All posts in Open content + textbooks

I'm getting ready to head in to DrupalCon, where over the next few days I'll be talking education and open learning with anyone who is interested.

And as I'm heading in, I have MOOCs on the brain - not because I'm particularly a fan of MOOCs, but because of the tendency to take a great thing (in this case, information and interpersonal exchanges distributed broadly over the web) and reduce it into something that feels more manageable, but is ultimately something lesser (in this case, MOOC platforms). More on this later.

The Web Is Your MOOC

Part of the reason that I'm thinking these thoughts prior to heading into DrupalCon is that I've long held the notion that open source communities have been engaging in effective peer-supported learning, even while many for-profit companies and academic communities have been struggling to distill the process of peer-supported learning into something resembling a replicable product. From having participated in and built many types of learning communities over the years, simpler is often better - many open source communities have done amazing work with listservs and issue queues, and many more feature-rich platforms have withered because, over time, a site owners "must-have" feature is the post launch usability nightmare. There's a moral in there about user-centered design and user testing, but that's a subject for another post.

But getting back to MOOCs, the early MOOCs - the ones run by Stephen Downes, Alec Couros, Dave Cormier, George Siemens, (and yes, I know I'm forgetting people - please fill in the gaps in the comments) etc - encouraged participation from anywhere. If you had a blog with an RSS feed, you were in. Participants remained in control of their work (depending, of course, on the publishing tool they were using. Open source platforms generally offer more options for data ownership and portability than their closed brethren). The MOOC was like a marauding mob of information, with the potential to sprout anywhere.

It's All About The Portfolio

In the post-lifestream, post-MOOC era, it's been rare to see much excitement about portfolios. This doesn't surprise me, because like all good ideas, portfolios have been around for a while, and thus lack the shiny newness that generates great marketing copy. However, the need for the concept hasn't diminished - any time you see a site that promises to collect the sources of your learning into a single location, so you can show your employers what you know! - you should think, "portfolio." All of the sites that promise to simplify collecting and curating your digital footprint? Portfolios. A lot of the conversations around documenting and receiving credit for informal learning have their roots (and possibly solutions) in portfolios.

In the conversations we have had about portfolios over the years, we have seen three main barriers, or areas of misunderstanding:

• Distinguishing between a working and a presentation portfolio: simply put, the working portfolio is a running collection of just about everything you do. The presentation portfolio is a selection of elements from the working portfolio selected for a specific purpose. Portfolios can serve different purposes for different reasons, and the relationship between the working portfolio and the presentation portfolio is key.
• Portfolios need care and feeding over time: as mentioned before, the working portfolio is messy. Periodically, the working portfolio needs to be pruned and cleaned up. But, messy is great, and if it's not messy, that could be a sign that things aren't working as they should.
• Ownership and control of the portfolio: because most portfolio implementations are paid for by an organization, the organization usually controls access to the portfolio and any information in it. Organizational control is also seen as an essential element to assessment. However, this flies in the face of learner control and ownership of the means by which they learn. Ultimately, this is a data portability issue with implications for the learning experience. More on this later.

Concluding Thoughts

One of the things that has been particularly underwhelming about the corporate MOOCs that have cropped up is their uncanny resemblance to an LMS with an open enrollment policy. While there are many differences between the platform-stylehttps://chronicle.com/article/Providers-of-Free-MOOCs-Now/136117/ MOOCs and the original versions, the lack of learner control is a key element. Like Vegas, work in a MOOC stays in a MOOC (unless, of course, a company pays money to study student data).

In the platform-style MOOCs, the open web is missing. From a learner perspective, the portfolio is MIA. For a learner, throwing the evidence of your learning into a space that someone else controls isn't a viable long term strategy.

So, if you're at DrupalCon and want to talk open learning, let's make some time and sit down together. Open source, and the methodologies that support sustainable open source development, have a lot in common with open learning. I'd love to hear what other people are doing in this space.

Yesterday, Darren Draper put out a post expressing some concerns with Teachers Pay Teachers. Shortly after putting out that post, Darren was forced to don his flame-and-troll-proof suit, as the comment thread got, well, interesting.

I'll get to the discussions in the comment thread later in this post, as a majority of the comments are illustrative of a small part of a larger problem.

OpenWashing, Teachers Pay Teachers Edition

Teachers Pay Teachers markets itself as "An open marketplace for educators where teachers buy, sell and share original teaching resources." In this context, Teachers Pay Teachers (or, TpT) provides a clear example of how the word "open" has been mangled beyond recognition.

For those of us working in open source and open content, our notions of openness generally share some common pedigree with the four freedoms of free software, the definition of Open Source, and the Creative Commons licenses. It's worth noting that, even within these broad definitions, there is often vehement disagreement as to what constitutes open. However, even while acknowledging that there is no universally accepted definition of what "open" really is, it's still safe to say that TpT isn't it.

"Open" does not equal "being on the internet."

TpT is a marketplace, and this is fine, but a marketplace that anyone can enter isn't an "open" space, at least not in the context of Open Educational Resources. TpT puts technically unneeded barriers in the way of reusing content; the most obvious of these barriers is the need for a login even to download a free resource. The business need of TpT (collect contact info) is in direct conflict with greater openness, and TpT lets the business need trump the tendency to be more open.

And, of course, this is fine - it's just not open. If, however, your actual practice conflicts with your marketing catchphrase, that's not good.

I'll return to the TpT at the end of this post, but now, we're going to jump into Darren's post.

Private Time, Public Money

Darren lays out seven reasons why he struggles with TpT. I'm highlighting 5, 6, and 7, below:

5. Public school teachers are paid by the taxpayers - with public funds - to work during specific hours of the day.
6. The computer and other equipment used by public school teachers were all likely purchased by the taxpayers, using public funds.
7. It is my belief that classroom activities, assessments, games, handouts, outlines, posters, printables, research, worksheets, and the like - that have been created by a public educator during work time or with school-owned equipment - belong to the public and should therefore be licensed with an appropriate, open license. Resources created with public funds should neither be bought nor sold by teachers because they were never the teacher's to sell in the first place. Because these resources were created with public funds, they belong to the public.

I checked the comment thread on Darren's post before staring to write this response. When I looked, there were 34 comments - 19 of those comments focused on when content was created - and this is illustrative of the larger problem.

The question of who owns teacher-created content - and the nuances of the time of day and equipment used to create the content - came up in several of the Open Content Authoring events we ran over the last several months.

Our advice to this question in the short term:

• Work on your curricular material outside of school hours, and use your personal account. Store a copy on personal hardware (an external hard drive, a personal blog, a personal Google Apps account, etc);
• Let your district know that their policy on intellectual property creates an unnecessarily adversarial relationship around curriculum planning;
• Let your district know that their policy on intellectual property creates a disincentive to you doing your best work, as the only way you can maintain ownership over your work is to do it outside "normal" working hours on your own equipment;
• If you belong to a union, bring this to union leaders as an issue that needs to be on the table as part of contract negotiations;
• Incorporate a piece of Creative Commons Licensed content into EVERYTHING you do for your work - make sure it is licensed under the Share-Alike clause. This means that your District can claim ownership of it, but that due to the nature of the license, you (and anyone else) is free to reuse it under the terms of the CC license.

In Darren's comment thread, the fact that so many commenters were fixated on the timing issue flags the reality that people are having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. Fighting about the time of day when you are allowed to maintain control of your creative output means that you are living in the box that people laid out for you. Fighting about the time of day when you can do your work means that your perspective is limited at the outset. This comment illustrates the predicament perfectly:

I was so with you on this post, until it hinted that items were most likely being created on school time and/or with school equipment. I would encourage you to spend a week with me to see that I don't have enough hours in my "school day" prep time to make my weekly schedule, copy/assemble resources, grade papers, record grades, communicate with parents, and supervise my students during additional remediation opportunities. I consider myself lucky to sneak in a second bathroom break each day! :)
All of my TpT products are made by me, at home, on my personal equipment with software I've purchased myself (my classroom computer is a desktop that is over 8 years old) .That's *after* I have spent numerous additional hours per week grading papers, inputting grades, and emailing parents (from home, on my own computer). My dear husband can attest to the hours he has spent helping me cut, laminate, recut, and assemble centers for my kiddos.

The workload issues here sound very typical of most teachers that I know. There is not enough time in the workday to cover their professional responsibilities, so work comes home. Work spills into weekends. Budgets for supplies have been slashed, so teachers buy supplies out of their own pocket. School equipment is outdated or locked down to the point of unusable, requiring much prep to take place outside of school networks, on non-school machines. Teaching doesn't fit into the hours defined in most contracts, and teachers put in significant time outside of traditional working hours, in addition to spending their own money on class supplies.

And this is the conversation we should be having: why are teachers expected to power the underfunded mandates of increased reporting in the era of high stakes testing, with fewer resources, less support, in a work day that doesn't have room for all the demands on teacher time? Districts that have policies that claim ownership of teacher intellectual property are perpetuating that absurdity, and this absurdity needs to be addressed and clarified in employment contracts. Unions need to make this an issue as well.

Lessons Are Not The Ultimate Goal

The problem - and a shortcoming - of both traditional textbooks and content silos like TpT is that they treat a lesson as the stopping point. This makes sense for them, because both textbook companies and TpT make money from distribution. If there is no sale, there is no revenue. From a business place, this makes perfect sense.

Creating and using open content approaches the same problem - how do I get the best possible material to my class - from a different place. Teachers can use open content exactly as they would use a textbook, or a piece of content purchased from TpT; for many people, that is where their understanding of open content ends. However, that vision of open content is incomplete, and rooted in our habits of using material with restrictive licensing.

There are different levels of using open content; teaching lessons that use open content is the starting point. Remixing material that incorporates two or more openly licensed sources is a next step. Releasing that remixed version is the next step. Collaborating with other people to edit and remix content is an additional level of involvement.

And, if you look at the trajectory of using open content, it resembles the trajectory of learning. It's not a transaction (go here, buy this) - it's a series of interactions of increasing complexity, each of which requires judgment and expertise. Over time, building and using open content develops a professional network and a collection of domain level experts to work with. Working with people to create open content is some of the best ongoing professional development out there, and districts would be wise to embrace and support this reality. Rather than make absurd claims over ownership of teacher IP, they could divert some professional development money into supporting teacher time in a facilitated authoring process that spanned the course of a year. The resulting material could be released under a Creative Commons license, ensuring that teachers and the district were given the appropriate credit for their role in creating and funding the work, and material created with public money would remain available for public use.

Image Credit: "Money, get away!" taken by kiki follettosa, published under an Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.

On Saturday, March 9th, we held an Open Content authoring day in San Francisco. It's the second we've put on this year, and for those interested, we have a third coming up in Portland, OR on April 6th.

The San Francisco meetup was held on the campus of Lick Wilmerding, made possible thanks to Jonathan Mergy. In the morning of the meetup in San Francisco, we spent some time working with the participants on converting existing lessons - stored in word docs, google docs, or as collections of files - into more granular, more easily reusable, chunks of information.

The work of transitioning existing instructional material into reusable open content is largely organizational, and involves reviewing and editing existing material to ensure that it is well organized and coherent. However - and this point cannot be emphasized enough - this review and editing process results in better material. This is something that, in an ideal world, would happen anyways. This review should be viewed through the lens of supporting better instructional design, and should be incorporated as part of ongoing teacher professional development. The process of organizing a lesson to make it easier to reuse as open content is EXACTLY THE SAME as reviewing a lesson to make sure it is coherent.

In the afternoon, the discussion included sketching out a rough road map for an entire school to transition to a broader, more regular use of open content. The key element in this transition involves reinforcing the idea that the process of creating open content is identical to the process of creating any other type of content - the only substantial difference is the license that is applied to the work. It sounds obvious, but when discussing open content, the notion of openness - and the new horizons implied by the philosophical shift in focus - often distract us from the familiar act of creating useful educational material.

The starting point for individual teachers, a department, or an entire school is exactly the same: the individual lessons that teachers have already created, currently stored on hard drives, in Google docs, in notebooks, and/or in filing cabinets. These lessons exist; many of them have been tested and revised multiple times. Cleaning up this existing source material - a practice that leads to better instructional design, and a practice that should be happening anyways - provides a starting point. It's also worth noting that teachers working in groups, revising the lessons of their colleagues, provides natural opportunities for peer mentoring.

In an earlier post, we talked about the steps involved in creating open content. Working teachers have already done the first steps. Most are at the point where they can edit and revise to make their work clearer - and, as a side benefit, easier to reuse.

Teachers have lessons and other educational materials. They create them regularly, and use them every day.

Like just about anything, this material can benefit from review, and this review can include reorganization into a structure that makes it easy to reuse the lessons.

Once the lessons have been edited and restructured, they can be sequenced into a unit or a course. At this point, the goals of the unit or course can be used to determine what additional material, if any, is needed to round out the work. If any new material is needed, it can be created, or sourced from other openly licensed content.

In practice, this would look something like this:

The review process - steps 2 and 3, where existing lessons are converted into smaller, more granular components, would occur periodically throughout the year. The process of sequencing the lessons - step 4 - would occur less regularly - perhaps 2-3 times a year - with a semi-annual review session - step 5 - dedicated to cleaning up full courses by filling in any gaps that aren't met with the material that has already been created. This way, the work unfolds gradually, and is a natural extension of the work already required to teach a course, and to prepare for upcoming classes. The process can be sped up, of course, but that requires more focused time, and people who have both the content area expertise and the available time to do the work. If this was implemented at the department level - with all teachers in a department collaborating over the course of a year on focused lesson cleanup - the first year would produce a solid body of work, and the second year could allow for greater levels of experimentation and sophistication - for example, Chemistry and Biology teachers and students could generate some 3d molecular models that could be incorporated into science texts.

But in any case, when we talk about creating open content, the discussion needs to be framed around the act of creating. Teachers are already doing this work, and many teachers are already on board with sharing their work to benefit others. However, we have found calling this process "creating open content" confuses the issue. When we are introducing people to the concept of open content, we need to talk less about the licensing issues, and more about sound instructional design. It sounds counter-intuitive, but we have found that by reinforcing what teachers know, and how that pre-existing knowledge dovetails cleanly with the new concept of open licensing, people understand the new concept - open licensing - more fully, even though we talk about it less. Open content is good teaching, and this is the discussion that we need to be having.

If you are thinking about going to an open content authoring day, here are some tips to help you get the most from the day:

• Identify what you want to get from the day ahead of time. The authoring events are a mix of community work days and a maker space, and knowing what you want to do with your time will help you make the most of the day.
• If your goals for the day include working on a specific project, try and make progress on your working outline and your initial research before the event. This way, during the event, you can work with other participants on structure, editing, and other elements of the project where you will benefit from outside review.

• If your goals for the day don't include working on a specific project, that's fine - one of the other ways that you can participate in an open content authoring day is by helping to clean up existing open content that has been released in clumsy formats (pdfs, word docs, powerpoint, etc).
• If your goal for the day is to learn more about open content, that's fine as well - most events will have an intro session on open content, but then you will get the chance to learn by doing. The open content authoring days have more in common with Project-based Learning or Maker events than with traditional lecture.
• Identify potential partners - if you think that someone else might be working on a similar concept (or might be interested in working on a similar concept) ask them. If you can assemble a working group prior to the event, you will be better prepared to make the most of in-person meeting of the open content event.

Based on feedback we have gotten from other open content events we have run, we put together a series of posts to help provide background information for people authoring open content. This documentation works equally well for people looking to author open content on their own, with a small group in their school or organization, or for people attending open content authoring days.

• A General Guide for Creating Open Content; and a shorter version
• Using Advanced Search To Find Open Content;
• Licensing, Attribution, and Reuse;
• Resolving License Conflicts When Authoring Open Content
• Background Information On Open Content

But really, the short version of this post is that if you are coming to an open content authoring day, that's awesome. Talk about it. Talk about the work you want to do there. During the day, start the planning for the next one. Identify people you might want to work with to collaborate on a year long project where you each save ten of your best ideas, and then, over the summer, get together to refine that group of great ideas into the best open educational resource ever. The open content days are group work days, but as educators, every day is a work day. Using the ethos of open content, infused with the learn while doing of Project Based Learning, flavored with some of the inventiveness and freedom to experiment that comes from Maker spaces, let's see what we can build.

Image Credit: "Working - Glass Blower" taken by Bob Jagendorf, published under an Attribution Non Commercial license.