David Wiley es demana si caldrà començar a argumentar el valor dels recursos educatius oberts en termes de costs i resultats:
[...] The more people I talk to, the more convinced I am that OER has failed to establish a digestible value proposition for formal education. For better or worse, many people caught up in the day-to-day vortex of teaching, advising, mentoring, and grading don’t have the spare time to problematize publisher-school power relations, realize the virtue of local control of curriculum materials, or fully appreciate the transformative benefits of transparency.
We need to refine our messaging if we mean to impact formal education – particularly in K-12 where so many curricular decisions are made “above” the individual teacher. Perhaps our messaging can take a cue from the intersection of the current, outcomes-obsessed political climate and the slashing of school budgets in response to global economic realities. Perhaps we should begin discussing a “golden ratio” of open educational resources that compares (1) (differences in outcomes) with (2) (differences in cost) when a OER are used instead of traditional, proprietary educational materials [...]
Scott Leslie (EdTechPost) demana suggeriments i/o ajuda per millorar la seva col·lecció de diagrames d'entorns personals d'aprenentatge (PLE).
- Is the collection useful to you? What have you gleaned from it? How have you used it?
- What would make it better?
- Would it be *more* useful to you if it were someplace else, say Wikieducator, that perhaps seemed more neutral (though, arguably, less easy to edit)? Would you be more willing to contribute to it if it were?
- Would you be interested in helping to grow or maintain the collection? What would you be willing to do to make it better?
La nova versió d'ATutor (disponible ja en beta) permet crear, importar i exportar continguts en format IMS Common Cartridge.
[November 17, 2009] A beta release of ATutor 1.6.4 is now available for testing and feedback, leading up to the final release in mid December. Post your feedback and bug reports early to the Bug Reports Forum. Try the ATutor 1.6.4 Demo to see how the new Common Cartridge features work. Or, Download ATutor to install a version of your own for testing. See the ChangeLog for a list of new features in this release.
Interessant. Una bona definició d'una universitat oberta i un camí per arribar-hi.
Més informació sobre la campanya ací: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Open_University_Campaign
[...]About the Open University Campaign
In October 2008, Students for Free Culture drafted and adopted the Wheeler Declaration which declared that:
An open university is one in which:
- The research produced is open access;
- The course materials are open educational resources;
- The university embraces free software and open standards;
- The university’s patents are readily licensed for free software, essential medicine, and the public good;
- The university’s network reflects the open nature of the Internet,
where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty and administration.
Informe sobre l'accés obert i l'ús lliure del coneixement en l'educació superior, elaborat pel Committee for Economic Development, un think tank empresarial nord-americà.
Peter Suber cita un fragment de les conclusions (molt significatiu pel que fa a un possible canvi de paradigma, vg. més avall), a més de l'índex del capítol 5, sobre l'accés obert i la investigació (repositoris, drets, finançament...). També hi ha altres capítols igualment interessants sobre recursos educatius oberts, avaluació i acreditació, extensió de les comunitats d'aprenentatge, etc.
In this report we have only begun to plumb the potential for greater openness to improve higher education. As we have made clear in our previous reports we believe that openness is not a paramount value or an unalloyed good [...] Just as new, more open, means of electronic distribution for scholarly work should accelerate the dissemination of new knowledge and hasten the pace of innovation, they pose financial challenges to existing vehicles for scholarly publication that have, and are, providing valuable services [...]
But with all the difficult issues to address, and with all the unforeseen consequences of these new pathways, we are convinced that institutions of higher education should move toward greater openness on their own with support and encouragement from businesses and governments [...] We want to encourage thoughtful experimentation to learn more about the effect of greater openness in practice.
As part of International Open Access Week (October 19 – 23, 2009) JISC is today launching a definitive guide to its 15 years of work in Open Access, tracking the changes in UK policy, opinions and what the future will look like [...]
Helen Foster ho anuncia al seu blog en Moodle.org: la compatibilitat amb IMS Common Cartridge (només importació) ha estat inclosa en Moodle 1.9.7 com a característica experimental.
L'altre dia parlàvem d'IMS CC i dels altres estàndards d'IMS ací: seminari sobre estàndards d'elearning.
Més informació sobre la compatibilitat futura amb IMS CC en Moodle 2.0: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:IMS_common_cartridge
Article de Scott Wilson, Paul Sharples, Dai Griffiths i Kris Popat (University of Bolton). Descriu un experiment d'inserció d'aplicacions externes en Moodle mitjançant widgets (Wookie Widget Server).
It was expected by the team that the use of Widgets, particularly those using the Wave Gadget API to provide live collaboration, would be a satisfactory replacement for the built-in tools of the VLE, such as chats, forums, and quizzes. This was certainly the case; and we believe that almost the entire toolset of a VLE can be readily replaced with this type of Widget.
Amb relació a això, fa esment d'un comentari de Martin Dougiamas sobre l'impacte de Google Wave en els entorns visuals d'ensenyament/aprenentatge (EVE/A):
Moodle (and similar systems) are (like it or not!) more about the management of learning at a higher level than this, a system of control and authentication that supports institutional policy and practice. However, what I do think will happen is that many of the activities in Moodle will be replaced by services like these.
L'opinió dels autors de l'article és que els EVE/A es podrien redissenyar com a entorns de: (1) gestió de l'aprenentatge, integrats amb els sistemes de gestió acadèmica (bases de dades de matrícula, estudis, professorat...) i (2) disseny de l'aprenentatge (a la manera de LAMS), utilitzant com a components del disseny aquesta mena de widgets d'activitats col·laboratives. Els widgets serien així independents dels EVE/A concret i també podrien funcionar fora de l'EVE/A, p. ex. en els PLE de l'estudiantat.
Són conscients, tanmateix, d'algunes dificultats: es faria més difícil seguir l'activitat dels estudiants, ja que no quedaria registrada en l'EVE/A, i a privadesa de l'EVE/A tendiria a esvair-se.
Està disponible una nova versió beta del Mahara 1.2. La novetat més important és la capacitat d'exportar/importar els continguts complets d'un compte mitjançant l'especificació LEAP2A (una característica prèviament anunciada en el roadmap).
The biggest piece of news regarding this is that Mahara has full LEAP2A support - in particular, you can export your account from one Mahara, and import it again to the same or a different Mahara, and the new account will have all of the data (files, blogs, Views) that the old account had [...]
Slides, full papers and audio recordings from the 2nd World Summit on the Knowledge Society (WSKS 2009).
Manuel M. Almeida recull algunes xifres actuals d'ús de la blogosfera, Twitter, la Wikipedia i FaceBook.
Abstract:
Course management systems, like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.
Nova versió de MyStuff, el programari de portafolis de l'Open University. Però pareix que simplement resol algun error i no presenta característiques noves...
This is an incremental version with a a major XSLT bug resolved which may have caused installation issues for some users depending on which version of the PHP XSLT library they have installed [...]
Resum de la situació actual del programa Escuela 2.0 i de les negociacions dels convenis amb les comunitats autònomes.
L'Open University ha anunciat un nou mòdul per a Moodle (Shared activities) que permet que l'usuari "normal" sense permisos especials (p.. ex. l'estudiantat) pugui crear les seves pròpies activitats i invitar-hi altres usuaris del sistema. Les activitats que es poden crear són les següents:
És a dir, es podrien configurar fàcilment fòrums o wikis per a col·laborar en un projecte, per a debatre un tema, per a estar en contacte o per a qualsevol cosa que els usuaris vulguin.
Aquest mòdul s'implementa internament com a format de curs. Totes les "activitats compartides" que creen els usuaris es vinculen en la base de dades a un curs especial que roman ocult (anàleg al curs 0 que conté els elements de la pàgina d'inici de Moodle). Els usuaris veuen les activitats que han creat, o aquelles a les quals s'han unit per invitació, fora i a banda dels cursos en què estan inscrits. D'aquesta manera s'"enganya" l'arquitectura "cursocèntrica" de Moodle per mantenir espais que s'estenguin més enllà dels límits d'una assignatura, d'un curs acadèmic, etc.
Un experiment sens dubte molt interessant, però amb problemes tècnics que es detallen en la documentació, derivats dels ajusts i filigranes que cal fer per a encabir aquest tipus de funcions en un LMS. Per a llocs "en producció" es recomana modificar algunes variables de configuració de Moodle i fer uns pocs canvis en el codi font. Potser aquests canvis es podrien tenir en compte en una propera versió de Moodle.
[...] I cannot stress enough how fundamentally this changes the underlying assumptions of what a VLE is. The institution still sets up course web pages, uploads content, specifies learning activities and assessments and provides formal tutor groups with the right students (and tutor) having access to them.
But now individual students can also form their own study groups or use the system for social networking purposes with others in ways that they decide. There is no need to get permission or involve an administrator in setting up a blog, wiki or forum – just a requirement to click a box saying you agree with the terms and conditions and will be responsible for moderating the forum etc. [...]
Niall Sclater: Now learners control their VLE/LMS (Director of Learning Innovation, The Open University)
- Structured Data
- The Real-Time Web
- Personalization
- Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
- Internet of Things
WordPress.com implementa i impulsa la solució de Dave Winer per aconseguir notificacions i converses en temps real en la blogosfera. A la manera de Twitter o FriendFeed, però sense les limitacions de Twitter i amb els avantatges de l'estàndard RSS, p. ex. adjunts, etiquetes i retroenllaços que no compten dins dels 140 caràcters :-)
Helen Barrett ha creat aquest estiu dos nous webs sobre utilització d'eportfolios en educació secundària i universitària:
David Mudrak (Praga, Moodle HQ, autor de la nova versió del mòdul Workshop, encarregat de les eines de traducció de Moodle i Mahara) exposa ací els seus malsons. Una de les parts més acabades de Moodle, remarca, és el mòdul d'exercicis autocorrectius (Quiz). I les activitats condicionals seran una de les novetats més destacades de Moodle 2.0. Això són fets. En canvi, l'eina de fòrums segueix més o menys com era. I no són sols els fòrums. Podria ser que, per atendre les demandes de tota mena d'usuaris, Moodle s'anés fent menys constructivista i més -massa- instructivista?
This all starts to smell like a SCORM too much! Is not it a little bit strange that the automatically evaluated Quiz is so matured, while the Forum, the essential tool for constructivistic online courses, still lacks such essential features like to subscribe to individual threads, to mark (or tag) the thread as closed, to collapse the parts of the displayed threads etc.? When did we last improve our good old Forum in a really significant way? Why do we not support real cooperation of the students? We are still not able to group students into a team and grade the team work instead of individual students, for example.
Presentació d'Oskar Casquero en CcITA'09. Integració del Web 2.0 en l'educació universitària en el marc de l'EEES, mitjançant la introducció d'un iPLE ("institutionally powered PLE"). Un plantejament interessant.
As part of work being undertaken by the Rhizome project, we plan to enhance the range of existing standalone and plugin CV builders by developing a custom CV creation plugin for the blogging tool WordPress. This will allow individuals to maintain and present views of their professional profile, skills and competences.
Our plugin lies at the crossroads between self-presentation devices like the résumé, profiles maintained on professional social networks such as LinkedIn, and an ePortfolio style systems.
It will allow users to store their online personal data in a secure location of their choice and facilitate individuals in not only presenting their competencies according to the Europass CV format, but also in interoperable formats such as HR-XML and Hresume [...]
The Rhizome project will not be developing a solution from scratch. We will be extending an existing open source solution released under GPL in 2007 – the KITE Europass-CV plugin [...]
Text de la conferència de Bryan Alexander en OpenEd 2009.
[...] for some pedagogical and curricular needs, the CMS walled garden is well suited. It makes for a separation from the social media world, a paused space, perhaps one fertile for reflection. If that works for some situations, then it works, and should be selected consciously, not as a default or unreflective option, but as the result of a pedagogical decision process.
Meanwhile, we need to watch for where innovations occur. That's largely going to be Web 2.0, a hub of invention so busy that it's difficult to keep up.
El termini oficial de finalització dels projectes del GSOC 2009 s'acaba i Helen Foster informa que enguany els autors dels projectes han anat explicant cadascun en un blog com anava la cosa. Bon moment per donar-hi una ullada. Els enllaços, a la pàgina corresponent de Moodle Docs:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/GSOC/2009
Recordem quins són aquests projectes (n'hi ha de molt interessants):
- Record audio repository plugin
- Timeline course format
- Improve Moodle user experience consistency
- What you paint is what you get
- Google Gears integration
- XML templates for administrative settings
- Mentors
Helen Barrett comenta dos esquemes funcionals d'Eportfolio (1, 2) i Stephen Downes reflexiona que cada vegada això s'assembla més a un entorn personal d'aprenentatge (PLE).
[...] the picture of e-portfolios is looking more and more like the picture of personal learning environments, a convergence that was probably inevitable.
(Esquema d'un eportfolio per Sònia Guilana: Portfolio roadmap.)
