At the request of list members, I am republishing part of the exchange on IT Forum between myself and Larry Lipsitz, and absolutely great guy who publishes Educational Technology Magazine. I’ll leave it to you to guess which voice I am. :) ...
It’s that time of year again! Last year’s Open Education Conference at USU was described by several as “the best conference I ever attended.” This year’s conference should be even better. Keynotes this year include John Seely Brown (Social Life of Information) and Yochai Benkler (Coase’s Penguin). The Call for Papers is available now. Please submit something! General information on the conference, including a Flyer and Presentation Slide you can use to help us advertise, is available at http://cosl.usu.edu/conference/.
Lots of folks responded rather strongly to my suggestion that talking about and focusing on scalability is immoral. As usual, I appear to have done a poor job articulating my feelings. :) The focus on scalability scares me because it only focuses on reaching lots of people, on reaching large numbers of people, on reaching the majority of people. The amount of commitment necessary to reach all as opposed to many seems qualitatively different to me. I’m afraid that the focus on scaling, and talk about how great and worthy reaching the majority of people is, will allow instructional technologists to feel like they’re off the hook for reaching the few, the small numbers of people, the minority. ...
Lots of folks responded rather strongly to my suggestion that talking about and focusing on scalability is immoral. As usual, I appear to have done a poor job articulating my feelings. :) The focus on scalability scares me because it only focuses on reaching lots of people, on reaching large numbers of people, on reaching the majority of people. The amount of commitment necessary to reach all as opposed to many seems qualitatively different to me. I’m afraid that the focus on scaling, and talk about how great and worthy reaching the majority of people is, will allow instructional technologists to feel like they’re off the hook for reaching the few, the small numbers of people, the minority. ...
An excellent presentation on Freire at AERA titled I’m Morpheus in this Hip-Hop Matrix: The Industry, Oppression, and the Word provoked some of the most (personally) interesting thinking I’ve done in a while. Short version: I’m now thinking that talking about the scalability of educational opportunity is immoral, and that there is a far bigger problem facing instructional technology researchers than simply making education more effective. ...
Back in August of 2003 I proposed that rather than create a new education license, we rebrand the By-NC-SA license as the cc.edu. The idea had lots of traction on the list - Stephen even agreed eventually ;) - as did many others (see August - December 2003 posts). However, because of some push back from CC about rebranding as a strategy, the discussion moved another direction and to the frustration of many eventually fizzled out. ...
Back in August of 2003 I proposed that rather than create a new education license, we rebrand the By-NC-SA license as the cc.edu. The idea had lots of traction on the list - Stephen even agreed eventually ;) - as did many others (see August - December 2003 posts). However, because of some push back from CC about rebranding as a strategy, the discussion moved another direction and to the frustration of many eventually fizzled out. ...
Our annual conference (which several of you attended last year, thanks!) is back. Advancing the Effectiveness and Sustainability of Open Education will take place September 28 - 30, 2005 in beautiful Logan, Utah. I’m *really* excited about the conference this year. A few highlights: Keynote speakers include John Seely Brown (Social Life of Information, etc.) and Yochai Benkler (Coase’s Penguin, etc.) and one other (but we can’t say who yet). The Hewlett Foundation will be holding its annual open education fundees meeting in conjunction with the conference, which will bring several super interesting participants to the conference Finally, the group of universities that recently met at MIT to discuss their OpenCourseWare projects will be meeting again in conjunction with the conference, which will bring even more people doing really excellent open education work I’ll be able to say more later, but this is going to be an absolutely awesome conference. I hope you come! More details are available on the conference website. Registration isn’t open yet, but I’m so excited I just had to share…
So we’ve been updating all sorts of things lately. OpenContent.org has been laying more or less unproductive for a while, so it seemed like time to update it as well. OpenContent.org is now a mini-portal into several collections of open educational resources and the discussion forums around those. Have a look around, and if you can think of an open access collection I haven’t listed there (which you no doubt will), let me know. If you think OpenContent.org should be doing something completely different, let me know.
A couple of times a year I update this page with longer pieces written as peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, or presentations. Enjoy! 2004 Scalability and Sociability in Online Learning Environments HTML Supporting Student Autonomy Online HTML Commentary on Downes’ Resource Profiles PDF IMS/SSP Comes So Close HTML 2003 A beginner’s guide to blogs. HTML OSOSS - Crisis / Response. HTML Learning objects: difficulties and opportunities. PDF A brief history of the blog. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF Keeping the Baby and the Bath Water. HTML 2002 Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online learning. Quarterly Review of Distance Education. (With Erin Brewer). PDF A proposed measure of discussion activity in threaded discussion spaces. Working Draft PDF Learning objects need instructional design theory. In A. Rossett (Ed.) The 2001/2002 ASTD Distance Learning Yearbook. New York: McGraw-Hill. PDF Learning objects – a definition. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF CAREER Grant - A mediated action study of learning object use in online learning communities. PDF The coming collision between the automated instruction and learning communities camps of online learning research. Working Draft DOC Component Display Theory. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF OpenCourseWare. In A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson (Eds.) Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. PDF A unified design framework for learning objects and educational discourse. PDF 2001 EduCommons. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF An empirical estimate of student growth in beginning music theory: Results and pedagogical implications. (With Leo Welch). PDF About the RLO strategy white paper. HTML Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition a metaphor, and a taxonomy. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. DOC “Web-based instruction” should never have happened (oh, never mind - it’s dead anyway). Tech Trends PDF What is the Internet ran like the U.S. public education system. Tech Trends PDF The teacher’s outrageous claim to intellectual property. Tech Trends HTML Collaboratively filtering learning objects. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. Bloomington, IN: Association for Educational Communications and Technology. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Walker). DOC A non-authoritative educational metadata ontology for filtering and recommending learning objects. Journal of Interactive Learning Environments. The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. (With Mimi Recker). PDF 2000 In defense of the by-hand assembly of learning objects. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF A reformulation of learning object granularity. (With Mimi Recker and Andy Gibbons). PDF An exploratory study of the statistical and educational implications of violations of the assumptions of parametric analysis techniques. (With Vic Bunderson and Jim Olsen). PDF When worlds collide. PDF Learning object design and sequencing theory. Dissertation PDF Getting students interested: An integrated approach to Keller’s ARCS model of motivational design. Instructional Design Project PDF Structured metadata spaces. Journal of Internet Cataloging. 3(2/3), pp. 263 - 277. Binghamton, NY: Haworth. (With Tom Wason). PDF 1999 Three common properties of efficient online instructional support systems. ALN Magazine. (With Joe South, Julene Bassett, Laurie Nelson, Larry Seawright, Trent Peterson, and David Monson). HTML The post-LEGO learning object. PDF So what do I do with a learning object?. PDF Metadata mall. HTML Dynamic directory structures. PDF An intelligent method for searching metadata spaces. Epistemology Course Final Paper PDF My, what an intelligent tool you have!. IMS White Paper HTML Why semantic structures?. IMS White Paper HTML 1998 Towards a definition of fundamentality. HTML It’s… fundamentality 2.0!. HTML Iterative formation of learning environments based on self-similar primedial objects (for dummies). (With Laurie Nelson, David Monson, and Joe South). HTML