K12 Open Ed

I’ve refined my awareness presentation about Open Ed:

This info and all the links (as well as the ODP, handouts, etc.) are also available here.

I hope that others can use these materials to let others know about Open Ed as well.

I am very excited that the new build-your-own-glossary feature is up on the Kids Open Dictionary. Try it out and let me know what you think.  (We’re still refining and adding features.)

I’m excited about this for a couple reasons. First, I think it is a very useful feature that has immediate appeal to teachers and will help them see the value of the dictionary and adding words.

The second reason is broader. There is a lot of talk about remixing and reusing OERs — I think this is essential if they are to be used effectively to differentiate instruction. Every learner has different needs, styles, skills, etc., and learning resources need to be modified in order to be suitable. However, despite this, many OERs don’t lend themselves to customization. The reasons are many, but they include format (e.g. PDFs), content (lack of granularity), and simple logistics.

The dictionary, however, is ideally suited toward remixing and customization.  Definitions of words are the right level of granularity and can be a valuable addition to almost any educational resource, whether it is a book, a web page, or a wiki. Everyone uses glossaries.

The glossary builder is great, because it outputs a variety of formats, including text, rtf, and pdf. (More formats are coming including wikitext and most likely an ipod format.) In addition, the glossary can be edited and refined, either within the dictionary system (so others can reap the benefits)  or within the output file.

After you look at this (there are a couple samples up), please let us know if it is a valuable tool for you and what features you’d like to see added. We’ll also be producing a bunch of glossaries for various topics, books, etc. that everyone can use, so stay tuned for that.

Ed Week recently published an article about Open Ed.

I thought it was a pretty good article (aside from misquoting me twice* and misspelling my name :). This article definitely shows the growing attention to Open Ed in K-12.

Here are some things in the article I thought were interesting:

• It’s interesting how other tangential issues and technologies get associated with Open Ed — in this article, it’s wikis. True that some OERs are created or housed in wikis but that’s almost coincidental. OERs don’t even have to be produced through mass collaboration (which is where the wiki connection comes from). Many OERs are produced by subject matter experts and cannot be “edited by anyone.”
  While I love wikis and mass collaboration, I think that confusing them with OERs leads to some unfortunate misconceptions, such as the idea that OERs can’t be scholarly, accurate, or high quality. The comments after the article bring those misconceptions to light. As I point out in my own comment, there are many OERs, including FreeReading, that are research-based, quality-screened, and then “frozen” to maintain that quality.
• I like the way from AAP discounts OERs. (Yes, these are the same people who, when asked about the problem of textbooks being too heavy for kids, suggested the solution of buying two copies for each kid so they never had to carry them.) Their rep then goes on to say “If digital formats are what teachers want…, textbook publishers have, over the past six or seven years, added digital materials to supplement print textbooks.” First, if he really thinks that those materials reflect the best of application of technology in instruction, I’d love to spend a couple hours with him showing him what is possible. More importantly, though, what we really want isn’t “digital formats”; it’s instructional materials that are accessible and relevant to students and that lend themselves to differentiation. We’re just so tired of trying to get publishers to address these real needs that we can’t wait any more (and our kids can’t wait) so we’re doing it through other channels. (This message is also a relevant one for Microsoft. I hear that they are not being so flip about denying the trend toward open source though.)
• I thought that some of the comments made online by readers were quite interesting. I hope that the readers of the print version of Ed Week get to see them. (This really points out how web-based journalism changes the dynamic of information delivery.) Here are a few:”Free Open Content materials help students around the world rich and poor to get access to great educational content. Our own Schools have been so economically strapped that about the only media materials that are available to teachers are Text Books and that is only because the Text book companies over the years have arranged for special funding for text books that is separate from the funding the schools get otherwise. Free and Open educational resources may one day break this expensive and inefficient monopoly.” – Herb Schuchard”The fact that textbooks are still a piece of school’s budget is a travesty. I can’t think of a more outdated educational learning tool.[and in addressing the concern about “scholarship” and accuracy]
  …Open source materials are valuable not b/c they’re ‘always right’, but because accessing the information is an educational experience in and of itself. Students are no longer looking up the ‘right answers’ in a textbook; they’re doing real research, weeding through the admittedly massive amounts of data out there to find the answers to their specific questions. It’s a matter of student-centric learning, as opposed to students learning what textbook publishers deem ‘valuable.'”

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* One of this misquotes was “teacher-based” instead of “research-based” in regards to FreeReading. Here’s the other:

After talking about the kids open dictionary and the decision to put it in the public domain (something we are very proud of) …

Interviewer: Aren’t you afraid people will just rip it off?

Me: No! We hope they do. We want people to use this in as many ways as possible. That’s the whole point.

This got translated into:

“‘We’re hoping lots of people will rip it off and do what they want with it­—it’s one of the most basic needed resources,” Ms. Fasimpauer [sic] said. ”

[sigh]

Here is an interesting poll of K-12 educators about their awareness of open licenses and CC.

(Note that at the time I’m posting this, the sample size is pretty small.)

My own experience in surveying hundreds of people at ed tech conferences (a group that should have somewhat higher awareness than the education community at large) is similar to this; the majority (perhaps 60-70%) have no familiarity with open licenses or CC.

I’m doing my part to spread the word. I hope you are too.

Jimmy Wales was recently a guest at the Long Now forum with Stewart Brand. The podcast was very thought-provoking. (Summary here; MP3 here.) Here are some random notes and reflections.

Asked to speak about “vision,” Wales began by saying he is “more of a carpenter than an architect.”

The vision of Wikipedia is to “imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”
[Even though I’ve heard/read this hundreds of times, I still paused and reflected on what a wondrous statement that is.]

Wikipedia is empowering everyone on the planet to get involved.
[Wikipedia has some interesting methods to involve the non-connected world…capturing local knowledge through non-digital means, distributing database dumps, etc. “Wikipedia is the killer app for the OLPC.”]

The free license of Wikipedia is key. Four dimensions of free license:
1. Copy
2. Modify
3. Redistribute
4. Redistribute modified copies (commercial or not)
[He neglected to discuss the issue of share alike or the IMHO onerous GFDL license; to me, these are both restrictions on freedom.]

Wikipedia is a top 20 web site and has a broader reach than the NYT, WSJ, MSNBC, and others combined.

Two views of how Wikipedia works: emergent phenomenon/evolution – “wisdom of crowds” vs. community of thoughtful users. Wales espouses the second view. He claims that most of the active Wikipedians really know each other and that trust and communication are foundational values.

Here’s a great story from Wales: Imagine you’re designing a restaurant. You’re going to serve steak. You’ll have steak knives. Steak knives are potentially dangerous. So obviously you build cages around all the tables, right?
This story was told to make the point that “When you prevent people from doing bad things,… you often prevent them from doing good things.”
In addition, a philosophy of trying to eliminate all potential of bad often eliminates opportunities for trust.
This is a good point for schools to consider.
I’ve been searching for an argument to rampant school blocking and filtering that will resonate with conservative school board members and the like. This is a good one, as is Kevin Honeycutt’s point made at Edubloggercon:
“If you ask kids to do the right thing, 99 times out of 100, they will….Why are we zero tolerant with digital, when analog isn’t that way?”

Wales talks about the value of dialog over voting.
[Maybe Wikia should take on reforming the democratic process in the U.S.? Larry Lessig could head it up. He didn’t really belong in Congress anyway.]