K12 Open Ed

As a part of my interest in building awareness for OER in the K-12 community, I’ve been doing presentations at various ed tech conferences. I have been very happy with how enthusiastic the audiences have been about this topic. (Most of them have not heard of OER before.) Not only are they excited about “free stuff,” but they really understand how OER could provide a alternative to traditional textbooks and software.

Several groups have asked me to expand my one-hour presentation to a half- or full-day hands-on workshop. In doing this, I’ve set up the hands on activities posted here. These are designed to be short activities that folks can do in a short time to get familiar with wiki editing, licensing issues, mass collaboration, and curriculum sharing.

As with the presentation materials, this is all licensed under CC-BY-SA, so feel free to use and adapt for your own workshops or other uses.

And if you have ideas for other short, easy-to-do activities to get folks excited about OER, I’d love to hear from you.

Curriki has a new group feature that I’ve been playing with at a few Open Ed workshops I’ve been doing.

If you’d like to see it, visit the K-8 Math Collaborative Project I set up. After you join the group, go to the Curriculum tab, choose a level, and add a few word problems or other resources.

K-12 schools have some unique circumstances that can make using OERs a challenge. Among these are concerns about inappropriate content (prompting the need for a pre-screened “frozen” version of materials) and extensive filtering and blocking systems that make accessing some open sites impossible.

As such, I am going to start work on an Open Content CD for K-12 educators. Most likely, this will either be a free downloadable resource or perhaps nominally priced ($5?) to cover shipping. (I’m worried that this will make it “commercial” though, which will restrict the content I can include. On the other hand, a free download will likely be large and may limit its usefulness to some teachers. A dilemma. Any thoughts?)

If you are interested in this idea, take a minute to complete a short survey so I  can get ideas about what would be most useful to you.

OK, I’ve given a close read to the Capetown Open Education Declaration. (If, like me, you’ve put off doing so because of time constraints, take 5 minutes and look it over. It is neither long nor complex.)

For all the apparent controversy surrounding this document, I really can’t imagine why folks are fussing about it. It is a simple and straightforward document that outlines the basic principles of the OER movement and the potential it offers.

As for the criticisms, yes, I agree that the drafting process could have been more”open” (though many people like me, a “nobody” in this field, were given opportunities to offer comment), but perhaps the writers have learned from the experience. And regardless of the process, the results are laudable. Signing the declaration is an endorsement of the general idea of OER, nothing more. (Once I worked for an organization that involved a group that had a great deal of discord. It was once said that if there was a proposal to give everyone $100, an agreement couldn’t be reached. Sometime the OER community reminds me of that.)

And as for the backlash from what David Wiley calls the “Libre License League,” their militant and non-inclusive approach threatens to relegate the OER movement to a fringe effort. I think it’s wonderful that some materials are completely free, but why insist that everything meet these criteria? Why castigate those who opt for licenses that while not completely free still offer materials to millions of learners worldwide at no charge? (And as for commercial publishers, even they understand that OER is emerging as a challenge to them. They are not salivating at reading this declaration as some suggest.)

It’s very odd to me that people involved in open endeavours would have such an elitist orientation. What happened to live and let live? Everyone has to make their own choices.

At any rate, I’ve digressed. If you haven’t, read the declaration. Spread the word. Keep doing good work. And share nicely.

 Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director of ccLearn, sent this message out about the recently issued Capetown declaration on OER:

Dear friends and colleagues,

Some of you may already know that I have been working with the Shuttleworth Foundation, Wikimedia and other organizations to draft and release this Declaration on the future of open education:

http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/

The Declaration is a rallying point for people who want to accelerate the growth of innovative, collaborative approaches to learning. We’re asking people to sign on to the Declaration online:

http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/sign-declaration

The Declaration officially launches next Tuesday (Jan 22), and we are hoping to have as many people as possible indicating their support. Obviously, you should only sign it if you agree with it! But speaking from a totally biased perspective, the ideas within are highly compelling, and the potential positive impacts on education of all levels and forms are likely to be substantial. This is the first time that the various people and organizations working on “opening up” educational materials and practices have made a joint statement that establishes some fundamental principles driving the movement. I certainly hope you will join in, regardless of your particular relationship to openness and formal education.

I am always happy to discuss further anything related to this effort or open education generally. Please do pass this along to anyone else who might be interested.

Others have blogged about this extensively already. I’ve been waiting to comment until I had a little more time. Stay tuned for my thoughts.

If you haven’t read this and decided whether to add your signature, now is a good time.