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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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.