Monday, October 4, 2010
Last time I blogged, I mentioned how Open Source Software is not being implemented in schools like it should be in this day and age. There are many reasons why but the one I truly believe is that teachers simply do not know about Open Source.
The first thing we did this week was a have a Breeze chat with Anya Kamenetz. It was an interesting start to class due to the series of technology malfunctions we had to start the class. Though we are promoting e-Learning, we were reminded that technology still has kinks in it to be fixed. When we started the interactive chat, I quickly realized that she was a young, successful entrepreneur. She is the writing of DIY U...Do-it-Yourself University. In it she talks about alternative education. (Please watch the YouTube Anya Kamenetz on Alternative Education.)Students in the class asked many questions about her book. I actually went out and rented the book from the library. In it she stated three ways that DIY U can help the future. The second point, "Opening up the walls of the Ivy League & other elite colleges can demystify what goes on there and possibly even endear it to the public". First I thought this was an interesting point. If elite colleges were open to all, would all college students be on the same playing field? I think no as there are levels and schools within schools that makes them "elite colleges". Look at IU, IU is a good school but it is not a deemed "elite school" however schools such as the Kelley School of Business is an internationally elite and established business school. Secondly, I find it interesting that she made this point as she herself is a graduate of Yale University. What does she mean by this? I would love to know.
Next Dr. Bonk assigned four OER's to each one of us. Open Educational Resources are "Free-to-Use teaching and learning content from around the world" (OER Commons 2007). The ones I was assigned to explore were:
1. Tufts University’s OCW: http://ocw.tufts.edu/
2. Vietnam Fulbright Economics OCW: http://ocw.fetp.edu.vn/home.cfm
3. The Rai Foundation Colleges OCW project in India: http://www.raifoundation.org/aspirations.html
4. Teacher lesson plan sites: (see http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ and http://www.sitesforteachers.com/
My favorite out of all four was Hotchalk's Lesson Plan. It was so easily and simply to explore that it should be Lesson Plan for Dummies...but of course getting permission to use "for Dummies". So say I am a new teacher and I wanted to create a lesson. I would click on subject, grade level, category, and specific lesson. The lessons could incorporate several lessons like a recap or review or it could be one thing. For example: Math -> Pre-K - 1 -> Addition -> This lesson is on patterns, adding, and counting. It is so simple to develop a lesson plan as it has the topic, the grade level, the name of the activity (which teacher can change to suit the dynamics of their class), materials, purpose, and description of the activity. There are even sample problems that teachers can use. With sources such as this, especially FREE, there is only one reason why I can see teachers not using OER's...and that is because they do not know about them. We HAVE to get the word out there!
Atkins, Seely, and Hammond (2007) did A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, new opportunities. In their findings, they listed way more challenges than achievements. As a student, I find this disheartening as Open Source can also be used in Higher Education. Yes, there are new opportunities such as finding ways to both "advertise" these OER's to teachers as well as educate these teachers but we still seemly run into the challenge of teachers wanting to take the time to learn as learning then planning around their subjects in itself can be time consuming especially with subjects that get updated regularly. Though it is easier said than done, life is full of changes so deal with them.
References:
1. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Chelsea Green Publishing. February 2010.
2. OER Commons. 2007. Retrieved Monday, November 22, 2010 from http://www.oercommons.org/
3. Atkins, Dan, Brown, John Seely, & Hammond, Allen (2007, February). A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, new opportunities. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (84 pages). Retrieved on June 25, 2010, from http://www.oerderves.org/?p=23
What is Anya Kamenetz is really impressive, she is on the forefront of individual efforts in alternative learning approach. The idea of opening elite schools to the public in a way that makes it accessible to everyone is a nice idea, but I am not sure how it would benefit the people from an educational aspect! I mean shouldn't we focus on providing adequate education for everybody instead of paying the elite colleges to open their doors for such population!
ReplyDeleteThe OER and OCW that we looked at this week are great efforts by very creative and talented people, yet the issue of using these resources is at the center of this topic. There is almost an application or a resource for everything we might need in to improve the education process, yet we don't see the improvement we hope to see! So I think that developing an understanding of our technical needs should precede the integration of any technology.
Abdullah