Open Educational Resources Continued :: Richard Baraniuk and Connexions @ Rice University

Over the last few weeks I’ve posted a few times about OER and Open Textbooks. As I continue to think about where OER might lead and working out ideas for an upcoming faculty brown bag on the topic, I stumbled across the following TED talk.  In the video below Dr. Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, the OER platform at Rice University.  Connexions was one of the first sites I spent a good amount of time with months back when I started looking into OER.

While I’ve seen more than my share of great Ted talks this year, this one hit close to home.  I only whish Dr. Baraniuk would have spent more time addressing peer review and tenure/promotion in the context of OER. I found that the presentation passed by these issues a bit to quickly.

And if you don’t know about TED –  Technology, Entertainment, Design – check them out.

On a separate note, I had a great conversation with the folks at OER Commons today via Twitter (@oercommons). Although I missed the OER conference down the road in Monterey a few days ago (use #oer2009 for a Twitter search), I’m catching up with the proceedings online. And since OER Commons is local, I hope to find ways to work closely with them down the road.

We live in Shakespearian Times

Ok. I had one of those weeks. Drama, sloth and “we’ve always done it that way” spirit all around. But I just kept pressing… ’till Friday when I just a bout took my toys and went home. I resisted. But why?  Fast forward to this morning. The indomitable Jenny Levine posted this:

Block me, and I will go around you. Build a wall, and I will build a door. Lock the door and I will break a window. And if I don’t have have a leader to inspire me, I will lead. If I don’t have a team that will support me, I will recruit a team from beyond the organizational boundaries – every policy has a loophole, every system has a hidden reward.” [Dave Lankes ::  The Participatory Librarianship Starter Kit]

Thanks Jenny and Dave. Much apprecaited.

Just joined GradShare

I enrolled in GradShare today (shawncalhoun). The service is hosted by ProQuest and is intended to be an online community of scholars (grad students) looking for help in their studies. From the site, thats about as specific as it gets.  My take is the service is a peer-mentorship model of community. A few of the discussion areas include

1. Thesis topic selection
2. Proposals
3. Committee selection
4. Writing
5. Defending
6. Submitting
7. Publishing
8. Advisor relationships

So far, there have been a few posts in my area (Curriculum and Instruction), but not much that I can use to gauge the utilitiy of the site… yet. So, stay tuned and I hope to have more after a few weeks onboard.

Open Textbooks Follow-up

I presented earlier in the week to USF’s Provosts Council on Open Textbooks.   The presentation was well received and it looks like a group of us will continue to develop the idea at USF.  The VP of IT and the academic leadership team were very supportive (of open textbooks specifically and the library as a whole) and I got a nice shout-out for my presentation here.

Thanks to Shawn Calhoun for bringing up the topic of Open Textbooks for discussion at the Provost’s Council this week. Shawn gave a very informative presentation, which I have provided a link to in the new “Resources” section in the right hand column. I am now finding open textbook and e-book sites all around. Some of the more interesting ones: Flatworld Knowledge and Connexions.

Thanks Tracy!

I’m releived that the prospect of open textbooks (an idea that is evolving into ‘open education resources‘ – thanks to J.P. Allen) was well recieved and its time to start gearing up for the next phase.

Open Textbooks – Preparing for a Presentation

Following up on a post I made here a week or so ago, I have a presentation next Tuesday to our Provosts Council on Open Textbooks. A few of my colleagues have heard me test-drive this presentation a few times and it is coming together. While feedback so far has been good, I still don’t think its as solid of a case for considering open textbooks as it could be. If you have some time, please take a look and let me know what you think.

A little background on the logistics of the presentation – I’ll be handing out printed examples I (McAfee) and II (Illowsky & Dean) at the beginning of the presentation (paper copies/examples of open textbooks) and I have about 15 minutes to make my case.

Update: There seems to be a problem viewing the embeded Slideshare with Firefox. Works for me in Safari. Direct link here.

Tweets with my Tweeple in the Twitterverse

I’ve been on Twitter now for about 3 weeks and the learning curve has been steep. Twitter is not IM, or Facebook, or a blog – I think it’s all of those things and more. This week I finally got to a point where I feel comfortable using it and more importantly contribute to the Twitterverse along the way. All this Twitter talk new – there are good introductions all over the web try here and here.

A few examples if how Twitter is working for me. Yesterday, I started a conversation on Twitter with a gentleman in New Mexico (I’ve never met him in person, but I have been following him for a few weeks) about library schools. After a few Tweets, the discussion moved from Twitter to Facebook. The same day, another conversation started on Twitter about the future of technology in libraries with a great guy I’ve know for 5+ years but had never connected with on Twitter. Once again, the conversation moved to a prolonged discussion on FB.  In both cases, the conversations began on Twitter and moved into longer, richer conversations.

I have done my best to keep my little network as manageable as possible. At this point, I am not interested as much in the number of followers  I have or the number of Tweets I make. For me it’s all about the connections –my network of library folks and education folks.

Here’s a little visualization of my network.

Twitter is an awesome tool, if you’re willing to invest the time and are just a little curious.  While it’s not as user friendly as Facebook or MySpace, it has its own unique vibe. If you’re on the fence – give it a try. And if you’re just jumping in, give it some time. Either way – hope to see you there.

Went to a meeting in Denver today

The good folks who put together the LITA ALA Midwinter Top Tech Trends (TTT) meeting in Denver today did a great job providing virtual access to the committee discussions.  This year my classes started the same weekend as mid-winter, so being there in person was not an option.  Between the live blog, Twitter and Ustream attendance from my living room was a snap. Plus, I could continue to follow the various TTT threads via twitter as the rest of my day unfolded.  Well done LITA, @griffey and everyone else who pulled this one off – thank you!

The only good dissertation is a finished dissertation

I’ve followed Danah Boyd via her blog for a few years now. Dana’s work popped up on my radar when I started to do a bit of research around Second Life for a course I was taking in constructivism.  For as long as I’ve followed Dr. Boyd (yup, Dr., as in the only good dissertation….) she’s been working on her dissertation (teen use of social networking sites). Last week Danah completed her dissertation (or at least published it on the web) and is done with her PhD!

While I have yet to read her magnum opus (Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics), it was great to see that Danah has finished her PhD. I can only imagine what a great feeling that must be.

Tomorrow morning I begin the last semester of coursework in my doctoral program (Ed. D.) and its time to get down to the business of constructing a plan for my dissertation (an uneasy feeling, to say the least). Seeing that Danah has completed her dissertation is great motivation. While I have not plans to tackle a topic as wide ranging and all encompassing teen use of social networks for my dissertation… (boil the ocean why don’t you Danah) I am planning to come back to this post and remind myself that the only good dissertation is a finished dissertation.

Open Textbooks

Well, 2009 has barely gotten off the ground and an interesting new project has landed at my doorstep – investigate open textbooks and their possible use at my university.

First, a little background. Nearly a year ago, someone asked me why universities generally don’t buy textbooks for students and make them available via the library.  As it turns out, the reasons are legion – but most of the challenges for libraries in buying textbooks boil down to cost (yep, the same issue students have with them). The traditional textbook can be very expensive and new editions are published more rapidly than most other types of books. Pile on replacing/buying new books each semester and the costs simply spiral out of control. A very helpful article by Pollitz and Christie (2006) can be found here.

In getting to an understanding of why libraries generally don’t buy textbooks, I stumbled on the open textbook movement.  The concepts behind open textbooks are simple – build a textbook using many of the same processes found in traditional publishing (e.g. peer review, edited etc.) but license the work under a Creative Commons license and distribute them for low or no charge (usually over the web).

In the past week, the question (‘why don’t we buy textbooks…’) came back in a slightly different form: why don’t we buy eBooks and use them as textbooks.  From my perspective eBooks are similar to textbooks in that the costs are comparable to a printed book (even if the eBook is a scaled down version of the printed version), the eBook model does not change the problems related to new editions, and distribution (DRM) can be just as challenging as one finds with a printed textbook (with notable exceptions such as Project Gutenberg). The news on eBooks with respect to our central issues – essentially access questions – was not great news for the folks asking questions. But, this time I chimed in with the idea of open textbooks.

Cut to today – one of our deans asked if I might be willing to help investigate the use of open textbooks. Of course, I said sure!

So, without further ado – I have a new project, and its one that I’m excited about (yes, there are projects I’m not excited about, but that’s another story).  However, I can’t in any way claim to be an expert on the subject of open textbooks. Much of my original research is nearly a year old and was specific to the original idea of buying traditional textbooks for the library.

Here is where I need your help.

Do you use open textbooks?  Are you interested in them but are in the same spot as me (just getting the discussions going)? K-12? Higher Education?  One and all, I’d like to hear from you.  Please post in the comments or just give me a shout:  Calhouns[at]usfca.edu, follow me at Twitter or keep up with my links at Delicious.

2009 Resolutions

2009 is here and in full swing.  I spent the first few days just relaxing with family. No travel this year. In fact, I never left The City during the holiday leaving me lots of time to consider 2009 and what I plan to do… A few things on the list:

• Finish my Ed. D. coursework
• Start my dissertation
• Apply for tenure

In order to get going, I know I’ll need a network of friends and colleagues to help.  My plan is to use this blog, my website and social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) as tools to help me focus on my 2009 goals – and have a little fun along the way.  Seems like a stretch?

Well, consider that I’ve been using Facebook to connect with colleagues in my department in the School of Education as well as a few faculty for over a year. These connections have been invalueable during course projects, planning research and general networking.  Down the road, I hope this networking will prove particulaly helpful once I start to refine my dissertation topic and speicifically need to gather data — since I don’t teach traditional courses, I already recognize that finding a population for study could be a challenge. Many of my friends teach and might be willing to let me use their students in my research (pretty please!).

While this blog as been static for some time, the plan is to use this as a way to “just write” – write about ideas that might become parts of a dissertation.  Write about things that might support my dissertation (social networks like Twitter and Facebook) and will also probably include more than my share of dead-end rants. Whatever it takes to start writing and keep writing is all I’m after.

My webiste already has a few bits and pieces that I’ll need for tenure and promotion, so I need to keep up with that site as well.

So, there you go. 2009 will be crazy, but I hope with these goals (and no more) and some general ideas about how to get from here to there, I’ll make it to 2010 in decent shape.

Cheers and Happy New Year.