Okay, not really. I did change the name to 39/51, so that’s an update. I’m coming back here is to try again to compile, organize, and maybe accidentally disseminate what I’m thinking about.
We’ll see how that goes.
Notes from Tuesday’s Open Source Curriculum Praxis series
- Open Source Curriculum informs our college’s discussion about the role of course content, Distance Learning, and even instruction.
- Steve is using open source curriculum in all of his sessions this term
- Question of efficiency? Question of accuracy and professionalism?
- Looked at MIT OpenCourseWare
- $$ is no longer required to learn, but is it required for education?
- good question!
- What are the implications for instructional design? for instrution? for education?
- are we knowledge brokers?
- are we content creators?
- are we guides? counselors? designers?
- basic premise (for me): I’ve been here before, and here’s what I have to offer. Interested?
- open-source has obviated what has been true for a while now
- necessitates pre-assessment, student-oriented design, and clear communication and respect
- The K-12 system is creating more self-directed learners, and there is an increasing competition among educational institutions
- Creative Commons — open-source copyright system
- This boils down, it seems to me, to negotiation — we need to discuss, keep in touch, vet, filter, and think critically and creatively!
- Clay Sherky — Here Comes Everybody
Perfection is for suckers.
This is my mantra for the week, and maybe for a while: “Perfection is for suckers.”
(Obviously I’m still not a… strong… blogger.)
Contextual support materials
(Note: this post is a result of a meeting I had a few minutes ago with Ann. Whether or not it is a good idea to post such things on my blog remains to be seen, but I can’t think of a better place, at the moment.)
Right now we have a DL support page where students and faculty can find information and answers to their questions. Most of the information and answers point to our LMS (okay, CMS – whatever Steve! 
), which is where students/faculty will implement these answers.
We should be storing, creating, and organizing our support materials in our LMS! Duh, I know, but this was problematic with Bb because of the way it required accounts to access information stored on the server. With Moodle we can create a public “layer” that contains all of our support materials, and make that available to everyone (including folks already in and using the system).
This is basically expanding the idea we’re trying with NOTE to students. Again, I think this is an obvious move to anyone who hasn’t been in the thick of it with Bb and CCC.
Or maybe I’m forgetting something… .
Web 2.0, Gaming and Mobile Computing
(Joel’s notes disclaimer: even though we may have been sitting together, I might have not been at the same presentation 
)
Session summary: featured presentation that described the growing “virtual” world of distributed, social, and collaborative sharing, education, work, and play.
Main take-aways: the world-wide web is not, in fact, world-wide (yet), and, for it to succeed as a connecting mechanism, it needs to be. As things accelerate, they become smaller (“micro-content”), and perhaps we need to guard our ability to slow down so we don’t lose the “big picture.” The conceit of technology is that it works; the wonder of technology is that it works. This new model of distributed, collaborative production requires new negotiations around how we survive (could it be time for another conversation about socialism and capitalism?).
Shared resources: http://www.nitle.org/, http://www.nitle.org/www/site/staff/bryan_alexander, http://b2e.nitle.org/
“Using Faculty Learning Community to Support Collaborative Online Course Development”
Session summary: presenters described a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) created with a 6-faculty Nursing Dept.
Main take-aways:
- programmatic development vs. course development — is this an even better idea as we’re trying to build collaborative communities of practice, increase adoption and ownership (buy-in), and use our resources more efficiently?
- sooner rather than later, we should gather student feedback on what they would like to see offered online, how it should be offered, and other questions to help us address their wants and needs
- we should seriously consider explicitly involving librarians in course development (and certainly in programmatic development) — in addition to finding resources, perhaps they could help with organization, media, and copyright clearance?
- best predictors of success seemed to be setting clear goals, creating a good timeline, having regular and relatively frequent check-ins, and working with goal-oriented community members
- could we fund programmatic development more easily? Grants? Professional development funds? Dept. budget? (I know, the only real possibility there is “Grants”
- idea that faculty didn’t want to “be students” and wanted, instead, to particpate in a collaborative community of learners — Faculty Learning Community > Learning Community — same consideration needed for students
Resources: Articulate, Center of Online Learning, Miami University, Beth Dietz-Uhler and Andrea Han
“Fulfilling the Need for Real-Time Interaction in the Online Environment”
Session summary: group of instructors from PCC demonstrated their success with Elluminate.
Main take-aways:
- the time has come to offer tech tool support via Connect/Elluminate/etc.
- online meeting rooms can be a student-to-student resource, as well as a resource for instructors (assuming student interaction is logged)
- Elluminate may deal with slower connections (56k) better than Connect
