PLE or PLN - what's the difference

This is it in one graphic - PLE is the environment while PLN is the people in the network.

Personal learning environment and Personal learning network

Back to research

So... what is my research question? I'm revisiting this before meeting with the other OER Fellows in Toronto on Saturday.

How does the application of critical digital literacies inform my open knowledge construction at a Faculty of Education, as I negotiate the complex, personal and contextual teaching and learning landscapes of open educational spaces?

Key elements:

Critical DL

1. code breaking
2. meaning making
3. using & problem solving
4. analyzing
5. persona

Open knowledge construction in open educational spaces

• building understanding - using social media & LMS spaces
• negotiations between personal and professional - Cronin's macro, micro, meso, nano layers
• dial-it-up graphic

Complexity; networking; decisions made and reflective actions

• use of D2L - why I don't step into this space unless I have to (part of code breaking issues - figuring out how to use it on my own)
• use of Slack - why, how, use
• use of Twitter - 
• use of blogging
• use of inquiry projects 
• use of digital storytelling
• external influences and impacts on course design and delivery

NOW: 

• data collection has started but is it the right data? 
• What am I not considering? 
• where will this be 'published'? or will there be more than one possible publication result?

Webinars... oh my!

So Jenni sent a reminder out today for our upcoming OER Fellows day long 'retreat' to meet. It'll be the first time we get together and learn together. She also reminded us that we should be prepared to share our research plan and a webinar idea we have.

So, after reading Tony Bate's blog post That Was 2017 in Online Learning, I'm re-framing my thinking. Tony writes that "There’s a long way to go with open educational resources". He identifies five key points about why OER is not as prevalent as it should be. The point that caught my attention speaks to my work as an OER Fellow:
"stop thinking of OER as something different from everything else on the Internet; all open content has value, whether it is specifically designed for educational purposes or not; this means coming up with course design models that exploit open content for the purpose of developing 21st century skills such as knowledge management, analysis of source reliability, etc."
The next point he makes is that "Instructor training in teaching remains a huge problem" with the following statement providing a HUGE aha moment for me:

"less than half the instructors based their innovation on a theory of learning or a change of teaching method to produce different outcomes, such as skills development. Without a grounding in pedagogy and a knowledge of the research into how people learn, it is impossible for most instructors to see the real potential of digital technology for improving their teaching"

I forget that what comes naturally to me, after a lifetime in the field of education, is the underlying, implicit and tacit knowledge I bring to my course design, delivery and teaching strategies. My mediation and decision making with digital teaching and learning is based on years of experience with educators of all ages and stages. This is my gift to give.

Further to this, I'm thinking there may be some ways to focus my particular skill set into the  webinars. Since eCampus Ontario managers are already doing a Bento Box series where new e-tech tools are shared, there really isn't a need for a WHAT style webinar. It's time to shift my thinking to the WHY webinar.

• Why would you integrate media into your course syllabus - the visual syllabus shared in the Catch is a model and one example.
• Why would you stop marking and grading in open learning? links to Jesse Stommel, Laura Gibbs and Dave Cormier's work comes to mind.
• Why would you post your course openly on a blog or web site? thinking beyond powerpoint presentations comes to mind; iterations of course content over time to suit learner needs
• Why should UDL matter in course design? linking in new frameworks for UDL from CAST
• Why SECTIONS should guide your decisions of tech integrations into course delivery.
• Why digital literacies should be integrated into EVERY course.

More info about the SECTIONS model is found in Tony's book Teaching in a Digital Age Chapter 8.

Wayfinding in Digital Spaces?
Media Making Matters?
PLN's and PLE's: Critical decision making in building your digital teaching persona?

So.... I'm OPEN

Today, Jenni Hayman sent out a message in the ECHO group with a link to the WikiEducator Research/Open Educators Factory site. This describes a project about open education and lead me onto a web tool to self assess & rate your individual openness.

The graphic results are provided immediately, along with some recommendations for readings and viewing to extend your learning. So, I guess I'm not really surprised, but it turns out... I'm an open designer, OER user, open teacher AND and open evaluator.

Open Educator is defined as:

An Open Educator choses to use open approaches, when possible and appropriate, with the aim to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning. She works through an open online identity and relies on online social networking to enrich and implement her work, understanding that collaboration bears a responsibility towards the work of others.

An Open Educator implements openness along four main activities. She:

1. Implements Open Learning Design, by openly sharing ideas and plans about her teaching activities with experts and with past and potential students, incorporating inputs and transparently leaving a trace of the development process.

2. Uses open educational content, by releasing her teaching resources through open licenses, by facilitating sharing of her resources through OER repositories and other means, and by adapting, assembling and using OERs produced by others in her teaching.

3. Adopts Open Pedagogies, fostering co-creation of knowledge by students through online and offline collaboration, allowing learners to contribute to public knowledge resources such as Wikipedia.

4. Implements open assessment practices such as peer and collaborative evaluation, open badges and e-portfolios, engaging students as well as external stakeholders in learning assessment.

Despite that result based on a handful of questions, I'm still not sure about my 'status' as an open educator. As I've been exploring the 'dial it up' model, there are steps and mechanisms to shift my teaching and learning further into the open, but those will need to considered carefully and negotiated. My open means that my students, colleagues and institution are also 'dialing it up' with me. Where do ethics and privacy come into this equation and how can open be balanced with safer internet practices?

Why didn't I think of that!

I'm working on adding articles to Zotero this morning and came across a research piece done in the UK about open media classes at Conventry University in the UK. It caught my attention because of one of the names involved in this photography course - Jonathan Worth. I'd gotten to know about his work in open photography through a Virtually Connecting hangout.

As I'm peeking into the site where the course is described and results are outlined, I'm thinking of the connections to my own work in the MDL4000 course. That's when one statement hit me and I'm thinking - why didn't I think of that!

• move from broadcast model to collaborative and connected interactions
• inclusion of open students, working professionals and enthusiastic amateurs in conversations and feedback

When I meet teachers at conferences or talk to them about my course work, the often ask how they could take my course. I never made a connection to offering their participation in the course during the timeframe my own students are doing the course. It would be so easy to build external (outside of Lakehead University spaces) participation if I were to 'offer' this course to others as I teach it internally to the teacher candidates.

The #netNarr course that Alan Levine and Mia Zamora are currently teaching is done just like that! Why didn't I think of that! It may be too late for the MDL4000 course since it's on it's way out and wouldn't be sustainable in it's full year framework. But the 3239CDL course could certainly be opened to working professionals - not as an AQ formatted course since that requires university approval - as an open offering to engage with others in open digital spaces for self directed, self driven learning. I will need to think about this and talk to Mia and Alan to see how they've framed their course to engage others in openly connecting with their students.

Reference

Digital Alchemy and Networked Narratives http://netnarr.arganee.world/ 

McGill, L., & Gray, T. (2015). Open media classes at Coventry University. Jisc Final Evaluation Report 2015. Retrieved from http://comc.loumcgill.co.uk  

Striving towards openness

Today I read an article written by Viv Rolfe - someone I've been following on Twitter and listening to in Virtually Connecting hangouts. This research paper shares five elements of openness as gained from faculty interviews. These interviews were analyzed through an "interpretive lens" (something I'll need to investigate to learn more about). This work is linked to work done by Farrow (2016) where openness is described "not as a binary quality or value attributed to one activity or feature, such as cost or licensing terms, but as a 'constellation of elements'" (p. 76). These five elements are:

1. personal practice - open having a personal benefit in enhancing the practice of teaching; part of a community of practice
2. learner benefits - open serving to address accessibility issues; open providing access to education; supporting the digital learner and developing open literacies; open to promote science at open-days
3. content - OER creation by teaching staff; OER creation by students; OER reuse/dismantling; OER sharing; knowledge of open licenses; open licenses for more control over your resources
4. institution - institutional OER agenda and policy; tension with institutional priorities
5. value and culture - openness as a personal value; openness as a trait within the community "the spirit of open"; culture of open within the university

The interesting inclusion in this article are the key messages that can be used to communicate - which could be applied to the work of eCampus Ontario in their work with promotion of openness in higher education.

1. "Open education is a means of enhancing your teaching practice, and allows you to participate in communities beyond your institution."
2. "Open educational resource in their truest sense provide accessible materials for students; these practices widen access in education and support diversity. Engaging in co-creation of open educational resources will support digital literacy development for your learners."
3. "By creating content you will understand (technical) and legal aspects of applying open licenses; open licenses will help you keep control over your resources and specify how you'd like them to be used."
4. "(Research suggests that policy alone is less motivating for staff, but culture and support is.)"
5. "Engaging in open education will catalyze change within your teams and institution; you will connect with global open communities united by "the spirit of open"".

If there is an opportunity to share these elements with the OER Fellows, the eCampus team and/or the #OEORangers, I will do so.

Reference

Farrow, R. (2016). Constellations of openness. In M. Deimann & M. Peters, (Eds.), The philosophy and theory of open education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 

 
Rolfe, V. (2017, November). Striving toward openness: But what do we really mean? International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning  (18), 7. 

Purposeful Play

The application of OPEN learning in my work returned to some purposeful play in the physical classroom this past week. The students are digging into the beginning pre-production phase of their digital storytelling project. This stage includes concept mapping their ideas into a 'story map' using Mindomo. As part of this work we had a period of time of purposeful play in class. The purpose was to create a concept map of their understanding of digital storytelling after reading and discussing this topic. First step - signing up as a 'teacher' so their use of this digital tool can continue into their next placement and beyond. Then code-breaking within the space while completing the task. They immediately shared their findings and how to accomplish elements in the creation of their maps. Some went further to partner in the digital space with another person in the class. Others used the presentation option to extend their learning. Some returned to their readings and discussion notes to make sense of the topic.

The second OPENLY shared purposeful play came from creating radio bumpers for VoiceEd Radio. This was to support the first anniversary radio-thon planned for the following Saturday. The script for the bumpers were pre-written so knowing what to say was eliminated as a barrier. The 10 second message was randomly distributed to pairs of students so they didn't have to 'go it alone'. They could record the message together, take turns, or one individual could be the 'voice' while the other managed the technology. The intention was to add a music intro, as a hook, and multitrack audio production using either Audacity, GarageBand or other audio recording tools. Since this activity was device agnostic and non-tool specific, students could select and apply the tech they had available to them. Knowing that their audience would reach beyond our classroom spaces added an additional purpose to this learning task.

The third purposeful play event was the collection of images to create a video to accompany a song. The song was played in class without seeing the accompanying music video. This was done in order to assist in the visualization of images to support the voice/music. The song lyrics had been collected and imported into a Google spreadsheet, shared openly to the students. They selected a portion of the song to collect and curate images. Then the students went to any of the open, creative commons licensed locations for images (Pixabay, Unsplash, Morguefiles, Flickr CC) to find images for their section of the song. The purpose of this task was to get students into these image warehouses to code break the site mechanisms for image curation. These may or may not become locations for them to apply image collections for their digital story production. The play had purpose - experiences with image selection, script development, directions for film production and sequencing of image URLs.

Purposeful play has a space in any classroom as a way to dip into a topic, learning experience or assignment skill development. It removes barriers and supports students as they learn, build skills and demonstrate their learning in culminating tasks.