I've finished my script for my summary of learning. I intend to turn this into a PowToon to use as my summary of learning artifact. Comments welcome - it's been a fantastic course!
OLTD 505 - Summary of Learning by Graeme Campbell
OLTD 505 was all about sharing. We used some terminology to discuss the different types of sharing, but in general, it all came down to what we shared, what we were allowed to share, why we share and how we can be better sharers.
The course was broken down into six weeks with four different topics presented. I will discuss the content from these topics as well as some takeaways in this summary of learning. The topics are:
Foundations of Open Education
Free licenses, copyright and openess
Open Educational Resources
and
Making Learning Visisble
Foundations of Open Education
The basic premise of this week, and really the entire course, was the idea that knowledge should be freely available to everyone around the world. A number of articles pointed out that teachers used to be the keepers of knowledge - they had the resources, time and skill required to “pass on” the collected knowledge of the world.
With the advent of the internet, and especially Web 2.0 resources, this was no longer the case. Now, anyone could post or read content from a variety of sources. It started with open software - software that a number of programmers worked on, remotely, and then made freely available with the understanding that others would keep the openess of the software. This idea of “making it free with similar restrictions” would later be codified in the creative commons licenses, to be discussed later.
On the other side of this “openess” debate is the well established idea of copyright and the ownership of works and ideas. Copyright was created in order to give producers an incentive to create new content - if anyone could take what you made and repackage it for sale there wouldn’t be any impetus to actually create anything in the first place. Copyright is still the dominant method of licensing the work created by individuals even though the openess movement is taking hold.
I believe in both approaches and think they each have value in different context. Copyright is required in order to allow people to take great ideas and make enough money from them to be able to sustain those excellent ideas. I see the value in copyright and understand the time and money it takes to take an idea and turn it into an excellent product.
On the other hand, I appreciate those who create open works in order for the rest of the world to utilize their thinking and their talents. I myself contribute to open resources wherever possible and utilize them in my daily work as an educator. If we can share most of what we do, keeping only the most fundamental ideas under copyright, I feel we will strike a good balance between finance and openess.
Free licenses, copyright and openess
In the second week we considered the openness movement in a legal sense and considered the pros and cons of copyright versus copyleft.
Open Content is a term coined by David Wiley in 1999 to refer to content that could be freely shared and modified while ensuring that all future works could be similarly free to share and modify. We considered two styles of “license” when looking at open content - copyleft and creative commons.
Copyleft is the idea that you can license a work (use copyright) to put restrictions in place about when that work can be shared. Copyleft licensed works are really just copyright licensed works in disguise with the added requirement that any distribution of the work must include the terms that require it to be freely available and any modifications of the work also be freely available.
Creative Commons Licenses followed the copyleft idea and allowed for a variety of different methods of sharing work.
These methods include a CC-BY license which required all the work to be freely available and for credit given to the author. This work can be used for commercial purposes.
A CC-BY-NC license requires all future work to be freely available, give credit to the author and not be used in a commercial venture.
A CC-BY-SA license is one which allows for free use with appropriate attribution as long as an identical license is used in sharing.
CC-BY-NC-SA licenses mean that the work is freely available, the author must be credited, cannot be used for a commercial venture, and an identical license is required for sharing.
CC-BY-ND licenses mean the work is freely available and the author must be credited but it cannot be modified.
CC-BY-NC-ND licenses allow for the work to be used with attribution but no changes can be made and it cannot be used in a commercial venture.
The creative commons system has been incredibly useful for myself as a teacher. I have been able to show my students free alternatives to taking copyright content off of the internet for their projects and presentations. My one concern with respect to creative commons is the time it takes to properly format and reference the creative commons license. My students tend to either forget to copy the link, or only copy the link and forget to copy the important author and image names, causing them to have to return to every page they got creative commons work from. A tool would be excellent to allow for quick creative commons license generation!
Open Educational Resources
Open educational resources, or OER’s for short, are websites or other resources which are freely available, can be reshared, and contain a number of educationally related topics. These resources tend to be compilations around a theme, such as a particular content area or level of education, an entire course or a compilation of lessons. We considered OER’s in terms of the quality of the resources using some freely available rubrics.
Two resources which I looked at are Khan Academy and Desmos. While focusing on mathematics, the similarity between them ends there. Khan Academy is a series of video lectures on a wide variety of mathematical topics. The videos focus on the how of the mathematical content, providing viewers with some step-by-step analysis. There are a wide range of videos available covering most topics in elementary and secondary mathematical education.
Desmos, on the other hand, focuses on a few tasks, primarily created by Dan Meyer. These tasks tend to be very open-ended and the Desmos tools allows for student exploration of the content rather than a step-by-step analysis.
I love the different approaches these resources take to teaching similar topics. Both are very useful for different purposes and both are freely available. While neither technically qualifies as an open educational resource because these cannot be freely reshared or modified, both are freely available repositories of useful learning activities which sticks with the spirit of OER’s.
Making Learning Visible
The fourth week was devoted to considering the how and why of sharing the work that we do in our classrooms, and teaching in general.
Dean Shareski created a keynote address devoted to the idea that sharing is not only a good idea but is an obligation of teachers - essentially, it is the essence of teaching. I agree with his assertion and make every effort to share the work I do and the information I find.
I utilize a number of tools and social media platforms in order to both consume, but also to share, valuable educational resources. I start my mornings with a cup of coffee and 10 minutes on either Twitter or some educational blogs which I follow. Throughout the day I will use my iPhone to take images or video of the different activities my students are engaging in and share these out to my social networks.
One of the reasons that I sometimes choose not to share something is because it seems mundane or “simple” rather than groundbreaking and amazing. I have to remind myself that some very simple ideas I get from someone else on Twitter can turn into amazing lesson plans that I utilize fully in my own classroom. By sharing even the small pieces of my day I hope to make an impact on others.
An interesting discussion that I had with others was the role of the employer in teacher created work. It was interesting to discover that, on a number of occasions, courts had ruled that teacher work was owned by the employer regardless of the time and location used to create this work. I agree with this stance because I would not be able to make the lessons and resources I do without the ongoing financial support from my employer. They are, essentially, paying for me to do a job which includes creating the resources I create.
In conclusion I have learned a number of the major ideas, terms and concepts around open education during this course. I have been introduced to a number of new open educational resources, as well as a number of new tools that I can bring into my classroom. I will continue to strive to share the work that I, and my students, create and utilize open resources wherever possible.
Thank you for taking the time to view this video.
OLTD 505 was all about sharing. We used some terminology to discuss the different types of sharing, but in general, it all came down to what we shared, what we were allowed to share, why we share and how we can be better sharers.
The course was broken down into six weeks with four different topics presented. I will discuss the content from these topics as well as some takeaways in this summary of learning. The topics are:
Foundations of Open Education
Free licenses, copyright and openess
Open Educational Resources
and
Making Learning Visisble
Foundations of Open Education
The basic premise of this week, and really the entire course, was the idea that knowledge should be freely available to everyone around the world. A number of articles pointed out that teachers used to be the keepers of knowledge - they had the resources, time and skill required to “pass on” the collected knowledge of the world.
With the advent of the internet, and especially Web 2.0 resources, this was no longer the case. Now, anyone could post or read content from a variety of sources. It started with open software - software that a number of programmers worked on, remotely, and then made freely available with the understanding that others would keep the openess of the software. This idea of “making it free with similar restrictions” would later be codified in the creative commons licenses, to be discussed later.
On the other side of this “openess” debate is the well established idea of copyright and the ownership of works and ideas. Copyright was created in order to give producers an incentive to create new content - if anyone could take what you made and repackage it for sale there wouldn’t be any impetus to actually create anything in the first place. Copyright is still the dominant method of licensing the work created by individuals even though the openess movement is taking hold.
I believe in both approaches and think they each have value in different context. Copyright is required in order to allow people to take great ideas and make enough money from them to be able to sustain those excellent ideas. I see the value in copyright and understand the time and money it takes to take an idea and turn it into an excellent product.
On the other hand, I appreciate those who create open works in order for the rest of the world to utilize their thinking and their talents. I myself contribute to open resources wherever possible and utilize them in my daily work as an educator. If we can share most of what we do, keeping only the most fundamental ideas under copyright, I feel we will strike a good balance between finance and openess.
Free licenses, copyright and openess
In the second week we considered the openness movement in a legal sense and considered the pros and cons of copyright versus copyleft.
Open Content is a term coined by David Wiley in 1999 to refer to content that could be freely shared and modified while ensuring that all future works could be similarly free to share and modify. We considered two styles of “license” when looking at open content - copyleft and creative commons.
Copyleft is the idea that you can license a work (use copyright) to put restrictions in place about when that work can be shared. Copyleft licensed works are really just copyright licensed works in disguise with the added requirement that any distribution of the work must include the terms that require it to be freely available and any modifications of the work also be freely available.
Creative Commons Licenses followed the copyleft idea and allowed for a variety of different methods of sharing work.
These methods include a CC-BY license which required all the work to be freely available and for credit given to the author. This work can be used for commercial purposes.
A CC-BY-NC license requires all future work to be freely available, give credit to the author and not be used in a commercial venture.
A CC-BY-SA license is one which allows for free use with appropriate attribution as long as an identical license is used in sharing.
CC-BY-NC-SA licenses mean that the work is freely available, the author must be credited, cannot be used for a commercial venture, and an identical license is required for sharing.
CC-BY-ND licenses mean the work is freely available and the author must be credited but it cannot be modified.
CC-BY-NC-ND licenses allow for the work to be used with attribution but no changes can be made and it cannot be used in a commercial venture.
The creative commons system has been incredibly useful for myself as a teacher. I have been able to show my students free alternatives to taking copyright content off of the internet for their projects and presentations. My one concern with respect to creative commons is the time it takes to properly format and reference the creative commons license. My students tend to either forget to copy the link, or only copy the link and forget to copy the important author and image names, causing them to have to return to every page they got creative commons work from. A tool would be excellent to allow for quick creative commons license generation!
Open Educational Resources
Open educational resources, or OER’s for short, are websites or other resources which are freely available, can be reshared, and contain a number of educationally related topics. These resources tend to be compilations around a theme, such as a particular content area or level of education, an entire course or a compilation of lessons. We considered OER’s in terms of the quality of the resources using some freely available rubrics.
Two resources which I looked at are Khan Academy and Desmos. While focusing on mathematics, the similarity between them ends there. Khan Academy is a series of video lectures on a wide variety of mathematical topics. The videos focus on the how of the mathematical content, providing viewers with some step-by-step analysis. There are a wide range of videos available covering most topics in elementary and secondary mathematical education.
Desmos, on the other hand, focuses on a few tasks, primarily created by Dan Meyer. These tasks tend to be very open-ended and the Desmos tools allows for student exploration of the content rather than a step-by-step analysis.
I love the different approaches these resources take to teaching similar topics. Both are very useful for different purposes and both are freely available. While neither technically qualifies as an open educational resource because these cannot be freely reshared or modified, both are freely available repositories of useful learning activities which sticks with the spirit of OER’s.
Making Learning Visible
The fourth week was devoted to considering the how and why of sharing the work that we do in our classrooms, and teaching in general.
Dean Shareski created a keynote address devoted to the idea that sharing is not only a good idea but is an obligation of teachers - essentially, it is the essence of teaching. I agree with his assertion and make every effort to share the work I do and the information I find.
I utilize a number of tools and social media platforms in order to both consume, but also to share, valuable educational resources. I start my mornings with a cup of coffee and 10 minutes on either Twitter or some educational blogs which I follow. Throughout the day I will use my iPhone to take images or video of the different activities my students are engaging in and share these out to my social networks.
One of the reasons that I sometimes choose not to share something is because it seems mundane or “simple” rather than groundbreaking and amazing. I have to remind myself that some very simple ideas I get from someone else on Twitter can turn into amazing lesson plans that I utilize fully in my own classroom. By sharing even the small pieces of my day I hope to make an impact on others.
An interesting discussion that I had with others was the role of the employer in teacher created work. It was interesting to discover that, on a number of occasions, courts had ruled that teacher work was owned by the employer regardless of the time and location used to create this work. I agree with this stance because I would not be able to make the lessons and resources I do without the ongoing financial support from my employer. They are, essentially, paying for me to do a job which includes creating the resources I create.
In conclusion I have learned a number of the major ideas, terms and concepts around open education during this course. I have been introduced to a number of new open educational resources, as well as a number of new tools that I can bring into my classroom. I will continue to strive to share the work that I, and my students, create and utilize open resources wherever possible.
Thank you for taking the time to view this video.