One of my most recent OER projects has been working with Michigan State University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. In this pilot project we have captured a series of talks on issues and challenges facing Latin America. Here’s the press release:

June 10, 2010

EAST LANSING, Mich. — To address the social, educational and health inequalities in Latin America, Michigan State University has launched a virtual resource aimed at educating a variety of stakeholders, including educators and policy makers.

Latin America Learning is an open education resource, meaning the public has free access to information and can repurpose it.

A pilot project of MSU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the site provides a virtual hub of material provided by nearly 150 scholars and practitioners who participated in the two-day symposium, “Regional Identity in Times of Globalization,” held at MSU in April.

CLACS is working with MSUglobal Learning Ventures, an entrepreneurial business unit at MSU, to develop effective practices for sharing information.

“MSU fosters on-the-ground solutions and scholarship with students, faculty and colleagues around the world,” said Chris Geith, assistant provost and executive director of MSUglobal. “Open Educational Resources enable us to have an even greater impact by inviting everyone to engage with us by redistributing and remixing these materials for their own purposes.”

CLACS is currently inviting researchers and academics from around the world to contribute to the resource. Latin America Learning currently includes material produced by MSU, Cornell University; Tulane University; W. K. Kellogg Foundation; Centro de Investigaciones Regionales of the Autonomous University of Yucatan; the Integrated Family Development System in Yucatán; CIESAS-Sureste; El Colegio de la Frontera Sur; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; and Universidade Federal da Bahía.

“This project is particularly timely,” said Robert Blake, director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. “Often overlooked, much of Latin America is on a path of democratic reformism, which can offer aspirations for communities in parallel situations around the world.”

FSKN will use ccLearn’s DiscoverEd search tool to draw resources from reliable sources. These materials will be curated by experts in the field as well as aligned to a set of core competencies for food safety managers so that the users can identify the specific area the resource covers as well as trust the quality of the content. This fall, the Food Safety Knowledge Network will be pilot tested to support implementation of supplier training at the pre-certification level in developing countries including India and China.

If you have or know of food safety resources to share, please contact Sunnie Kim at kiml@msu.edu.

these are people whose ideas i have been following in the edtech/oer blogosphere for months. i love hearing them dialogue with one another, especially the disagreements that lead to enlightenment.

this is why i love coming to opened.

I have a couple different goals for the next few days here. One is to really start thinking about my dissertation topic since I’m pretty sure I want it to be something that will add value to the OER community. I want to learn what other people are studying and how they are going about it.

My other goal is to look for people who are doing things related to what we are doing over at MSU. Specifically, I’m looking for folks working on K12 OER so that I can make some connections for collaboration with our school gardening project. I also want to talk with people who work on OER repositories and directories and pick their brain on things they’ve learned that may enlighten our process for our food safety OER projects.

I’ll also be presenting on the last day of the conference. The title of my session is called “Piggy-backing your way to OER growth in higher education.” I’ll be talking about how we (MSUglobal) have been using back door methods to increase awareness, use, and production of OER on our campus.

I am super stoked for this week and can’t wait to hear all the speakers and meet new people and old friends!

dr. david wiley

i had the wonderful opportunity to chat with david wiley about the projects he is working on.

david is associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at brigham young university, chief openness officer of flat world knowledge, and founder of the open high school of utah. he was formerly associate professor of instructional technology and director of the center for open and sustainable learning (COSL) at utah state university.

• about david (01:09 min)
  

• open high school of utah (11:19 min)
  
  • www.openhighschool.org

• flat world knowledge (05:30 min)
  
  • www.flatworldknowledge.com

• study on the financial impact of open courseware (05:21 min)
  

• OER legislation and role playing online courses (06:30 min)
  
  • H.R. 801

• OER’s impact on the future of education (06:20 min)
  

• dissertation advice (01:50 min)
  

thanks david for taking the time to chat! i’m so excited to see the progress of your projects!

www.hightechhigh.org

so the conference wasn’t too spectacular, but what was absolutely breath-taking was visiting high tech high school with my pepperdine classmates. what an amazing realization of all of the learning theories we have been learning about. the high tech high design is all about problem-based learning (PBL), collaboration, personalization, student engagement, real-life application, and innovation.

from the moment we walked into the doors of the original high tech high, there was a different feel than all other schools i’ve been in. the students were happy, they were engaged, they were self-monitoring, they were confident and proud, they were LEARNING! their artwork and projects were everywhere and it was beautiful.

high tech high is a charter program in san diego, california that is currently comprised of 5 high schools, 2 middle schools, and an elementary school. 100% of their graduates are admitted to college. whoa. the thing i LOVE is that these are not privileged, affluent, uppity kids. the enrollment is by lottery and the only prereq for entering the drawing is being a resident of california and having a method of getting to the school since there is no bus system. the schools do not track and so there is no such thing as isolating or mainstreaming… they’re all in it together. the classes are small… 25-27 at most and every student is known by an adult through an advisory program that goes throughout the whole 4 years. the teachers teach interdisciplinary subjects and collaborate together for all kinds of cool real-world projects. the students have published books and are exhibiting their artwork on blood at a real art gallery next month. i could literally go on and on about the exciting things they are doing there.

we were given a tour of high tech high international by a student in her junior year and she was amazing. so poised, confident, and intelligent. you can hear her talk in this awesome video made by my classmate terry who could possibly be the coolest teacher i have ever met:

we also had a chance to visit explorer elementary and these are some pictures i took there. the knowledge tree is especially inspiring. click on it to see a larger view.

tree of knowledge

peace

dogs by elementary kids

aren’t these wonderful? as you can tell, i had a lovely time just seeing how school can be done and was so inspired to see it working and working well. yay for people who think outside the box and challenge the status quo.

they miss the whole point about collaboration, sharing, and making things transparent. they have yet to embrace the reality that there could be a different business culture that is not about power and hierarchy, but about a shared vision and purpose.

not to be an age-ist because i know a lot of really innovative and seriously cool older people, but is it surprising that they’re all old? no. is it surprising that all the old people in the audience are nodding their heads in agreement with them? no. is it surprising that the young people are standing up to question the lack of thinking outside the corporate box? no.

lave and wenger’s idea of displacement -continuity contradiction is so coming into play here. these old-timers are feeling threatened by the newcomers who come in and want to bring about change. however it is only through change that the practice or the company will be able to stay relevant and in existance.

so far, beside the keynote speaker, i have been pretty unimpressed with this conference thus far. hopefully it will get better in the next two days.

photo by: flickr/bartheq

i’m here in san diego attending the CSCW (computer-supported collaborative workspace) conference and listening to the keynote speaker cory ondrejka, the cofounder of second life. second life is the crazy online alternative reality.

so cory just shared a story about craig, the founder of craigslist. he showed a picture of craig standing next to this really high uppity guy from the ny times with like a bajillion pulitzer prizes. to the ny times guy, craig was like a baby seal… totally harmless, soft, cute and fluffy. however, in just a short time, ny times classifieds lost a huge, huge sum of money while craig’s list grew to be the largest classified ad medium in the world.

craiglists’ ceo told wall street people that craigslist has “little interest in maximizing profit, instead preferring to help users find cars, apartments, jobs, and dates.” wow what a concept. just helping people for the sake of helping people, not to make money. just sharing for the sake of sharing, not to make money. it really is a paradigm shift in this day and age i think.

so what do we learn from craigslist? as cory put it, ny times… “don’t f*** with baby seals.” love that.

terri, dan, & sunnie @ the educause showroom

just got back from orlando today after giving a seminar at educause 2008. i co-presented with terri bays (executive director of the OCW consortium) and dan carchidi (publication director of MIT OCW). it was an awesome experience getting to know these folks who are doing so much for the OCW movement. i had a chance to interview both terri and dan and will be posting it in the coming days.

our seminar was 3 hours long and in a nutshell, we talked about how ocw can help universities not just help other people, but also help themselves: open sharing, local payoff. we talked about how OCW can help fulfill a university’s mission as well as its explicit and implicit goals.

this was my first time at educause and i was blown away by its huge scale. all the big names in IT were there trying to sell their goods to the higher ed public. the best part was walking around all the booths and getting free stuff and free food. overall, i had a wonderful time and learned a lot!

some things i have in the works are:

• inverviews with key players in the movement
• a look at the various repositories and sources of OERs
• surveys to determine the awareness and impact of OERs
• review of existing literature on OERs

i’m excited to start this knowledge path because i believe in the movement’s values of openness, sharing, and collaboration, and because i believe that open educational resources will be catalytic in the quest for equal access to quality education in the states and around the world. so let’s begin.