This post is basically  a thinly-veiled, massive plug for Box.net.  You can read all about what it’s supposed to do on their website, but I’ve been using it here at Canadian Polytechnic as a media repository for one of the programs I work with.

Consider the problem (one not so unique):  you work within a large unit that produces fantastic media for the institution on a daily basis.  This media gets used by instructors and students via different channels–online courses using a CMS, websites, powerpoints, even paper manuals.  The media is then dispersed through all these channels and sits in various locations–personal hard drives, servers, DVDs, CMS repositories.  There is no central index to the media, therefore no way of locating a: what has been created and b: where it is sitting.  Basically, imagine all the contents of your institutional library distributed across the cubicles  of your institution’s 5 campuses, without knowing what is sitting at which cubicle.

Let’s say you need a series of images of boats. Given the size of your institution, you know that somebody must have some boat pictures that were created for XYZ program, since they talk about boats.  You can go and find somebody in the program to see if you can “borrow” them.  Alternatively,  you have no idea that XYZ program even talks about boats, so you ask somebody at the institution to a: create some boat images or b:  purchase some for you.  Perhaps your saavy librarian could even see if there are any open access images of boats that could be used.  But searching the open repositories is pretty time consuming, and not always fruitful, so that might not turn up anything.

Your institution might be in discussion about setting up a searchable repository for institutionally created media.  But this might take a while for various reasons, and in the meantime XYZ program has decided that they want to a:  locate all the media sitting in the CMS courses and have it in one place, b: make it searchable and shareable with other programs in the Faculty/School/Institute and other institutions.  But it has to be super easy to:  

1. get any kind of media into the repository (from docs to movies, with a drag and drop interface)

2. tag it

3. share it (simple link so borrowers don’t to have to set up accounts or login)

4. search it

5. control permissions (different media and programs require different levels of permissions)

Box does a lot more than all that, but this is what we’ve found useful.  I like to think of it as a very small step towards an OER strategy at our institute–when the tools make it easier to share, then sharing might actually happen.

One of those things I meant to do this earlier, but got caught in a busy week.  Over at the BCIT LTC blog I’ve posted an audio clip of an interview I did with Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University.  Apart from learning all about his innovative approaches to teaching, I also learned that he is un bon franco-canadien de Sudbury qui demeure aux E-U depuis une bonne quinzaine d’années, mais qui reste toujours branché à notre Radio-Canada et CBC via satellite.

Wow. Well said.  Nothing more to add.

With mostly excitement and some anxiety, I’ve been thinking ahead to the OpenEd 2009 conference this August at UBC and have been working with Stephen to think about the focus we want to take with our presentation.  Most conference time slots are frustrating in that they really only let you breeze through the surface of your presentation, and hopefully elicit some good questions from the audience who hopefully got something out of your drive-by.  But we’re at a stage with our topic on Open Models where we want to be challenged and pressed to think differently about the topic and what potential might lie with the model.  I think this requires greater articulation of the rationale for this model, and some concrete examples where it has the most potential.  If time allows, we’re going to go in this direction:

1.  In our presentation and paper at the ICDE 2009 conference I mentioned (Bourdieu’s)  notion of English (and higher ed in English) as social/cultural capital, but I think this needs more explanation in relation to the importance of allowing access for global participation (with credits) in our bricks and mortar institutions.  This is also related to a need for models where barriers such as institutional bureaucracies and TOEFL scores can be by-passed to make this happen.

2.  We made the point that the OER movement to date has largely focussed on content and distribution of this content, but needs to move into the development of new models for education that allow for greater participation (with credits) to a more global population.   We feel it is timely to be reminded that in some constructivist views of formal education, content is actually not the most important piece of the education puzzle, but the interactions and engagement that take place in the learning space (broadly defined) and the multiple perspectives that are encountered in those interactions are where learning occurs.  Therefore, a model that embraces open access needs to account for this, which is why our model creates access for global participation with credits, and doesn’t spend much time on how OER content is being used.

3.  Our model evolved out of a desire create more opportunity to bring in local (globally dispersed) perspectives into a global forum in order to provide multiple perspectives on a topic in an authentic manner.  We’ve described this in terms of making the “local knowledge global” and the “global knowledge local”).  Stephen has since come up with the term “ecology of knowledge” but we have now discovered there is a well established discipline of “knowledge ecology“.  We’re going to tie in with this idea if appropriate.

3.  Stephen has a mild horror/fascination with global pandemics (he wouldn’t agree:)) and in his last few presentations has expressed the value of the model for disciplines such as the health sciences.  Specifically, a PBL medicine course would have students from geographically dispersed locations working together on cases, again making the local global and vice versa.  The urgency and the interest that has been expressed in ensuring that the developing world has access to current medical publications and up to date information has obviously influenced this example, coupled with Stephen’s observation that with any global health crisis there is no one solution or strategy that can be applied to any local context, while at the same time there is a need for global cooperation and collaboration.  It’s an interesting tension, and obviously one that applies to other disciplines such as  international development. 

The crux of our argument is that we feel that open course models integrated into traditional bricks and mortar institutions are critical in not only expanding the internationalisation agendas of these institutions, but in expanding the boundaries that these institutions have come to place on access, pedagogy, and knowledge.  One model is admittedly a micro step, but if it succeeds in altering the current course-based paradigm that we are in, then perhaps there will be more innovation of the educational experience these institutions currently provide.

From David Wiley, this is one of the most persuasive set of slides arguing for  institutions to consider the benefits of being more open about content. My institution needs to begin this conversation in a more coordinated way, and this presentation really nails the argument in my opinion.

After reading Stephen’s post I felt like I had to dig up this very important article by the New London Group (aka. James Gee, for example) circa 1996.  Multiliteracy is their term for “21st century literacy”,  framed within a sociocultural lens.  I might comment more later.

I’ve been revisiting some old articles/books that I collected when I was researching autonomy, self-access and language learning. This one from Gill Sturtridge seemed to have relevance to current discussions of informal learning, and open access in general.

The information explosion, information technology and increasing student numbers may not only mean the integration and acceptance of self-access centres within the traditional classroom-based teaching institution, but also the complete re-assessment of the mode of delivery of education generally. Institutions could become total providers of self-access learning and the traditional classroom could disappear entirely in some institutions” (1997, p. 68).

Sturtridge, G. (1997). Teaching and learning in self-access centres: changing roles? in P. Benson and P.Voller (eds): Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. London: Longman.

I’ve been busy over at http://testingcentre.wordpress.com, pulling a bunch of stuff together for a workshop on creating successful online learning environments. The problem with this topic is that so much good stuff has been said on the topic already, and I feel like I’m adding very little to the noise. My hope is that the participants will guide the workshop, since I’m quite prepared to go off in any direction that is needed.

Of course, in preparation for the workshop I found a couple of good new tools to add to the mix: PollDaddy  for quick student polls and Tangler , a non-US hosted discussion board.

I’ve begun uploading copies of articles and presentations to the Publications and Presentations part of this site.  It’s a great relief to pull them off my collection of drives, discs, etc, and get them into one place, although I still haven’t located a digital copy of my MA.  Almost all of the articles and presentations are co-authored and co-presented (dissertation excepted, obviously) since I generally prefer the collaboration part of the process.  I’ve also posted drafts of stuff published in locked-down journals, which I have unofficially vowed to avoid in the future.  It really makes no sense to publish in a subscription only journal on so many levels, so I’m not sure why anybody bothers to go that route anymore.  My first publication was published in a journal that doesn’t even exist online (obviously very obscure), so I’m not even sure how I would even go about getting a copy at this point.  

Anyhow, comments or questions about any of the stuff on that page are always welcome.

A quick trip over at one of my favourite sites, Interactive Narratives, lead me to VuVox, a Web 2.0 multimedia authoring tool that stole my attention for about a half an hour.  There could be lots of useful applications of  tools like this in higher ed, in particular where multimedia development resources might be stretched, or where there is a desire for students to tell a story, explain, show understanding, or even synthesize in a multi-layered, dynamic way.  Robin Good provides a nice overview/how to on the tool