’ve been slow to respond, in part, because life is a bit chaotic for me right now and, in part, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to weigh in on what could be perceived as overly critical of the K-12 Open Source Community, which I think, on the whole, is a benefit to the Open Source movement in schools.

The issues are gnawing at me, though, so so here are some thoughts:

• If the “proponents” of the movement aren’t using FOSS tools for a community dedicated to FOSS, there is a problem. (I have some ideas of what could be done to help address this, but I’ll save them for another post.)
• Open Source tools, on the whole, are more difficult for most users than standard proprietary tools. (I base this on hundreds of hours of workshops with tools like MediWiki and Wikispaces, Open Office and Office, GIMP and Photoshop, etc.)
• Steve’s fifth graders are undoubtedly more adventuresome (and probably more skilled) than most middle-of-the-road teachers.
• Middle-of-the-road teachers have to be the target for any broad-scale educational initiative.
• You have to pick your battles.
• An important 21st century skills to be be able to evaluate tools and to choose the best tool for each task, which varies according to the task.
• For all of his contributions, Richard Stallan-type thinking will not add to the expansion of FOSS or OER. One of my great concerns for OER is that it won’t ever grow beyond being a fringe movement.

For these and other reasons, I’ve chosen to focus more of my personal time on open content as opposed to open tools. Related points:

• Most people see the weaknesses of textbooks and have identified a need for better content resources that are feasible (and legal) to modify for the purposes of differentiating instruction
• Most teachers are much more facile with content than they are with software.
• There are not IT barriers to open content (though there are substantial barriers presented by the educational-industrial complex).
• Education can be positively and substantially improved with open content.

Food for thought. I’d be interest in your comments.

Thanks, Steve O., for starting this discussion, and Steve H. for starting a community to discuss this in.

For OER to be successful, lots of people need to participate. Not just in creating OER, but also in using it, modifying it, and generally making it useful. In order for this movement to take off and reach its potential, many people need to get involved.

It sounds daunting, but there are a million little things all of us can do to make this happen, and many of them don’t take much time at all.

Today I’m starting a new series of blog posts called “What you can do.” This will be a collection of things you can do to help make a difference in OER specifically and education more generally.

Idea #1 – If you see a mistake in Wikipedia, fix it.

This also applies to spam, vandalism, or opportunities for clarification or amplification. It’s easy to do this — just click the button that says “edit this page.” Don’t worry too much about messing up the page. Chances are you won’t, and just in case you do, you (or someone else) can always revert and/or fix it.

Wikipedia is a truly amazing free and open resource, because people like you make it better every day.