Class < Using Open Educational Resources To Create K-12 Curriculum (Cross-Platforms) < Introduction

These are 2 free trial short courses for this PD course to give you an idea.

OER Mobile Course - this goes through the most important topics of this course

OER Game - this tests your OER knowledge

If you like to download these 2 sample courses on your tablets for offline use, please contact me( jessie@classroomaid.org).

Why Should I Bother??

When printing technology matured throughout history, it disrupted the old system that believed that knowledge was only available to upper levels of society, and then brought the most innovative and revolutionary period in human's knowledge development - the age of Enlightenment! Now we are at the second tipping point for us to leap into a totally new page in history - the digital learning age. For the first time, knowledge can be shared without being given away, as sharing benefits all of us. Open education resources (OERs) makes sharing legal and efficient. Everyone has free or low-cost Web2.0 tools to connect and create content This new digital content has now become a commodity. What really matters ? Are you going to join the history flow? The options are to join to write history together or to be left behind. Enjoy the video below, and read more here : There is Only One Classroom in The World.

The Global One-Room Schoolhouse: John Seely Brown (Highlights from his "Entrepreneurial Learner" Keynote at DML2012) from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.

In K-12, the coming Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics may create unprecedented economies of scale for the development of instructional material that will further drive adoption of aligned OER. The Common Core Standards also promote the idea that students should “use technology . . . "to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.” OER provides building blocks and a sandbox to realize this goal. But proprietary textbooks, no matter whether they are print or digital, can not!

From Washington OER Project :

As the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics are implemented, school districts will be looking for instructional material to meet the new standards. Open Educational Resources (OER) may help fill that need.

In April 2012, the Washington State Legislature passed the bill HB2337, directing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction(OSPI) to create a collection of openly licensed courseware aligned to the common-core standards and an associated awareness campaign to inform school districts about these resources.

The core principles of this course

Referring to Designing with Teachers: Participatory Approaches to Professional Development in Education by Ioana Literat and Erin Reilly, we design this course with the core principles of participatory professional development in mind :

Participation, not indoctrination
Exploration, not prescription
Contextualization, not abstraction
Iteration, not repetition

The core belief : "collectively, we can be greater than me".

How is this course structured and designed ?

This course is all about steering your own learning in a way that works for you. You can explore the lessons at your own pace and sequence. We hope to learn together, connect and give others constructive feedback about their work.

Digital Learning Tree system as LMS - here is where the course resources are organized : lessons, quizzes, shared resources, videos, presentations, assignments..., and where you can upload your documents and ask questions in the forum... etc.
6 parts will contribute to your final achievement:
- Quests (quizzes): Finish each quiz after each lesson. (100 XP for each quiz passed) (Hint : The quizzes are designed to help you learn, their answers are hidden in the lessons. You can take the quiz before you learn the corresponding lesson, and after you go through the lesson, you'll be better prepared to conquer the quiz. It's problem-based learning.)
- Missions (assignments) : There is an assignment after each lesson, the mission description is revealed in it. A total of 7 out of 14 missions are required, but you can do more to achieve more. (200 XP for each; but for mission 8/ 10/14 - creating lesson plans, you can get up to 400 XP if you get > 90% rating according to their specific rubrics from 3 reviewers)
- Final project : creating an OER resource (videos, lesson plans, learning object, quizzes …) for the subject of your expertise, it could be built from scratch or from remixing open licensed resources, then publishing it with the open license you preferred, and add its information to your blog or ePortfolio. It's required for you to find a reviewer (learners from this course) for your project work using rubric provided in the assignment 15 pages, and provide his/her review commentary along with the work, otherwise it will be considered not completed. (400 ~ 600 XP, this is required)
- Participation : providing feedback and raising discussion on forum or other's mission works (blog posts), answering questions or inviting others to work together on your final project (not limited to those join this course). Your interaction and participation with other learners will earn extra 100 ~ 400 XP.
- Peer Review and feedback : review other learners’ works and give constructive suggestions or comments. (this is required, 1 review for other's final project is minimum, each gets 100 ~ 300 XP)
- Personal Learning Network (PLN) : As you go through this course, do remember to build your PLN about OER and content creation one by one. Don't forget to follow #OERtree to interact with other learners. Please share with us in the "Final Project" section about your personal learning network profile regarding to professional development in OER. It should include a feed stream (using any RSS reader or Netvibes) and the OER accounts/experts you are following on Twitter or other curation tools. (you can blog about your PLN profile, and give us the link in your Assignment "Final Project") (To showcase your PLN will gain extra 100 ~ 300 XP.)
Minimum requirement to pass the course is 2600 XP, “OER Brainiac” badge will be awarded
“OER Ambassador“ : awarded to those obtain final achievement higher than 3600 XP, with a badge to show on your own blog or ePortfolio
“OER Leadership” : awarded to those demonstrate notable contribution to participation and peer review, with a badge to show on your own blog or ePortfolio
“OER Captain“ : awarded to those obtain final achievement higher than 4500 XP, with a badge to show on your own blog or ePortfolio

You are the owner and designer of your learning. You are responsible to collect all the evidences showing the requirements listed above are met, and compose your learning profile as you proceed. When you finish your learning, quests, missions, final project and the whole learning profile document, upload it to Digital Learning Tree system - for this course please upload it under assignment 15 - as your proposal to be approved for graduation. Your writing and works will be reviewed by me and other educators. The core spirit of OER is about Participation, Social learning and Constructionism. We are looking forward to knowing how you realize them through your own personal way.

Please use hashtag #OERtree to tweet your thoughts, anything about this course, or ask your questions as you proceed your learning, raise or join conversations on Twitter. We’ll collect all pieces and conversations and share back with you all. You will receive from us regular newsletters with important summary of tweets, OER news, learners' articles, and updating of this course. We also will publish some great articles from you on Classroom Aid website (with your permission), the purpose is to amplify the voice of OER and make you visible as well. In this course, you are requested to tweet your blog post as you complete a mission (use hashtag #OERtree). This is a good way to get feedback from your peers and us. When you finish your final project, you must find someone to review your work; you are requested to tweet it out loud as well.

OER content is like a tree. The content is never “dead”, anyone can continue to “grow” on an OER object, like adding transcripts or captions or translations, adding quizzes, adding different ways of expression, improving it, remixing with other stuffs, putting it into different contexts, transforming it for mobile learning, making it more accessible... The possibility of branching and growing is endless. Just like a tree in an open and organic environment. The above activities are designed to prepare you to join the community and leverage the community-driven organic growth.

All the content in this course can be re-used and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Assessments

Through the activities in this course, you are expected to become :

An avid blogger - Demonstration of using blogging to reflect on learning, express personal opinions, show evidence on personal learning, contribute to learning community, connect with others, give feedback and further others' ideas and works; refer to these rubrics :
- Self-Assessment Sheet is a simple framework for you to evaluate yourself in blogging ;
- Blogging Rubric is a rubric as a guide for your own blogging and for you to give feedback to others' blogging, it's also a reference how we evaluate your blogging .
A fluent social media user - Demonstration of using social media tool to collect information, collect feedback, solve problem and build personal learning network; refer to this quote from Konrad Glogowski : learning is about conversations
- I want my students to realize that learning is not about making your work conform to some standard imposed by the teacher. Learning is about creating your own standards and adjusting them based on your goals. Learning is about setting your own goals and monitoring your own progress. It is about having conversations with yourself and others.
A digital content maker - Demonstration of using digital tools to create content, collaborate and publish to authentic audience (learners can utilize Digital Learning Tree to create their curriculum)
- This is not a course about teaching tools, but a course about learning how to learn. It's suggested to identify your purpose(s), looking through the tools we listed in this course for reference or find a great tool recommended somewhere else. Ask for opinions or help on forum or through Twitter. (you will get feedback from us or others)
A connected learner - Demonstration of self-directed learning through interaction with your PLN and continuously learn from your PLN (more helpful readings about PLN is at the end of this lesson)
An OER community member - Demonstration of participating in OER online community, being able to use tools for locating or evaluating OER on Learning Registry, OER Commons.

Missions(Assignments) 1 ~ 14 are for self-evaluation and peer-review, there are 2 kinds of missions(assignments) :

1. Blogging :

We ask learners to blog about their reflections on learning or essays on the topics assigned in assignments. Blogging is an act of reflecting and posting one's thoughts on a given subject or topic. It should be reflective in nature, and make a personal connection to your learning and/or your classroom. Blogging also includes taking part in the community by leaving comments on others blog posts. Thirdly, blogs can be used as digital portfolios that showcase your skills and improvements in different aspects of learning. We will use blogs throughout the course to achieve both goals. The following blogging rubric will be used for blogging activities. (refer to this doc.)

2. Lesson Planning :

For missions(assignments) 8/10/14, learners are asked to design lesson plans for their teaching, this lesson plan rubric is referred as the standard for self-evaluaiton and peer-review.

For final project evaluation (evaluated by the instructor and other learners), we use OER evaluation rubrics as standards to rate the OER created by learners. Released by Achieve and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), it is a complete set of rubrics to rate the quality of OER resources, enable educators to align content to the Common Core Standards. Click the links below to view and download each presentation slide on each rubric :

An Introduction to the Achieve OER Rubrics

Rubric I: Alignment to Standards

Rubric II: Quality of Explanation of the Subject Matter

Rubric III: Utility of Materials Designed to Support Teaching

Rubric IV: Quality of Assessment

Rubric V: Quality of Technological Interactivity

Rubric VI: Quality of Instructional Tasks and Practice Exercises

Rubric VII: Opportunities for Deeper Learning

Using the Achieve OER Evaluation Tool on OER Commons

Pass/Fail criteria for the final project :

For rubrics I ~ VII that is applicable to your learning object(s), the scores are 0, 1, 2, 3, if you get any item evaluated under 2 from the peer learner and the instructor, please improve it and have someone and the instructor to re-evaluate it again.

For rubric VIII, the evaluation result will be only for reference, not resulting in pass / fail for the evaluation.

NOTE : The bottom-line criteria to pass this course is XP > 2600 and to finish at least the minimum items required with requested quality :

7 out of 14 missions are required
Final Project
One peer review for other learner’s final project

Other opportunities

You will have the opportunity to publish your own mobile apps as your final project, it's optional. We will take care of everything technical, you just need to design your content optimized for mobile learning; there is no need to code a line. You can publish a web app or native app, free or for a fee, your choice.

About peer review and feedback

Peer review is commonly used in the Scientific paper publication process or literature review. The purpose of peer review isn't about making everyone feel good. Only constructive opinions are truly helpful for authors. Maybe you are already using it in your own classes.

Open textbooks require new models for ensuring the quality of the texts themselves. These models may include peer reviews, instructor reviews, and student reviews. That's why we raise the awareness of peer review here. While some may doubt that open text may be missing an essential credential that speaks to its validity, the review process will help us build a crucial digital literacy everyone needs in the fast-changing digital world This involves independent research skill and critical thinking.

In this course, you are requested to tweet your blog posts as you complete a mission (use hashtag #OERtree). This is a good way to get feedback from your peers and us. When you finish your final project, you must find someone to review your work; you are requested to tweet it out loud as well.

To show us your peer review for other's final project, please submit your review opinion (a link is fine if it's published online) with the project and author name of the review as a part of your final project. Your review can be published online, just let us know where it is. If your review comment is too short, you might be requested to enrich it.

Since social learning is not only crucial for this course, but for teacher's professional development and student-centered pedagogy, we like to talk more about effective feedback where learners can help each other. Please read this great article : Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, and share with us what you think on your own blog and tweet it out with #OERtree. Apply these principles as you give feedback to other learners in this course.

It will be also helpful to learn more details about the art of commenting on others' articles, we attached some guides which are not only useful for teacher's professional development but also for teachers to implement this pedagogy in their classrooms. The commenter should see himself/herself as a collaborator in a building conversation and add multimedia as evidence.

Maybe the most important thing of joining this course is to connect : we connect you with the formal certification ( 3 graduate-level professional development e-course credits when you finished), we help you connect with useful resources, and you can connect with educators and the community of practice. We will be sharing and building knowledge together. Consequently, the connections we make with others - our PLNs - are incredibly important for our own learning both during and after the course ends.

Go to Quest 1

Mission 1

Please setup your own blog (How-to guide) so that you can post your reflection or articles for missions on this course. If you are already blogging, you can use your own blog for publishing if you like. Let us know if you have problems in setting up your blog, we'll help. You will publish your articles for the missions given in lessons. When we say : “publish on your blog”, the form isn’t necessarily in writing, you can do an auditory narration or a performance recorded onto a video, even an animation or a graphic novel. Please embed them in your blog and give us the links as we like you to build your digital presence and identity.

You also need to create a Twitter (How-to guide) account if you haven't, since it will be needed in this course. After you finish your missions and final project, you are requested to tweet them out loud. (hashtag #OERtree)

Please upload your self introduction along with your blog address to the Assignment 1 page. Please introduce yourself in your own way, being creative or being traditional are both fine, how much information you like to publish is up to you. Oh, remember to tell us your Twitter account name. This is a guild of educators and learners, we like to build a profile of everybody's strength and thoughts. And, it will be shared among this guild.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by ivanpw

Note : Creating a profile on a service such as foliofor.me, About.me, Flavors.me, Easy Portfolio (this offer mobile apps) or even Google Apps is a good way to start positively creating and/or managing your digital identity online. Please read more about ePortfolio :

Teacher Notes

If you like to know more about this course, please contact me : jessie@classroomaid.org .

Digital Learning Tree