Die Vertiefungsarbeit "Zusammenarbeit und Unterstützung im multimedialen Zeitalter" wurde im Rahmen eines Didaktik-Kurses geschrieben. Sie handelt von der Zusammenarbeit unter Dozierenden und der Zusammenarbeit und Unterstützung von Studierenden.

So my last post should have made it clear that what I am ultimately hoping to promote/support for BC is an authoring and publishing system for open textbooks that:

• can enable collaborative authoring if desired
• can be done “out in the open” to enable as much as possible the conditions for serendipity to emerge, so that content can spread viral-ly, new co-authors and unintended readers happily stumble upon it
• results in all of a web, print and eBook version (maybe more!) being produced as automagically as possible – i.e making the material as accessible as possible to as many learners as possible
• is easy for authors and readers alike to use
• is free/cheap and open/extensible (and produces open standards-based content)
• limits the choices upstream of what authors and reusers want to do with the book as little as possible
• gets me dates (ok, this last one was just a test to see how closely you were reading)

That’s not asking much, is it?

Mediawiki and Wikieducator

Luckily, there are some real pioneers in our field who have blazed trails in this area that those of us coming along later can follow. One of those groups of pioneers is made up of the folks at the Mediawiki foundation and Wikieducator (and I’d be remiss not to mention the Commonwealth of Learning and Wayne Mackintosh in particular for funding a lot of this work.) They have created extensions to Mediawiki, the open source wiki software that famously powers Wikipedia, that allow one to collect pages together and publish them as a printable PDF book. In addition, they worked with a print-on-demand outfit called PediaPress to enable seamless printing of the results.

To see/use this in action you need only to visit the Wikieducator site. On the left-hand nav there’s a link to Add a wiki page to a book. That’s right – books aren’t predetermined but can be made on the fly to include whatever pages you like. That’s not to say the instructor can’t pre-assemble an official “text,” but whether it be a student personalizing it or another instructor wanting to adopt it, the book can contain whatever contents you choose.

But you needn’t try it only on wikieducator; the Collections extension is freely downloadable and installable by anyone wishing to run this in their own mediawiki. There is also a second, unrelated extension, ePubexport, available to convert a set of pages into an ePub.

Now before we get to far, let me make it clear, I am not suggesting you have to do this on your own or that you shouldn’t use wikieducator. Indeed, that should probably be your FIRST question to yourself if this approach seems appealing – why would I not use wikieducator? Not only is it likely to be better supported than what you will do on your own, there are already scores of folks involved, some of whom may prove to be future collaborators. In addition, they have done lots of work creating templates and styles that come in very handy. So many of us talk about the importance of communities but then forget we don’t always have to create them ourselves; often it’s a more a question of finding those that exist and joining in.

Trying it out locally

However, I did install Mediawiki and these extensions for our open textbook pilot, in part because I wanted to learn for myself how they worked and also see what parts could be customized or improved upon. As a test, one of my colleagues gave me access to a Desire2Learn-based course from the Applied Business Technology. I exported the course to get access to the source files. A few things to note here:

• hey D2L – your exports still kinda SUCK! I don’t know who thought it would be cute to transform file paths into file _names_ but it’s just a PITA.
• there’s no simple way I’ve ever found of getting from an IMS Content Package to a wiki (or much else for that matter, and thank goodness for that – it would mean someone outside of higher education was actually taking IMS specs seriously, pshaw!) There is however some html import tools for mediawiki that are useful. There are also web-based HTML to mediawiki conversion tools to that can be helpful too.
• that said, the truth is that all of the approaches that let you output to multiple formats depend to a lesser or greater extent on clean markup. So while you can get existing stuff in, its almost always better, if you have the choice, to simply author in those environments from the get go.

Here are some of the results of this initial test (trust me, the irony of the subject matter is not lost on me) – the site itself, the generated printable PDF and the ePub.

Now before you criticize, these were done with no additional attention paid to page templates, transformations or additional CSS. I also did some initial tests and it does look like the resulting PDF is editable after the fact with Adobe Acrobat X Pro, meaning there is room for manual improvements to the file in addition to refinements to the export process. And I was able to open and improve upon other automatically generated ePub’s with the Sigil WYSIWYG ePub editor, and in very short order was able to remove some of the cruft and other formatting and turn it into something reasonably usable.

So how does this approach fare? Let’s run it through the above criteria I described and see:

• collaborative authoring – in spades!
• can be done “out in the open” – the very definition of it
• results in all of a web, print and eBook version – yep
• is easy for authors and readers alike to use – let’s come back to this
• is free/cheap and open/extensible (and produces open standards-based content) – yep, yep and yep
• limits the choices upstream of what authors and reusers want to do with the book as little as possible – given XML exports and a multitude of wiki conversion tools, I’d say the answer was yes.
• gets me dates – still left to be seen

So this approach seems to hit on most fronts. The big question is – is it easy to do and will instructors and others supporting them be able to bridge the gap between there current workflow and approaches and this new one?

Well many folks tell me this is just too much to expect, editing mediawiki seems just short of rocket science. And I have to concede, there is always room for improvements – I am holding out great hope that the still experimental Mediawiki WYSIWYG editor will be a big step forward, but even turning on the bundled (but not activated by default) WikEd editor is a major step forward. Even something like the Word2Mediawiki extension can serve as a useful bridging strategy (Open Office also exports natively to Mediawiki.) And implementing page templates (and wiki gardeners – a potential useful role for students too) can also make things much easier. So yes, there’s room for improvements, but is mediawiki simply just too difficult in the end regardless of what we do to improve it? If so, someone should tell the faculty and students at UBC to stop doing the impossible – their wiki continues to astound.

So I’m left thinking there is some real potential here that I want to pursue. I know there is technical work still to do. The bigger challenge, one that I’m not sure is surmountable, is the cultural chasm between the cult of authority in higher ed and the messy give and take that is a vibrant, collaborative wiki. It may well be that this is an approach that anticipates future potential benefits too highly over current realities of practice. That’s part of the reason we’re doing a number of pilots, to figure this out, and this is but one of a number of approaches being investigated. More on that in the next post. – SWL

(Author’s Note: This post was partly written, online I might add, while sailing across the Salish Sea. I just had to mention this as the fact that I could do this continues to blow my mind.)

An der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht (HWR) Berlin ist im Zentralreferat „Hochschulentwicklung“ am Campus Lichtenberg folgende Stelle zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt zu besetzen:

Ihr Aufgabengebiet:

• technischer Support der Projektgruppe „Blended Learning“
• Nutzer- und Anwendungsadministration aller Formen des E-Learning  (1st und 2nd Level Support)
• Unterstützung bei der Weiterentwicklung des zentralen Lernmanagementsystems Moodle
• Unterstützung bei der  Weiterentwicklung anderer Webservices (Blogs, Wikis, Virtual Classrooms, etc.)
• Unterstützung bei der Integration neuer Module und Webservices nach didaktischen und multimedialen Anforderungen
• Didaktische und technische Beratung, Anleitung, Koordination
• Durchführung von Schulungen und Präsentationen (Studierende und Lehrende)
• Zusammenarbeit mit externen Einrichtungen und anderen Hochschulen (Networking)
• Dokumentation der Prozesse
  

• ein abgeschlossenes (Fach-)Hochschulstudium in Informatik, einem angrenzenden Fach oder relevante Arbeitserfahrung von mindestens 12 Monaten
• ausgeprägte Kenntnisse im Projekt- und Prozessmanagement sowie Erfahrung in der Durchführung von IT-Projekten
• sehr gute Erfahrungen im E-Learningbereich
• dem Aufgabengebiet adäquate Erfahrungen als Mitarbeiter einer Hochschule
• Erfahrung in interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit
• Kenntnisse verschiedener Content Management Systeme und LernmanagementSysteme
• sehr gute Kenntnisse bei der Administration von Moodle  • ausgeprägte Kommunikationskompetenz, gute Teamfähigkeit sowie sehr gutes Organisationsgeschick
• zeitliche Flexibilität
  

Schwerbehinderte Bewerber/innen werden bei gleicher Qualifikation bevorzugt. Die Bewerbung von Frauen ist ausdrücklich erwünscht. Bewerbungen von Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund, die die Einstellungsvoraussetzungen erfüllen, sind ausdrücklich erwünscht.
Bitte senden Sie Ihre Bewerbungen mit den üblichen Unterlagen, unter Angabe der Kennzahl KN-Z 98/2011, bis zum 19.02.2012 an
die Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht (HWR) Berlin,
Badensche Straße 52
10825 Berlin
Online-Bewerbungen können leider nicht berücksichtigt werden.

Die Forschungsarbeiten und Studien aus aller Welt untersuchen aktuelle Probelm- und Fragestellungen der virtuellen Lehre. Die Zeitschrift ist online frei zugänglich unter: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/50.

Wir verweisen Sie hier auf drei interessante Artikel, die besonders relevant für das E-Learning im universitären Kontext sind:

• "Pretesting mathematical concepts with the mobile phone: Implications for curriculum design"
  In der Distanzlehre gibt es selten Konzepte, die das Vorwissen der Teilnehmenden zu Beginn eines Kurses überprüfen. Die Autorin beschreibt einen Test, bei dem der Wissensstand von Studenten eines Online-Mathematikkurses vor Beginn per Handy ermittelt wurde.

• "Investigating instructional strategies for using social media in formal and informal learning"
  Die qualitative Studie untersucht die Verwendung von Social Media an Fakultäten für öffentliche Verwaltung in den USA. Sie wertet eine Umfrage unter Dozierenden aus, wie deren Erfahrungen im Umgang mit Social Media in der Lehre sind.

• "Online social networks as formal learning environments: Learner experiences and activities"
  Auch dieser Bericht untersucht den Einsatz sozialer Netzwerke in der Lehre, allerdings aus der Perspektive der Lernenden. Dabei geht es um die Social Network Software Elgg, die im Rahmen eines Online-Kurses eingesetzt wurde.

• "Examining motivation in online distance learning environments: Complex, multifaceted and situation-dependent"
  Anhand der Selbstbestimmungstheorie (SDT) untersuchten die Autoren die Lernmotivation von Lehramtstudenten in zwei Distanzlehre-Kontexten. Die Studie zeigte, dass die intrinsische Motivation der Teilnehmenden eher gering war, stattdessen zeigte sich die Motivation als komplex, vielseitig und abhängig von situationsspezifischen Umständen.
  

• "A pedagogical framework for mobile learning: Categorizing educational applications of mobile technologies into four types"
  Mobile Technologien kommen als Learning Tools in der Distanzlehre zum Einsatz. Doch es gibt kaum wissenschaftliche Bemühungen, die zahlreichen Beispiele von mobilem Lernen zu kategorisieren und fundierte Richtlinien für sie zu erstellen. Der Artikel erarbeitet einen theoretischen Bezugrahmen für mobiles Lernen im Kontext der Distanzlehre.
  
  
  

Vom 11. bis 13. September 2012 findet an der University of Manchester / UK die jährliche International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT-C 2012) statt. “A confrontation with reality” lautet das Motto der 19. ALT-C, wobei folgende Fragen diskutiert werden sollen:

• How can learning technology better support the core processes of learning, teaching, assessment, recruitment and retention?
• What will be the place of open educational resources and other kinds of free, shared, low cost or informal support and organisation in good provision?
• How should we respond to learners themselves, who are increasingly voluble in their desire for value for money and for effective use of technology?

Bis zum 27. Februar haben Sie die Möglichkeit einen Beitrag in Form eines Abstracts (max. 450 Wörter) oder als ein voll ausgearbeitetes Exposé (bis zu 5000 Wörter) einzureichen.
Weitere Informationen zur Konferenz und die genauen Einreichungsrichtlinien finden Sie unter http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2012.

An der Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht (HWR) Berlin ist im Zentralreferat „Hochschulentwicklung“ am Campus Lichtenberg folgende Beschäftigungsposition zu besetzen:

Bezeichnung:   Beschäftigte/r – Entgeltgruppe 11
– (TV-L Berliner Hochschulen, bisher IVa/III BAT-O) mit 50 % der
regelmäßigen wöchentlichen Arbeitszeit

Besetzbar: ab sofort, befristet bis 30.09.2016

Die Beschäftigungsposition wird finanziert aus Mitteln des
BundLänder-Programms für bessere Studienbedingungen und mehr Qualität in
der Lehre (3. Säule Hochschulpakt).

Kennzahl: KN-Z 98/2011 (Nachausschreibung)

Aufgabengebiet:

• technischer Support der Projektgruppe „Blended Learning“
• Nutzer- und Anwendungsadministration aller Formen des E-Learning  (1st und 2nd Level Support)
• Unterstützung bei der Weiterentwicklung des zentralen Lernmanagementsystems Moodle
• Unterstützung bei der  Weiterentwicklung anderer Webservices (Blogs, Wikis, Virtual Classrooms, etc.)
• Unterstützung bei der Integration neuer Module und Webservices nach didaktischen und multimedialen Anforderungen
• Didaktische und technische Beratung, Anleitung, Koordination
• Durchführung von Schulungen und Präsentationen (Studierende und Lehrende)
• Zusammenarbeit mit externen Einrichtungen und anderen Hochschulen (Networking)
• Dokumentation der Prozesse

Anforderungen:

• ein abgeschlossenes (Fach-)Hochschulstudium in Informatik, einem
  angrenzenden Fach oder relevante Arbeitserfahrung von mindestens 12
  Monaten
• ausgeprägte Kenntnisse im Projekt- und Prozessmanagement sowie Erfahrung in der Durchführung von IT-Projekten
• sehr gute Erfahrungen im E-Learningbereich
• dem Aufgabengebiet adäquate Erfahrungen als Mitarbeiter einer Hochschule
• Erfahrung in interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit
• Kenntnisse verschiedener Content Management Systeme und LernmanagementSysteme
• sehr gute Kenntnisse bei der Administration von Moodle  •
  ausgeprägte Kommunikationskompetenz, gute Teamfähigkeit sowie sehr
  gutes Organisationsgeschick
• zeitliche Flexibilität

Schwerbehinderte Bewerber/innen werden bei gleicher Qualifikation
bevorzugt. Die Bewerbung von Frauen ist ausdrücklich erwünscht.
Bewerbungen von Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund, die die
Einstellungsvoraussetzungen erfüllen, sind ausdrücklich erwünscht.

Bitte senden Sie Ihre Bewerbungen mit den üblichen Unterlagen, unter Angabe der Kennzahl, bis zum 19.02.2012 an die Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht (HWR) Berlin, Pers 7 – , Badensche Straße 52 in 10825 Berlin

Online-Bewerbungen können leider nicht berücksichtigt werden. Wir
machen darauf aufmerksam, dass eingereichte Unterlagen nicht
zurückgesandt werden.

Die HWR Berlin wurde im Jahre 2011 zum vierten Mal aufgrund ihrer
erfolgreichen Aktivitäten für die Chancengleichheit mit dem Total
E-Quality Science Award ausgezeichnet.

Die Stellenanzeige finden Sie auch auf der Webseite der Hochschule.

Nun ist sie also raus, die Ankündigung zum #opco12, dem neuen OpenCourse 2012. Das Thema sind Trends im E-Teaching und dazu soll der Horizon Report unter die Lupe genommen werden. Als Veranstalter kooperieren studiumdigitale und Weiterbildungsblog, namentlich Claudia Bremer und Jochen Robes, die ihre Erfahrung aus dem opco11 einbringen, das Multimedia Kontor Hamburg mit Marc Göcks, welches die deutsche Version des Horizon Reports verantwortet und e-teaching.org mit dem Hintergrund mehrerer Themenspecials und Dutzenden Online-Events.

Beim #opco11 war ich Teilnehmer und habe den Kurs auch hier kritisch begleitet. Nun bin ich auf der anderen Seite gelandet und mit den vielen anderen Beteiligten noch eifrig dran, Konzept und Inhalte zu finalisieren. Gar nicht so einfach, bei einem bewährten Konzept methodische Impulse zu setzen - und natürlich die Hoffnung, dass das Konzept dann Anklang finden wird.

Bin jedenfalls als Mitveranstalter mindestens so gespannt auf den Kurs, wie ich es als Teilnehmer wäre. Die ersten Reaktionen, die praktisch Minuten nach der Ankündigung schon eintrudelten, lassen auf rege Teilnahme hoffen, so dass aus dem Open Online Course wirklich wieder ein Massive Open Online Course werden könnte.

Think that we can just "give every student an iPad" and presto! Education revolution? Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. I talked to a bunch of librarians, who didn't quite laugh at my questions about e-readers and tablets and iPads in the school setting. But damn. There are a lot of obstacles:  device management, distribution, vendor lock-in, DRM, and so on.

You can read my story "The Truth About Tablets" in the latest School Library Journal.

Am 16. April 2012 startet e-teaching.org einen Open Course zum Thema Trends im E-Teaching – der Horizon Report unter der Lupe. Der rein im Internet stattfindende Kurs ist gratis und offen für alle, die sich für die Entwicklung neuer Lehr-/Lernformen interessieren. Er greift innerhalb von 14 Wochen unter anderem sechs Technologietrends auf, die im Rahmen des 2012 Horizon Report (PDF) identifiziert wurden: Mobile Apps, Tablet Computing, Game-Based Learning, Learning Analytics, Gesture-Based Computing,  Internet of Things.

Anmeldung ab sofort auf http://opco12.de

A guest post on Geek Wire today caught my eye with its contention that the tweets that would come from the grand opening of the new Gates Foundation public visitor center would likely "reveal [a] passive, insular global health community."  The argument was based in part on the visualizations done by sociologist Marc Smith. Curious if Smith's visualizations about the Gates Foundation would uncover anything interesting about the education community (are we "passive" and "insular"?!), I had a look at some of his work on Flickr.  

And what did I find?  A wonderful visualization of the social network graph of Educon -- or at least a visualization of the connections between Twitter users who tweeted the word "educon" over the course of last weekend.  

The green lines are "follows" and the blue lines are "reply" or "mentions."

I love the visualization, as I think it reveals relationships, connections and -- far better than I could explain -- the sense of swirling and fast-paced conversations that occured both online and offline over the course of the three-day event.

Below is a visualization of the social network graph of the Gates Foundation -- or rather the connections between Twitter users who tweeted the word "gatesfoundation" between January 29 and 31.  Again, green lines represent "follow" relationships, and blue lines are "reply" or "mentions."

Granted, these aren't necessarily education-related tweets -- but still, it's a very different looking network having very different looking "conversations."

While the Geek Wire article cited above is addressing a disconnected global health community, this passage seems noteworthy to think about in other areas in which the non-profit is active:  "What the network shows is that Gates serves as a broadcaster (see the star network on the left side around Gates Twitter account), but does not help to encourage the community to actively connect with each other. Ties are not reciprocated and there are very little interactions among the overall community."

Clearly the community around Educon thrives on reciprocity.  You can see it in how we tweet.  But is it an insular community?  Are these conversations being heard outside that circle?

For a better view of the graphs, be sure to click through to Flickr and look at the full size images.  You'll also find more information there about NodeXL, the tool used to create the layout, as well as the Clauset-Newman-Moore algorithm used to calculate these different clusters.

As part of our efforts here in BC around Open Textbooks, I have asked those involved with the project to single out some of their favourite examples. You see, when we use the term “open textbooks” we all think we know what we mean by it, but like the blind men and the elephant, depending on your perspective, “open textbooks” can end up meaning many things, and so it felt like being able to point to specifics would be helpful.

For many, “open textbooks” seem to be primarily about cost savings, about saving money for both funders and learners, but not particularly about challenging the “form” of what we have known as a textbook. And I agree, affordability is a strong motivator to get into this space, and an obvious selling point for all the stakeholders (well, almost all – commercial publishers don’t seem exactly thrilled about it.)

But the need to save money is not the only force shaping the future of textbooks.

It is impossible to ignore the rise of eBooks, especially since Apple has decided to disrupt this market too.

Add to that all that we have learned over the years about the important affordances of the digital (copy-ability, fork-ability, remix-ability, interactivity and rich media) the network-enabled (discover-ability, collaboration, enabling serendipity, real time-ness) and the mobile (any time, any where).

Add to that questions about whether the model of learning implicit in “textbooks” has become outdated, alongside the explosion in the quantities of information we are experiencing, and it would seem that simply producing cheaper versions of what we currently have in printed textbooks is the very least we could aim for, as big an accomplishment as that would be in the short term.

So given all of that, what indeed should we be aiming for?

An All-eBook Future?

One approach (which with the advent of Apple’s new iBook authoring tool is sure to lure many folks) is to leap directly towards full-on electronic textbooks. Given the recent explosion in sales in both eReaders and eBooks, this looks to many like the future.

And undoubtedly, in part it is. While the sheer number of platforms and packaging formats may give you pause, eBooks are here for the foreseeable future, and offer many of the benefits of being digital and mobile. But not necessarily all of them, or at least the extent to which they enable these is very dependent on the way in which they are implemented. On their own, without some sort of network-based publishing system, eBooks don’t lend themselves that well to collaborative authoring. While plugins like Firefox’s ePub reader make some formats accessible to those without eReader devices, they don’t necessarily serve other populations (offline, disabled) well. They deny the importance of the resale market in textbooks (though this is perhaps not an issue for open textbooks.) While digital note taking and annotation is often trumpted as improved in eBooks, I’m not personally convinced that we’ve made the leap yet in terms of how people study with textbooks.

Are we ready for ALL eBooks all-the-time? Well no, I don’t think so. Will it take 25 more years for the printing press to finally disappear, or less. I don’t know, but my guess is it won’t be the case anytime soon, nor is it even totally desirable.

Wither the Web?

In some ways, eBooks seem actually an answer begged by the question of eBook-specific devices and the whole metaphor of “books as objects.”  People have been reading electronic materials even before the dawn of the web, and the rise of the multi-purpose tablet, led by the iPad and quickly followed by many Android-powered devices, seems to me to bode a short future for eReader-specific devices and the many of the formats they’ve spawned. And what of those eBook formats in general? Even those, when you dig in, most often look like just a packaging format for XHTML/XML content and little more. And with the increased rich media capabilities of modern browsers coupled with HTML5, one is left wondering if there is anything that specific to “eBooks.” Google seemed to question just that when it produced this “20 Things I Learned about the Web” book using only HTML5.

In many ways, the book/ebook/web distinction needs to be understood along the same lines as the App/Site distinction and the overall fight for generativity. (As an aside, if you haven’t read it already, please get yourself a copy of Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It [free PDF copy here] to help undestand this term and how it underpins what so many of us are fighting for in the trenches of open source, net neutrality and open content.) On the one hand you have open standards that lead to an explosion of individual freedoms and creativity, and on the other, enclosure, false scarcity and gatekeepers in the guise of “user friendliness.” Of course it is not so simple as that, nor such a clearcut binary. It never is. But given where we’ve got to in the short 20 years of the web, we are foolish to simply abandon it in favour of teh shiny.

The Best of All Worlds?

But do print, the web and eBooks need to be mutually exclusive choices? Emphatically NO! We now have dozens of examples of content that gets authored online, in collaborative spaces, that is usable on the web but also capable of output both as printable books and downloadable eBooks. What has for so long been the promise of first SGML and later XML, to detach content from presentation and allow content to flow seamlessly into various forms, is finally moving out of the realm of the experts and into end-user oriented environments. I will discuss two such approaches in the posts to follow, but there are more showing up every week.

Now a criticism has been made that, when it comes to textbooks, the “user generated” versions are a big step back from the polished versions we’ve come to expect from publishers. To be fair, that article is a couple of years old now, and things move quickly in this space. But at the same time, it’s an important criticism to acknowledge. And for now I think it’s still largely true – the state of open textbooks that are not commercially produced (in saying this I am excepting FlatWorld Knowledge) are mostly not stunning to look at, they lack some of the polish their commercial alternatives have developed. And I think David Wiley is also correct when he argues that currently most open textbooks are only focusing on what’s traditional thought of as the “student edition” of a textbook, and that the supporting materials (problem solutions, lesson plans, teaching tips) are very important to encourage faculty adoption.

But… where have we heard this before? Isn’t it clear by now how much better Encyclopedia Britannica is than Wikipedia? How superior Microsoft apps are to open source versions? This is the perennial charge by incumbents in all sorts of industries towards peer production and openness. To which, a few responses:

1. While at first it may be true, given enough people and an important enough goal, it becomes less and less so. cf. Ubuntu, Open Office, etc.
2. This is less damaging a critique when the alternative being proposed is not intended as an exact duplication of what it is replacing. So – mediawiki-based textbooks now offer both ePub and PDF outputs as well as the site. But in addition to being collaboratively editable, the “textbook” begins to take on a different role when it is embedded in a collaborative environment that can be used for teaching. And extensions like UBC’s EmbedWiki mean that it even small chunks can flow and intermingle in a way that is synonymous with virality.
3. But, and this is critical for me, as important as cost is as a motivator, we frame the discussion about openness and open textbooks as being primarily or solely about cost savings at our peril. Free beer is of little solace when it’s served to those who’ve lost the actual freedoms they’ve struggled to win. The co-evolution of “Good Enough” and open networked collaboration is not simply accidental – we seem slowly to be understanding that the WAY we do things, and the way we structure our relations with each other in producing things, is important, needs to be factored into the “value” of the things produced even if we can’t account for it. There will be an initial hit in terms of productivity, in terms of polish, as we transition, but unless we start to understand this we are all going to keep winning our race to the bottom.

The Process of Change & Innovation

Still, we all have to start somewhere. As described above, there are MANY factors potentially affecting the future of textbooks. One of the challenges we face in our institutions (themselves already by definition resistant to change) is balancing the need to respond to or take advantage of these varied factors with other real constraints. In my upcoming talk on open textbook authoring models and platforms, I try to depict the considerations an individual instructor might need to balance:

and offer some of the questions to ask oneself:

• Who are the authors?
• Who do you expect to read and use the textbook?
• How will they author?
• How they read (format)?
• How they interact?

Ideally, after asking oneself these questions, one would select one of the many, many options now available to you.

But from an organization’s perspective, having limited resources that we need to dedicate to only a very few specific approaches, we need to settle on just a few. Over the next couple of posts I will outline a few that I am investigating in an effort to devise our strategy going forward. Ultimately, the point of this post (other than just trying to work out my own thoughts) was to make clear some of the boundaries I think are important in this decision making. I don’t have the perfect solution, not sure there is such a thing, but I have been doing this long enough to have erred in both directions, to have chosen the exigent over the long term, but also to have anticipated future possibilities over current realities. I can’t say I will never do the same again, but I know I’m even more likely to if I don’t become aware of where these boundaries are. – SWL

ELI has released a new white paper, Analytics in Higher Education: Establishing a Common Language, by Angela van Barneveld, Kimberly Arnold, and John P. Campbell, Purdue University.

read more

By Audrey Watters

The learning management system upstart Instructure is unveiling Canvas K-12 today, a version of its platform aimed — as the name suggests — for the K-12 level. The company says that it’s already had over a dozen school districts adopt Canvas, even before this roll-out of a specially designed LMS.

Traditionally the LMS has been something implemented primarily by colleges and universities, but as more and more K-12 schools move to online learning and digital curriculum, there’s a growing demand at that level. It’s a hot market, and according to research published in December 2011 by Simba Information, “the LMS segment is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 7.3%, reaching $377 million by the 2014-2015 school year.”

As such, it’s hardly surprising to see some of the big education companies make their move to offer schools these services. The acquisition of Edline by Blackboard last fall made it clear that the learning management giant was serious about its push into that market.

But as the Simba research suggests, it’s a market that’s still up for grabs. While Blackboard still holds a little over half of the higher ed LMS market, Blackboard, Pearson and Moodle altogether share only about 30% of the K-12 market.

That provides an interesting opportunity for Instructure, which officially launched its cloud-based LMS this time last year.

Its new K-12 offering includes several new features aimed at this level: it contains Common Core standards and objectives so that it’s easy to align assignments with them. There are also analytics for districts, schools, teachers and parents to be able to assess student progress. And that parent piece is particularly important as parents will have access to their child’s information, and just as importantly, have access to Instructure’s messaging system — so you can get an SMS when your child doesn’t turn in a homework assignment or an email with the week’s spelling list and so on.

Despite competition from some of the big LMS players, Instructure has made some inroads into higher education. Can it do the same at the K-12 level? When I spoke to CEO and founder Josh Coates yesterday, he noted that the company’s recent trip to FETC made them realize that a lot of K-12 teachers are fairly unfamiliar with the idea of what an LMS even is. (That’s something that should make us ask if an LMS is even necessary.) Of course, Instructure isn’t selling to teachers (although it does offer a free product that any teacher can adopt). It’s selling to districts.

But that the LMS is a new(ish) thing to the K-12 level might just work in Instructure’s favor, even if the startup remains a relative unknown. If schools choose to adopt an LMS because of their move online, then a Web-friendly, user-friendly, cloud-based tool (with easy Google Apps for Edu integration) might just fit the bill. That is, if the price is right, something that makes the future of that K-12 market — what with shrinking K-12 budgets and options for free and low-cost alternatives (“apps” not “systems”) — more than a little uncertain.

Possibly related posts:

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Instructure Makes Its Move into the K-12 Market by %%AUTHORINK%% on e-Literate

Am 1.3.2012 erhält educanet2 ein neues Kleid. Administratoren können bereits einen Blick auf das Testsystem werfen und ihre Meinung dazu kundtun. Es handelt sich um ein erfreuliches und überfälliges Facelifting. Die Funktionalität selbst wurde nicht verändert.

Am 16. April startet mit dem OpenCourse 2012 (kurz OPCO12) ein neuer deutschsprachiger MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), der sich dem Thema widmen wird. Der rein im Internet stattfindende Kurs ist offen für alle, die sich für die Entwicklung neuer Lehr-/Lernformen interessieren. Er greift innerhalb von 14 Wochen unter anderem sechs Technologietrends auf, die im Rahmen des identifiziert wurden: Mobile Apps, Tablet Computing, Game-Based Learning, Learning Analytics, Gesture-Based Computing, Internet of Things.

Ziel des Kurses ist, heute ermittelte technologische Trends in ihrer Wirkung für den Bildungsbereich auf den Prüfstand zu stellen. Die bildungstechnologischen Entwicklungen der letzten 40 Jahre haben gezeigt, dass viele propagierte Konzepte, Technologien und Werkzeuge schnell wieder aus der Diskussion verschwunden sind. Daher sollen auf Basis des in den 14 Wochen durch Diskussionen, Beiträge und Reflexionen im Netz die Fragen erörtert werden: Was kann konkret erwartet werden? Woran kann angeknüpft werden? Wie nachhaltig können die Entwicklungen eingeschätzt werden? Diese und weitere Fragen werden theoretisch und praktisch, konzeptionell und methodisch mit Hilfe des im Rahmen des OpenCourse 2012 diskutiert, wobei die thematisierten Ansätze und Beispiele alle Bildungsbereiche berühren können.

Der wird seit 2004 jährlich vom New Media Consortium und der EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) erarbeitet und gilt weltweit als eine der renommiertesten Informationsquellen über neue und aufkommende Technologien im akademischen Bildungsbereich. Er fokussiert jeweils auf Technologien, die sich in den kommenden ein bis fünf Jahren voraussichtlich etablieren werden. Seit 2009 wird der Horizon Report vom Multimedia Kontor Hamburg ins Deutsche übersetzt und ist mit zuletzt über 45.000 Downloads stark nachgefragt. Der aktuelle 2012 Horizon Report wird Mitte Februar auf der ELI-Conference veröffentlicht. Eine Vorschau ist bereits verfügbar.

Die Idee eines OpenCourse geht auf ein Konzept zurück, das von den kanadischen E-Learning-Experten Stephen Downes und George Siemens eingeführt wurde und eine Form des vernetzten Lernens im Sinne des Konnektivismus darstellt. Kennzeichnend für einen OpenCourse ist seine offene und dezentrale Infrastruktur: Einführende Papiere und Live-Sessions mit Experten geben Impulse und setzen einen thematischen Fokus. Die Teilnehmenden lesen, kommentieren, stellen Fragen, diskutieren online weiter: In ihrem eigenen Blog, ihrem Facebook-Profil oder Twitter-Kanal. Ihre Lernziele definieren sie dabei selbst. Die Organisatoren des Kurses bieten eine zentrale Anlaufstelle und eine Agenda im Netz, fassen Beiträge, Kommentare und Diskussionen zusammen und verteilen diese über einen Newsletter. Inzwischen wurden vielerorts vor allem im englischsprachigen Raum so genannte MOOCs durchgeführt, Massive Open Online Courses, womit Online-Kurse mit sehr hohen Teilnehmerzahlen bezeichnet werden. Im deutschsprachigen Bereich fand unter dem Titel "Zukunft des Lernens" 2011 der erste OpenCourse mit ca. 900 Teilnehmenden statt, auf dessen Erfahrungen dieser neue Kurs aufbauen wird.

Organisatoren des diesjährigen OPCO sind:

• studiumdigitale, zentrale eLearning-Einrichtung der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main: Claudia Bremer (www.studiumdigitale.uni-frankfurt.de)
• e-teaching.org: Simone Haug, Markus Schmidt, Dr. Anne Thillosen (www.e-teaching.org)
• Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM): Dr. Joachim Wedekind (www.iwm-kmrc.de)
• Multimedia Kontor Hamburg (MMKH): Dr. Marc Göcks, Helga Bechmann (www.mmkh.de)
• Weiterbildungsblogger Dr. Jochen Robes (www.weiterbildungsblog.de)

Following my last post Social Learning: Are you starting from the right place, I was asked to explain what “social learning” actually is in an organizational context. Rather than provide a bland definition, I thought I would provide some quotes from some key resources that will give a flavour of what it is all about.

If you haven’t yet come across The New Social Learning book (by Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham), this is a must-read. Marcia explains:

“At its most basic level, social learning can result in people becoming more informed, gaining a wider perspective, and being able to make better decisions by engaging with others. It acknowledges that learning happens with and through other people, as a matter of participating in a community, not just by acquiring knowledge.”

One of my favourite articles about social learning was also written by Marcia Conner – together with Steve LeBlanc, Where social learning thrives, and they state:

“Social learning is not just the technology of social media, although it makes use of it. It is not merely the ability to express yourself in a group of opt-in friends. Social learning combines social media tools with a shift in the corporate culture, a shift that encourages ongoing knowledge transfer and connects people in ways that make learning a joy.”

Harold Jarche in a blog post, Social Learning, complexity and the enterprise, (that originated as a white paper), looks at why social learning is  important for today’s enterprise.  It is chock-full of explanation and detail, but here are a couple of snippets”:

“A collective, social learning approach … takes the perspective that learning and work happen as groups and how the group is connected (the network) is more important than any individual node within it.”

“Social learning is how groups work and share knowledge to become better practitioners.”

“Knowledge workers get things done by conversing with peers, customers and partners, as they solve the problems of the day. Learning from these social interactions is a key to business innovation.”

And what does all this mean for L&D, Jay Cross makes it clear, in No more business as usual

“Continuous improvement and delighting customers require a culture of pervasive learning. We’re not talking classes and workshops here. Creating a new order of business requires learning ecologies — what we’ve been calling Workscapes — that make it simple and enjoyable for people to learn what they need to get the job done. Companies that fail to learn will wither and die.

As all business becomes social business, L&D professionals face a momentous choice. They can remain Chief Training Officers and instructors who get novices up to speed, deliver events required by compliance, and run in-house schools. These folks will be increasingly out of step with the times.

Or they can become business leaders who shape learning cultures, social networks, collaborative practices, information flows, federated content management, just-in-time performance support, customer feedback mechanisms, and structures for continuous improvement.”

Want to find out more? Come and visit the Social Learning Centre.

• Forschungsbeiträge motivieren ein Forschungsziel, beschreiben die Forschungsmethode und bewerten die Forschungsergebnisse.
• Anwendungsbeiträge leiten aus dem Einsatz von e-Learning neue Erkenntnisse ab.
• Industrie- und Praxisbeiträge stellen aktuelle e-Learning Anwendungen und gemachte Erfahrungen vor.
  

A new lecture series has been started in iTunesU of Graz University of Technology: Medical Informatics. At the beginning the whole lecture notes (print outs) are free available and next winter term we also plan to record the lecture.
Content of the lecture:

1. Introduction: Computer Science meets Life Sciences, challenges and future directions
2. Back to the future: Fundamentals of Data, Information and Knowledge
3. Structured Data: Coding, Classification (ICD, SNOMED, MeSH, UMLS)
4. Biomedical Databases: Acquisition, Storage, Information Retrieval and Use
5. Semi structured and weakly structured data (structural homologies)
6. Multimedia Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
7. Knowledge and Decision: Cognitive Science and Human-Computer Interaction
8. Biomedical Decision Making: Reasoning and Decision Support
9. Intelligent Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
10. Biomedical Information Systems and Medical Knowledge Management
11. Biomedical Data: Privacy, Safety and Security
12. Methodology for Information Systems: System Design, Usability and Evaluation

"4 out of 5 dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum." That's a slogan long associated with Trident gum. But most people are probably skeptical of that claim, and we wouldn't really view a chewing gum commercial as a scientific claim. Who conducted the research? Where was it published? What were the survey questions? And what about that famous fifth dentist?

But when it comes to education research, we don't always scrutinize things so closely -- particularly when it comes to results that confirm our gut reactions or further particular commercial or political agendas.

Case in point: does the iPad boost student learning? Is it a solid educational tool? That's the headline from a recent article in Wired magazine that argues that the devices are improving student engagement and assessment.

The article draws on two recent studies conducted on iPad apps: one on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse Algebra I app (see MindShift’s coverage here) and one on Motion Math’s fraction app (see MindShift’s coverage here). Both of these studies tout positive results for the apps in question: In the case of the former, state standardized test scores jumped by 20%; in the case of the latter, students’ scores improved an average of 15%.

Read my story on evaluating educational research, including an interview with cognitive psychologist Dr. Alicia Chang who talks about what to look for when judging whether or not studies are trustworthy, over on MindShift

Photo credits: Flickr user Harald Hoyer

A 17-year-old launches a site filling in all of what he didn’t learn in school. Read his interview, then check out the site They Don’t Teach You This In School.

• 
  
• Source: Fastcompany

Meet Michael Moore-Jones, ambitious entrepreneur, nostalgic ex-boyfriend, teenager. Michael Moore-Jones is a 17-year-old entrepreneur from New Zealand, and already the founder of two websites, They Don’t Teach You This In School and Duo. Fast Company caught up with Moore-Jones to talk about data security, ex-girlfriends, and why he can’t wait to get out of high school.

Read more at: www.fastcompany.com

Every week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to talk about the latest ed-tech news. I always find our conversation to be one of the most thought-provoking exchanges I have all week. This week we actually got to sit down face-to-face as we were both at Educon.  You can listen to last week's episode (in which we discuss our thoughts on why HTML5 is important for education, Google Chromebooks, Google+ for teens, and Pearson's investment in Startup Weekend EDU) below.  

Fair warning: the audio isn't so great for this episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast feed here.

January 29, 2012 podcast

In a previous post, we looked at five free desktop image editors.  Here are a couple of additional free desktop applications shared by some blog readers. They both look very capable.

• PhotoPlus SE
• PhotoFiltre

A challenge with free software is that sometimes your organization isn’t comfortable with you downloading and installing applications that aren’t approved. This is where the online graphics applications come in handy. Of course, you’ll need an internet connection and hope that your organization isn’t blocking its use.

If you do a search, you’ll find that there are a lot of online image editing products. The problem is that many are spammy or full of ads that they’re useless for real work.

In today’s post we’ll look at five very capable online image editors. I tried to stay clear of the ones that were too ad heavy or seemed kind of spammy. I only added the apps I’d be comfortable using for my own work. 

Aviary

Aviary has a few image editing tools and offers a pretty complete solution for most of what you need to do. They also have a very active user community which is a plus and lots of tutorials.

• Aviary Feather is a basic image editing tool. You can crop, adjust the image, add some text, and apply filters.
• Aviary Phoenix is a more robust application and close to something like Photoshop with the layering and more complex editing capabilities.
• Aviary Raven is a vector editor similar to the free Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator.

Pixlr

Pixlr has all of the standard features you’d need. I like some of the pencil drawing effects and it can output to Flickr and Picasa. I find it really easy to use and one of my favorites of the online tools. They also offer Pixlr Express, a streamlined editing tool.

Splashup

Splashup is an image editing tool and photo manager. I like that I can bring in images from sites like Flickr and Picasa, which I already use. It has all of the core features you’d expect in an image editing application. They also offer Splashup Light for download.

• Tour of features

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint is a very capable tool and comes with all of the core editing features. They also offer a Pro upgrade that gives you a desktop version with additional features.

• User community
• Tutorials

Simpler Tools

The following tools are honorable mentions. They do a decent job with simple edits but don’t have all of the features of the applications above.

• Photoshop.com offers simple image editing, but not the layering that you get with its desktop cousins. 
• Picnik is already integrated into a number of sites. You’ll find it in Flickr and Picasa.  It’s easy to use and has a lot of filters. Of course, I just found out that Picnik is being shut down. I believe that it will make its way back in Google+.
• Dr.Pic seems to have all of the basic features. I like the framing feature. My guess is the Polaroid frame would work well with some elearning screens.

As you can see, there are plenty of options for free graphics editing. And you have a good choice between desktop applications like I mentioned in the previous post, or go with an online solution.

• February 13-14: Atlanta (Training Magazine).  I’ll be doing a session on PowerPoint and we’ll have two Build-A-Course sessions.

• February 22-23: St. Louis (ASTD). Rapid E-Learning Workshop.  This is a great deal for a full-day workshop that also includes a full breakfast and lunch. PowerPoint Doesn’t Have to Be Boring.  We’ll follow the presentation with a free Articulate jam session.

• March 21-23: Orlando, FL (Learning Solutions Conference)

• April 10: Jacksonville, FL (NEFL ASTD). Details coming.

• April 17: Virginia (SEVA ASTD). Details coming.

• April 5: Portland, OR (OpenSesame). An E-Learning Heroes Roadshow workshop where we’ll look at ways to build elearning courses and learn some great PowerPoint tips. Excellent price and great coffee!

• May 17: Orange County California. Details coming.

• May 24: Articulate Conference hosted by Leeds.  Also will present a rapid elearning workshop.  Details coming.

• October 4: Seattle, WA (ASTDPS). Details coming.

• October 17: Bloomington, IL (CIC-ASTD). Details coming.

Un des aspects particulièrement intéressant des outils web 2.0 est de permettre a priori de partager des contenus, mais aussi de collaborer facilement. Cet aspect est un élément motivant pour leur utilisation dans un contexte éducatif. Malheureusement, la plupart des outils web 2.0 exigent une inscription préalable pour pouvoir être utilisés. Même si cette étape [...]

Gerade noch sprachen wir über iPad-Klassen oder Schulen, die ihre Schüler mit DELL-Laptops ausstatten. Bislang haben Schulen versucht, die IT ihrer Lehrer und Schüler zu kontrollieren.  An manchen Schulen (oder Hochschulen) ist es üblich, dass Lernende ein fest konfiguriertes Gerät mitbringen...

Google

Google has revamped its site for educators, creating a redesigned repository for all its educational tools and resources for teachers, schools, and students.

The newest feature is News and Calendar, a listing of all events and deadlines for Google’s education endeavors.

Google also created an online booklet called Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning, which lists the company’s initiatives and programs within the education realm, such as the Computer Science for High School program — university-created workshops for local high school and middle school computer science teachers teachers.

“We’re hoping educators will use this year-round for ideas on how to enhance teaching and learning,” said Google spokesperson Rachel Durfee.

And for those who jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, a specific Google+ page for educators.

The main Google in Education link offers much of the same content as before, but it’s better organized and redesigned. The Teachers site leads to Google’s many apps that can be used for teaching specific subjects, as well as design and collaboration tools. It’s divided by K-12, higher education, and examples of how education systems across the country are using the tools. The site also offers a list of professional development links, including webinars, online workshops, and tutorials, which are primarily centered around Google products and services. The Student Showcases link lists student-created material, such as worldwide panoramas using Google Earth and Sketchup models of homes, towns, and robots.

Schools and districts can find links to YouTube for Schools, which allows students to access YouTube EDU while blocking non-educational videos; App Engine, which hosts school web apps on Google’s system; and Google Apps for Higher Education, a free suite of hosted email and collaboration application.

For students, the site offers a list of awards and competitions — think YouTube Space Lab and Google Science Fair; programs like Summer of Code, which offer stipends for student code developers and Computer Science Summer Institute for high schools seniors about to start college; tools like Google Apps for Students, like Google Docs and Gmail; and Google tools, which include every app and tool the mega-search site has created.

Apps and software is one thing, but the company’s hardware is also making its way into more schools. Last week, Google announced that three school districts in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina are using only Google Chromebooks, the Web browser-based laptop, and that hundreds of schools across the country are deploying them in classrooms — a total of 27,000 in the hands of students.

“Students love the tablet. I am not going to hide that from you,” said Diane Gilbert, an English teacher at Kelly Mill Middle School in Blythewood, S.C., who’s taught with tablets in her classroom in a recent CNET article. “My goal is to have students publish their work–create and publish. The [Chromebook] is more alike to a laptop or a desktop in the ability to publish.”

Chromebooks are set up to use the Google Apps and other software found on Google’s Education site.

When I hear people ask for advice about how to “do” or “implement” social learning it reminds me of this Irish joke.

“Paddy stopped cutting the hedge as the big car drew up beside him and an English visitor enquired, 

“Could you tell me the way to Balbriggan, Please?”

Paddy wiped his brow. 

“Certainly, sor. If you take the first road to the left? no still that wouldn’t do? drive on for about four miles then turn left at the crossroads? no that wouldn’t do either.”

Paddy scratched his head thoughtfully.

“You know, sor, if I was going to Balbriggan I wouldn’t start from here at all.”

The similarity is that although I’ve seen many suggestions as to how people can “implement social learning” in terms of how social media can be used in e-learning or face-to-face training, or how updating to the latest Social Learning Management System will do the trick, this isn’t actually going to get them to Social Learning, it’ll only take them as far as Social Training.

To get to Social Learning, you have to start from a different place (and a different mindset) than Training – with its inherent need to try organise and manage everything everyone “learns” in the organisation.

Rather, it means going into the workplace, and then asking a different question: How can I encourage, enable, support, enhance and enrich the social learning that is already taking place there, since it is one of the key ways that people find out how to do their jobs – or do them better.

In other words it  requires a different approach than social training. Supporting social learning is just part of offering a  wider package of workplace performance services that I’ve talked about before. Furthermore, it will also involve the use of social business tools and systems – rather than specific training tools and learning systems – since true social learning is an integral part of working, not separate from it.

So if your destination is really social learning (and not just social training), then make sure you ask the right questions, to get the right directions, and ultimately end at the right destination.

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