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Open Content, Where You Want It, In A Space You Control

Posted January 7th, 2011 by Bill

In the past, we have talked a fair amount about open content. Done correctly, open content has the potential to support meaningful change within education. A significant amount of open content exists on the web; much of this content, however, is not immediately reusable.

In this post and the accompanying screencast, we break down a system that can be used for authoring, redistributing, remixing, and collaborating on open content. The site is customized on top of VoiceBox, and all of the components used to build it are freely available. I'll be presenting on this topic in more detail at Educon in a couple weeks.

This system has several differences from other systems that support open content, but one major difference merits additional notice: it is designed to be porous, and it is designed to be installed and run by the people or organization creating the content. It can be as public or as private as you want it to be, but that decision is left up to individual content authors, as opposed to the people building the content silo.

Overview

Within the site, people can:

  • Create and join groups; groups are workspaces that can be fully or partially private.
  • Author notes; notes are the main form of content within the site. A person creating a lesson would build it by creating notes.
  • Start discussions; discussions occur within groups, and provide a means to discuss areas of general interest, or to discuss a specific note.
  • Offer feedback; feedback is private between the person receiving and the person offering feedback.

Notes can be created as individual pages, or organized hierarchically into multiple page books. Each book can be accessed in print-friendly format, and each book generates its own RSS feed that can be used to import the book outside the site.

In conjunction with a service like BookBrewer, this site can be used by schools or other organizations to create, distribute, and sell eBooks. Also, given that this site is built on Drupal, we just might write some code that allows Views to output content in ePub format.

Video Breakdown, Education Version

Use the minute marks to skip around the video to find the sections that interest you most.

Creating Notes | 0:15

The opening section breaks down how to create notes, and how to shift pages within a book. Notes can contain a variety of different media, and in this section we talk briefly about embedding images, audio, video, and other files within your notes.

Groups | 4:15

This section describes how to use groups to work collaboratively. It shows how to track activity that has occurred within groups, provides an overview of group home pages, and shows the different ways that users can choose to share their content.

To see an example of how to create a group, skip ahead to the 15:00 mark of the video.

Discussions | 7:10

This section shows how to use discussions to collaborate within the site. Discussions can be tied to a specific note, or more general within groups.

Feedback | 9:30

Feedback is a private communication between a reviewer and an author. For example, a teacher can provide private feedback to a student, or a department head can provide feedback and evaluation to an instructor in their department.

Moving and Copying Content | 12:30

In this section, we show how people can work with other people within the site, and how work can be distributed outside of the site. We highlight how to access the RSS feed, and print-friendly format of each book.

For people working in the site, we cover how to copy books between groups to allow people to derive copies and remix content without disturbing the work of their peers

Video Breakdown, Drupal Version

This breakdown gives a high-level overview of how the functionality was created. As mentioned earlier, the site build is based on VoiceBox. The main additions within the Open Content site include the ability to create multiple page books (leveraging core Book module and the contrib Book Manager) and the ability to form working groups (using Organic Groups).

Creating Notes | 0:15

Notes are created using CCK, and the Filefield, Imagefield, and Embedded Media Field modules. With the exception of the embedded media field, this setup is identical to what we are using on VoiceBox. Audio and video nodes are formatted using SWF Tools, and images are displayed using LightBox2. We will likely be switching to ColorBox in Drupal 7.

Groups | 4:15

The groups functionality is created using Organic Groups. The additional access control options for groups are created using the OG Access Roles module.

Discussions | 7:10

Discussions are structurally identical to Notes, with the exception of a nodereference that allows a discussion to refer back to a specific note. The nodereference field is populated using the Node Reference URL Widget module, and the link to create the actual discussion is created via Views.

Feedback | 9:30

Like discussions, feedback nodes use a nodereference to point back to a specific note. Additionally, feedback nodes make use of the Node Access User Reference module to control access to the feedback node.

Moving and Copying Content | 12:30

The ability to copy books is done via the Book Copy module.

Additionally, when books are placed into a group, the group affiliation and the level of access control is kept in synch throughout the book tree via the Book Manager module.

The RSS feeds for books are generated via the Views module, and the print-friendly format comes from the core Book module.

Conclusion

If there any follow up questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments.

Assessment

Posted August 15th, 2010 by Bill

One way of changing education is to change how we assess learning.

This isn't going to be a post about standards, but we need to start with them to get into the center of the discussion (this is not to say that standards are not a subject worthy of close consideration; rather, they are just not the main focus here, today).

  • Standards define curricular goals and objectives.
  • Textbook companies prepare packaged materials that are "aligned to the standards." These textbooks, in theory, are designed to address the curricular goals and objectives as defined by the standards (and for fun, ask a textbook rep to demonstrate how their texts "align to the standards." Ask them to define the process by which the texts are "aligned to standards." Then, get out the boots, and enjoy the hijinks that will ensue).
  • Student learning is measured by a standardized test that claims to assess a student's base of knowledge as measured against the standard.
  • The "quality" of a school is determined (in part or in whole) by how students have done on the test. Test results can be a key factor in closing down schools.
  • The "quality" of a teacher is determined (and in many of the merit pay schemes, teachers are rewarded or punished) based on student scores on these tests.

So, let's take an enormous, completely unjustifiable leap of faith and assume that the standards actually define something meaningful, for one reason and one reason only: this post is not about standards, it's about assessment.

When a curriculum is defined by a pre-packaged text, teachers and students are relegated to content consumers. Teachers get the text; they deliver the text; they test on the text, and teacher effectiveness is tied to how students perform on the test that purportedly measures how well students "know" the content that has been delivered to them. Any process used to "learn" the material is overshadowed by the means of assessment that defines the experience, and defines one's success or failure within that experience.

It's also worth noting that in lower performing schools, there is more motivation to stick with the "proven" or "traditional" route of using a standards-aligned text, as this provides a level of cover and plausible deniability should a school not meet growth goals. In an environment where sanctions accompany low test scores, using alternative means of working with kids is equated with gambling with kid's futures - unless, of course it's happening under the auspices of TFA, KIPP, or a charter school. Higher performing schools - where socioeconomic level appears to play a role - tend to have more freedom to experiment, largely because the threat of sanctions for "failure" is missing.

This is why serious discussions about assessment are a necessary part of the dialogue around improving education. What would an educational environment look like where, in addition to or instead of a standardized test, students had the opportunity to show their mastery via two portfolios: one defined by the school, and the second defined by the student?

The process of building a portfolio (ie, of crafting the assessment) is also a learning process. Selecting and justifying elements in a portfolio requires a level of critical, reflective thought that is not present in either preparing for or taking current standardized tests. It's a more efficient means of mastering both material and life skills than the assessments that currently claim to measure those skills.

What would teacher professional development look like if a teacher was assessed on how they provided feedback on student work? What if teachers developed professional portfolios that included curriculum they developed, modified, collaborated on, and/or shared? Most teachers create curriculum on a regular basis as workarounds for sections of the text that are weak or not suited for their classroom; what if creating and sharing these units was made an explicit requirement for growth and development as a teacher? What if this ongoing creativity and collaboration was a factor in assessing an educator's professional growth?

These shifts are possible now; they require a change in how we look at assessment, which potentially could inform changes in what and how we teach.

Changing assessment is hard. Generally, more individualized assessment takes more time. From a business place, it's hard to plan a "disruptive" business around this because you can't really streamline the time required for good feedback. The challenge (and therefore the opportunity here) is to make tools that simplify and streamline creating portfolios of work that demonstrate learning. The benefit - especially when compared to other forms of evaluation, and certainly to standardized testing - is that the process of creating and justifying the artifacts that demonstrate learning is also a process that supports and reinforces learning.

But this is a subtle point, and one that is often buried beneath the time required to assess portfolio-based projects versus the time required to process a standardized test. Ironically, the quest for efficiency in assessment has occurred at the expense of efficiency in learning.

DrupalEd 5.3-0

Posted October 18th, 2007 by Bill

This release features both security and maintenance upgrades.

For new users, this is the best version to download and install. The download tarball contains a directory named "Instructions" that contains some instructions on getting started. For additional help, and/or to get involved with the DrupalEd community, submit issues to the issue queue or join the DrupalEd group.

Download DrupalEd here

For existing users, you do not need to download and install this tarball. Rather, you should be managing your upgrades by using the update status module. This module will help you keep your DrupalEd install current and secure. If you have an existing DrupalEd site, you should upgrade immediately to keep your site secure.

My Proposal, NECC 08

Posted October 3rd, 2007 by Bill

In this session, participants will examine portfolios from several angles:

  1. as a learner, using the portfolio to track/present their day to day work;
  2. as a learner, using the portfolio as a tool to highlight individual artifacts in order to demonstrate learning over time;
  3. as an instructor, examining the various situations where portfolio use may or may not be the best choice to support student learning;
  4. as an instructor, using a portfolio as a professional development tool;
  5. as an administrator/evaluator, using a portfolio as a means of presenting the different types of learning occurring within a school or an organization.

Drupal and Moodle together? Really? Really.

Posted August 4th, 2006 by Bill

Over on the OpenAcademic blog, Sean Lancaster has asked the following question:

i appreciate the effort that is being undertaken to create a terrific online learning environment that brings various resources together seamlessly; however, i am curious to better understand how Drupal and Moodle are different in what they provide. i mean, why would a person use both tools at the same time?

The short answer to your is that the best option is a subjective determination -- kind of like Mac vs PC, etc, etc.

OpenID in an Educational Context

Posted July 25th, 2006 by Bill

OpenID provides a method of Single Sign On (SSO) between multiple web sites. OpenID allows users to "claim" a specific url; this url identifies the user as they browse and join different web sites.

Other SSO options exist, including Shibboleth, SXIP, Pubcookie, and JA-SIG's Central Authentication Service. OpenID differs from other methods in a few ways, but the purpose of this post is not to compare or contrast the pros and cons of the different SSO options. This post is also intended as an overview to demonstrate some possibilities, not as the final word on what OpenID can or can't do.

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