I am at the above conference this week. It is hosted by the League for Innovations. Camosun is a member of the League.
Over the next few days I will be blogging about the highlights of the conference. It is my hope that colleagues back home and elsewhere will benefit from these notes.
Welcome to Martin Buck’s blog.
Here you will find postings I have made about different professional and schedule development activities I have been involved in over my recent time as a college math instructor at Camosun College. You will also find posts at my Google Plus account. See below for a link to that.
I have been an instructor at Camosun College since 1987. In that time I have been an active participant in and evaluator of the use of educational technology to help faculty, staff and students gain digital literacy skills.
In 1995 as an outcome of my master’s degree, I began Learning Webs, a project to develop and deliver online instructional materials for adult upgrading students. These are currently being delivered both online and in a blended mode in partnership with local community learning centres.
My passion is helping create a ” . . . world made transparent by true communications webs (Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society, 1971, p. 157).”
In my spare time, I like to read fiction and biographies as well as restore vehicles. I recently built a shop to facilitate that passion. You can read about the summer 2011 project at http://www.carbucks.ca/?p=11. Next up is an 83 Honda Magna V65. At the time it was claimed to be the world’s fastest production motorcycle. While I still have a need for speed, that bike is now up for sale, as I focus on more practical machines. In that vein, I also have two Triumph TR8s, an ’80 that needs a new water pumped and paint job and an ’82 that is in ‘collector plate’ condition.
Here’s a bit of background information for you.
The first keynote speaker at the E-Learn 2011 conference was Barbara Means of SRI International, USA. She spoke on the above topic. More info on her is available at http://ctl.sri.com/people/displayPerson.jsp?Nick=bmeans The blurb about her presentation is below.
Elementary and secondary schools were slower than private industry and higher education to embrace online learning options, but budget crises have done what technology evangelists could not. Estimates of the number of blended learning courses taken annually U.S. students have topped 3 million, and online options are no longer limited to course recovery, summer school, and Advanced Placement. This talk will consider the emerging research base on blended learning as part of mainstream practice in K-12 schools– its effectiveness, implementation, and implications for equity.
I also attended a small group circle led by her on this same topic. Below are a few things from that session.
She says that one third of American high school graduates do not have the English or math skills to succeed in post secondary education.
In the group was Christian Ellis from the Ho’ Ola Leadership Academy at the Kapolei High School spoke about the online option they offer students. Christian’s contact info is at http://sites.google.com/site/khscounselor/contact-information. The Leadership Academy is “Hawaii’s first educational effort that uses Hawaiian cultural practices to help students reach academic success.” See http://www.midweek.com/content/zones/west_coverstory_article/offering_a_new_lease_on_learning/
We were told that Alabama, Idaho, Michigan and Florida are all officially moving to online education in their K to 12 system.
Barbara Means mentioned a Canadian who has done research in this area. Robert Barnard Concordia University. More info on him is available at http://doe.concordia.ca/faculty/?page=faculty_list&categoryid=5&facultyid=10.
Some interesting developments in online education platforms. Pearson Publishing who provides the MathXL platform I use for teaching online is introducing OpenClass. It is a new kind of learning management system that is offered through the ‘Cloud‘ via Google Apps for Education.
OpenClass will be offered free of charge. A beta version is supposed to be available October 18th. Pearson’s model is to provide and charge for curriculum content. However, other content providers will also be able to make use of the platform.
For more details see the press release here. See their website at http://www.joinopenclass.com. A promotional video, without much in the way of details, is available here.
This development could very well be the ‘game changer’ Pearson claims it to be. The demand for online learning continues to grow, here in BC and around the world.
What are OERs?
Open educational resources (OER) are digital materials that can be re-used for teaching, learning, research and more, made available for free through open licenses, which allow uses of the materials that would not be easily permitted under copyright alone.[1]
A key part of OERs is that they are available under a Creative Commons License which permits the re-use and even re-mixing of educational resources.
There are a number of repositories available providing a range of resources from learning objects through to complete courses. Here are some examples:
BCcampus’ Shareable Online Learning Resources
National Repository of Online Courses
To see more about what I’ve written about Open Educational Resoures, enter OER into the search box on the top right of the screen.