From Wikiversity
Teacher in primary school in northern Laos.
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- For some of us, the process of composing educational
resources has come a long way from a blackboard, or borrowing books
from a library, or photocopying handouts, or even creating slide
presentations - for others, these methods remain necessary. Anyone
who has had more than a superficial understanding of the Internet these days knows
there are more resources and methods available to us now than at
any other point in the history of education. For most people
however, accessing and knowing how to use the Internet effectively
prevents them from accessing this wealth of resources. This course
will guide you to accessing Internet resources and producing
resources in a way that crosses online to offline.
- The questions in this course are:
-
- How can we more effectively find resources?
- How can we efficiently manage all the resources that we
find?
- How can we then educational resources?
To join this course: Participation in this
course is free. It involves an approximate time commitment of 5
hours per week for 10 weeks. The next facilitated session is
scheduled to start on the 1st September 2009. If you would like to
join, simply complete the tasks in the Orientation section of this webpage.
Alternatively, you can start and finish at any time, working
through the schedule below, at a pace that suits you. If you think
you will benefit from receiving focused and personal learning
support, assessment services, and/or certification, please consider
enrolling as a formal participant. You can inquire about formal
enrollment by emailing: leighblackall AT gmail DOT com
Schedule
Orientation
Spend a week orientating yourself and introducing yourself to the
course
- A week spent orientating yourself into the course, the
commitment required, the assignments and what else is involved. For
those new to this way of learning online, this week will seem
daunting. Get through it and the rest of the course will flow for
you nicely.
To do
- Set up a blog for your weekly work in this course. If you
already have a blog, you are welcome to use that so long as you can
clearly indicate what posts are for this course. If you are new to
blogging, refer to Blogger help
resources.
- Post to your blog a little bit about you and why you are
joining in with the course.
- Introduce yourself to the course by adding your blog's web
address to the
participant blog list
- Prepare your computer and attend the first of our regular meetings (Date
TBA)
Copyright and our right to
copy
Copyright applies to any expressible form
of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and
fixed in a medium. The default is for works to be "All Rights
Reserved" - meaning you cannot make copies without expressed
permission from the copyright holder.
- Before we do anything with educational resources, we need
to consider the issue of copyright. Copyrights - or the rights of
you and others to copy, directly impacts on your ability to create,
reuse, and distribute educational resources. You need to ask
yourself: Can you afford to use restricted content, and how does it
restrict the way you use it? Should you use free for reuse content,
and how would you know if something was restricted or free for
reuse? Will you permit others to copy, create or redistribute your
resources?
To do:
1. You should write one blog post with the title as "Copyright
and our right to copy" that refers to the following readings:
2. Your blog post should discuss all these resources ellaborate
on why copyright is as it is, why how Lessig is claiming that we
need "Free Culture", and what problems Fioretti has highlighted.
Try to also contextualize these ideas into your own work and
country.
Managing collections of
resources
Finding resources is one thing, managing what you find so it can be
recovered again later is another thing all together
- In this topic we will explore tools for managing online
resources. The tools we will use simply bookmark resources where
they are on the Internet, saving you time and storage. If you think
there is a chance that the resource will not remain, you should
download it and manage it in a filing system that you normally use.
'
To do
- Watch the demo video on how to use Diigo. Create an
account on Diigo, join the Composing Educational Resources group,
and bookmark that video using the tag word CER09 as well as your
own tag words. Find other resources that explain Diigo and bookmark
them using the tag word CER09 as well.
- Create an account on Youtube and search for videos about Diigo.
When you find videos you like, click the link in the bottom left of
the video that says "Favorite". When you have favourited a number
of videos, view your account (Youtube.com/YOUR USER NAME) and
bookmark the webpage to your Diigo account using the tag word
CER09
- Write a post to your blog that tells about your experience
doing these tasks, and describes how you understand Diigo to be
useful in your own settings. Tag that blog post to your Diigo
account using the tag word CER09.
- Join an online meeting (Date TBA) to discuss with other
participants your experiences and ideas.
Search
techniques
There are more ways to search for resources then by Google
- We will look at 3 search techniques. Advanced search
through Google and collective search engines like CC; search
specific sites and collections known for free media and resources;
connecting to networks and information feeds for future
finds.
To do
- Bring up the normal Google search page, and click "advanced
search". At the bottom of the various input fields you will see a
link that reads, "+Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more".
Clicking this link will expose further options, the one we are
interested in is the drop down menu called "usage rights". Use all
this to refine your search for an educational resource in your
preferred subject area. Use Diigo to bookmark 3 resources you find
useful. Remember to double check the license!
- Phew, that was probably harder than it should have been. Now
try the collected search on the
Creative Commons website.
- There are a large number of web services that host reusable
media. Most notably Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons,
Archive.org and many others. Join a web meeting to tour many of
these sites and discuss the idea of using networks and feeds to
find resources.
Finding, creating and
publishing texts
To do
- Join an online meeting (Date TBA) to consider the question of
how we can find and/or re/produce educational texts for both on and
offline use.
- Find at least 1 talk or paper that considers searching for
and/or re/producing educational texts and summarise its key points
to less than 250 words.
- Find an example of an educational text that is designed for on
and offline use, it could be a text that has been produced
deliberatley for both purposes or software functionaility or
process design that facilitates such a cross over.
- Write a post to your blog that reviews the discussion had in
the meeting, that introduces and summarises the talk or paper you
have referenced, and outlines how you will go about locating and/or
re/producing an educational text for on and offline use in your
work. Make sure you link to or reference your sources.
Finding, creating
and publishing pictures
Photographers in New York City.
- A picture paints a thousand words
To do
- You should write only one (1) blog post but do all the things
below:
- Study the links below, and search for images of your home
town.
- Use a digital camera to take photos in your home town, or for
an educational resource you are working on.
- Edit the photos that you have chosen (crop, add text or
graphics, create new images with graphics).
- Join Flickr and upload the photos that you selected.
Describe photos with tags, place them on a map and add a Creative
Commons Attribution license to your images.
- Join Wikimedia Commons and upload one or more of your photos
there as well.
- Search for similar images to what you have loaded to Wikimedia
Commons and Flickr Creative
Commons.
- Write a blog post where you summarize what you done in this
task, including adding your image to your blog post. Tell us if you
have found images in Flickr and Wikimedia Commons that are reusable
as an educational resource in your subject area. If yes, show us an
example image in your blog and tell us how you think it useful. If
no, find at least 3 other image libraries that might have images
you can reuse.
Finding, creating and
publishing audio
There are a range of sites for finding reusable audio. There
is free software available for creating audio. And publishing your
audio so that it is accessible, rusable and connected is free and
simple.
To do
- Search for audio related to your subject area at Archive.org.
Search for music
Finding, creating and
publishing video
Start
planning
- Prepare for and promote the upcoming conference
To do
- Write a post to your blog with ideas for the course mini
conference.
- Visit the blogs of other participants, and leave comments
encouraging other ideas you like.
- Join a planning meeting for the conference date TBA
Course
mini conference
- Over this week you present your work at a course mini
conference and attend the presentations of other
participants
To do
- Confirm details for your 15 minute presentation listed in the
course mini conference.
- Assist in promotion of the events and in getting people to
attend.
- Present your work at the course mini conference and attend as
many if not all other events in the conference.
- Help document the conference by posting commentary about other
presentations to your blog.
Projects
A library of resouces, links to resources that is
Aim to complete the following 3 projects for this course. These
projects are used to assess learning and to award certification for
the course.
Project 1: Topical
reading and blogging
Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it
Follow the course schedule, read the assigned material,
participate in any events, and post notes to your blog with
responses to questions and tasks in the topic schedule. You should
also post to your blog progress reports on your assignments. Your
blogging should demonstrate your understanding of the assigned
reading material and events, and should include original thoughts,
synthesis and references. Don't just summarize readings or events.
Making connections between the weekly topics, or previous blogging
(of your own or of other participants) is strongly encouraged.
To keep up with the contributions of other participants, you may
wish to set up an (RSS) news reader and subscribe to their blogs.
This will save you a lot of time by not having to go to each blog.
News readers are a very efficient and simple way to establish a
connection with others in the course, and to stay up to date with
what they are doing.
Project 2: Develop and publish a library of educational
resources
Use search and management techniques learned in this course to
compose a collection of reusable educational resources to do with
your own subject area. All resources should have non restrictive
copyrights and can include things as simple as images, through to
video and audio as well as other collections. Your collection
should be publicly available and online with usefully short
descriptions for each item. For example: Here is my own collection of
resources I used to compose this course.
Project
3: Develop and publish an educational resource
Use production techniques learned during this course to compose
your own educational resource. Your resource will use text, images,
audio and video, and it will be usable both on and off-line and in
both digital and non digital formats. Your resource will also
include content sampled from other legitimate sources, and have the
appropriate attributions and acknowledgments.
HELP
Remember, those who are formally enrolled in this course with
Otago Polytechnic have access to learning support services. Please
contact the facilitators for help with the course content and
assessments. Please contact Otago Polytechnic's Community Learning
Centres in Forth St, Princes St Mosgiel or Alexandra Community Learning
Centres for help with computer and internet access as well as
technical assistance with blogs, RSS and related Internet research
and communication skills. The Bill Robertson Library is
available for support with information research. And the Student Learning Centre
in F Block of the Forth Street Campus is available for one to one
tutorial support in all of the above. For those who are formally
enrolled but have limited access to these services, when in New
Zealand please call 0800 762 786 and ask to speak to any of these
services.
-
- Student Service Desk for
technical computing assistance, e.g., Elluminate (computer
conferencing) is available from Otago Polytechnic by phone and
email. Check out the website for the list of services.
- Phone: 0800 765 948
- Email: itssATtekotagoDOTacDOTnz
Ensure you tell them your name, lecturer's name, name of the
course, and a brief description of the problem. They may ask for
your username as well.
This
course is also used in
Acknowledgements
This course has been developed by Leigh Blackall for the
Educational Development Centre of Otago Polytechnic, drawing from
the Wikiversity course Composing
Free and Open Online Educational Resources. The structure and
openness of the course draws inspiration originally from the Introduction to Open
Education course by David Wiley.
Wikis
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