Someone (I think Tracey) asked about ways to create clonable start pages/webtops. I mentioned there were likely a dozen ways to do this. This article (http://unescochair.blogs.uoc.edu/05032009/my-uocs-main-page-design-your-own-learning-experience/) describes UOC's experience doing this and is a very good starting point (and yes, it seems to indicate that iGoogle offers a 'clonable' option).
My $0.02 - the issue isn't so much the container (iGoogle vs Netvibes vs. Pageflakes vs ....) as making sure that the various 'things' you plug into them are as interoperable as possible. So look for 'widgets' based on emerging cross-platform standards as well as basic things like RSS. If the whole idea is "personal" starting spaces, then choosing widget formats that work across multiple platforms will allow people to truly make those choices *personal*.
Cheers, Scott
Scott Leslie
Posts made by Scott Leslie
"Who am I?" Seems like such an innocent question...
(...hours later, emerging from his subterranean lair) My name is Scott Leslie. I work for BCcampus. My primary focus is in helping BC post-secondary educators share open content. The *lack* of community in how we've tried to do this is maybe one of the chief problems I face.
I don't know that I am "in charge" of any communities (indeed I find that phrase a bit odd) but am active with a few of the communities that BCcampus helps facilitate. I have been trying to help start up a new grassroots group of people using Wordpress in Education here in BC. I continually meddle in our own organization's "knowledge management" needs and try to inject social ways to do this better. Finally I blog at http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/ and participate in the global conspiracy to open up education for all.
Mostly I'm coming because I do what Sylvia tells me to, and it would be crazy to pass up the opportunity to learn with a group like this. See you tomorrow!
(...hours later, emerging from his subterranean lair) My name is Scott Leslie. I work for BCcampus. My primary focus is in helping BC post-secondary educators share open content. The *lack* of community in how we've tried to do this is maybe one of the chief problems I face.
I don't know that I am "in charge" of any communities (indeed I find that phrase a bit odd) but am active with a few of the communities that BCcampus helps facilitate. I have been trying to help start up a new grassroots group of people using Wordpress in Education here in BC. I continually meddle in our own organization's "knowledge management" needs and try to inject social ways to do this better. Finally I blog at http://www.edtechpost.ca/wordpress/ and participate in the global conspiracy to open up education for all.
Mostly I'm coming because I do what Sylvia tells me to, and it would be crazy to pass up the opportunity to learn with a group like this. See you tomorrow!
So we've reached the end of the scheduled 3 weeks - I hope all of you have enjoyed it and found it as helpful as I know I have.
The Introductory post helped us get to know at least 25 others who participated (I know there were many more who participated by reading, just as important) - an amazing group of professionals from at least 4 continents that I could count.
Week 1 found us exploring ways to find OERs, introduing the use of social networks, specific search tools like the OCW meta-search and flickrCC search, as well as a number of special OER collections. I know part of my own practice is to always expand the methods and sources I have for combing and filtering the mass of resources out there, and hopefully you also found some useful techniques in this thread.
Week 1 also found spirited discussions on the nature of "Openness" and who is taking leadership in OER. In the former, what emerged for me was a multi-facted understanding of openness, that it needs to be understood on many levels (all of which are important). The leadership discussion interestingly morphed into a discussion of "Open Textbooks" which I think could easily turn into an entire seminar in itself!
The main focus of week 2, 'creating OERs' found what was for me a valueable discussion on the value propositions of OER; this for me is very important, as too often the value propositions are described solely in turns of who wil use OER, but as the discussion showed, there are many reasons why OER can be valuable to instructors and institutions themselves.
Finally, in week 3 we dug in a bit to ways in which OER could be made less content-centric. I personally think this is a rich vein for Open Education to explore, as I think it not only can improve the experience for those accessing the OER, but for those initially learning with them as well.
I hope you got something useful from the three weeks - either a new insight into the importance of openness; more energy to help bring to fruition one of the many fantastic imagined futures for OER, or just a new tool or site you hadn't seen before. In any case, it's been great, and I look forward to speaking and working with you in the ongoing conversations and projects that are happening ALL the time online, in blogs and wikis and other forums everywhere.
Cheers, Scott Leslie
The Introductory post helped us get to know at least 25 others who participated (I know there were many more who participated by reading, just as important) - an amazing group of professionals from at least 4 continents that I could count.
Week 1 found us exploring ways to find OERs, introduing the use of social networks, specific search tools like the OCW meta-search and flickrCC search, as well as a number of special OER collections. I know part of my own practice is to always expand the methods and sources I have for combing and filtering the mass of resources out there, and hopefully you also found some useful techniques in this thread.
Week 1 also found spirited discussions on the nature of "Openness" and who is taking leadership in OER. In the former, what emerged for me was a multi-facted understanding of openness, that it needs to be understood on many levels (all of which are important). The leadership discussion interestingly morphed into a discussion of "Open Textbooks" which I think could easily turn into an entire seminar in itself!
The main focus of week 2, 'creating OERs' found what was for me a valueable discussion on the value propositions of OER; this for me is very important, as too often the value propositions are described solely in turns of who wil use OER, but as the discussion showed, there are many reasons why OER can be valuable to instructors and institutions themselves.
Finally, in week 3 we dug in a bit to ways in which OER could be made less content-centric. I personally think this is a rich vein for Open Education to explore, as I think it not only can improve the experience for those accessing the OER, but for those initially learning with them as well.
I hope you got something useful from the three weeks - either a new insight into the importance of openness; more energy to help bring to fruition one of the many fantastic imagined futures for OER, or just a new tool or site you hadn't seen before. In any case, it's been great, and I look forward to speaking and working with you in the ongoing conversations and projects that are happening ALL the time online, in blogs and wikis and other forums everywhere.
Cheers, Scott Leslie
My 'ideal future' looks something like this:
Both because of pressures from many different avenues, as well as the increased awareness of how they can use the network to increase their value and usefulness, institutions and instructors start to 'open up' both their content and educational processes. It starts slowly at first, but by 2020 it becomes commonplace to find Massively Open Online Courses online, the communities and networks which they tap into, spawn and help nurture often far outlasting the short duration of the course. Instructors still get paid, institutions still credential, but many many more people benefit from the actual learning content and processes. Indeed, while institutions still exist, they are much clearer in their focus and mandate, and within society there are many new ways that become generally recognized as ways to become learned. "Open Source" learning communities abound. The term 'personal learning environments' now sounds quaint, as increasingly ubiquitous access to the network and to learning and collaborating with others in it, across many existing boundaries, is now the norm.
Over the 10 year period, translation technologies leap forward, spawning the 'Translating Telephone' - a phone-based device that can translate either text or speech on the fly. This innovation, which even 10 years earlier had seemed like science fiction, suddenly enables learners in all nations to access scores of content and learners that had previously been inaccessible to them. Both the developed and developing world come to understand network access as both a fundamental right and a key enabler of innovation; while it works out differently in different jurisdictions, the basic tenets of net neutrality survive the first two decades of the 21st Century and create a renaissance as never witnessed before. (Hey, I did say 'ideal'!)
More locally - in BC, by 2020 there are 4 more post-secondary schools running OCW-like projects on a large scale, and many other smaller scale initiatives under way; the province and BCcampus supports this and gradually abandons the 'BC Commons license' in favour of fully open content licenses (like CC-Attribution). BC leads the way in Canada in preserving net neutrality, and these efforts at promoting open content, open education and access help it weather the global economic collapse much better than many jurisdictions. BC becomes a leader in sustainable green technologies, especially around forestry, wind and aquaculture, and helps pioneer co-opetition partnerships with many developing nations through opening up access to the underlying technologies and knowledge.
And what am *I* doing to try and bring this about? Everything I can ;-) I know the above picture likely sounds naive to many people, but I'll trade that over its alternative any day.
I am a pretty slow learner - I intuitively gravitate to many different issues and projects without explicitly understanding how they fit together. But after 7 years working on OER, and 16 on the web, I have started to see that my interests and work on PLEs, on mashups, on the educational browser, on blogs and wikis, on Open Content and OER, on Network Learning, on Net Neutrality and copyright... were all about the same thing - helping people take control of their learning in an easy and sustainable way that leads to an increase in the collective consciousness. Which I now realize isn't that surprising, because the first person I ever worked for explained to me that this is exactly what we were doing. It just took me this long to figure it out for myself.
Both because of pressures from many different avenues, as well as the increased awareness of how they can use the network to increase their value and usefulness, institutions and instructors start to 'open up' both their content and educational processes. It starts slowly at first, but by 2020 it becomes commonplace to find Massively Open Online Courses online, the communities and networks which they tap into, spawn and help nurture often far outlasting the short duration of the course. Instructors still get paid, institutions still credential, but many many more people benefit from the actual learning content and processes. Indeed, while institutions still exist, they are much clearer in their focus and mandate, and within society there are many new ways that become generally recognized as ways to become learned. "Open Source" learning communities abound. The term 'personal learning environments' now sounds quaint, as increasingly ubiquitous access to the network and to learning and collaborating with others in it, across many existing boundaries, is now the norm.
Over the 10 year period, translation technologies leap forward, spawning the 'Translating Telephone' - a phone-based device that can translate either text or speech on the fly. This innovation, which even 10 years earlier had seemed like science fiction, suddenly enables learners in all nations to access scores of content and learners that had previously been inaccessible to them. Both the developed and developing world come to understand network access as both a fundamental right and a key enabler of innovation; while it works out differently in different jurisdictions, the basic tenets of net neutrality survive the first two decades of the 21st Century and create a renaissance as never witnessed before. (Hey, I did say 'ideal'!)
More locally - in BC, by 2020 there are 4 more post-secondary schools running OCW-like projects on a large scale, and many other smaller scale initiatives under way; the province and BCcampus supports this and gradually abandons the 'BC Commons license' in favour of fully open content licenses (like CC-Attribution). BC leads the way in Canada in preserving net neutrality, and these efforts at promoting open content, open education and access help it weather the global economic collapse much better than many jurisdictions. BC becomes a leader in sustainable green technologies, especially around forestry, wind and aquaculture, and helps pioneer co-opetition partnerships with many developing nations through opening up access to the underlying technologies and knowledge.
And what am *I* doing to try and bring this about? Everything I can ;-) I know the above picture likely sounds naive to many people, but I'll trade that over its alternative any day.
I am a pretty slow learner - I intuitively gravitate to many different issues and projects without explicitly understanding how they fit together. But after 7 years working on OER, and 16 on the web, I have started to see that my interests and work on PLEs, on mashups, on the educational browser, on blogs and wikis, on Open Content and OER, on Network Learning, on Net Neutrality and copyright... were all about the same thing - helping people take control of their learning in an easy and sustainable way that leads to an increase in the collective consciousness. Which I now realize isn't that surprising, because the first person I ever worked for explained to me that this is exactly what we were doing. It just took me this long to figure it out for myself.
So ostensibly the seminar is scheduled to go until Sunday, but over the next few posts I am going to try and do some wrap-up and summaries. (I find it funny, the idea of this discussion 'starting' and 'ending' because for me it's an ongoing one, out in the open blogosphere, to which you're all always invited, but that's another post I guess...)
What I'd really like to hear, from all of you, is "What is your ideal future for OER?" To get more specific, what would you like to see happening at your institution with OER in 5 years? In 10 years?
What opportunities would you like to see for independant learners in the developing world, in 5 years? in 10 years? For instructors at institutions in the developing world?
And what are YOU going to do to help make it happen? ;-)
What I'd really like to hear, from all of you, is "What is your ideal future for OER?" To get more specific, what would you like to see happening at your institution with OER in 5 years? In 10 years?
What opportunities would you like to see for independant learners in the developing world, in 5 years? in 10 years? For instructors at institutions in the developing world?
And what are YOU going to do to help make it happen? ;-)