Short and Smart Tutorial about OER

#GoOpen Campaign in the USA

In the search for something new in the sphere of Educational Technologies I have discovered an idea of openly licensed educational resources, which are learning materials that can be used for teaching, learning, and assessment without cost. They can be modified and redistributed without violating copyright laws. The US Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign encourages states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials to transform teaching and learning. It is a great opportunity to improve students' learning in their school.

The Office of Educational Technology on their official webpage of Open Education claim that "educational opportunities should be available to all learners. Creating an open education ecosystem involves making learning materials, data, and educational opportunities available without restrictions imposed by copyright laws, access barriers, or exclusive proprietary systems that lack interoperability and limit the free exchange of information."

They describe how resources that are openly licensed benefit schools in a number of ways, but most notably they help to:

• Increase Equity – All students have access to high quality learning materials that have the most up-to-date and relevant content because openly licensed educational resources can be freely distributed to anyone.
• Save Money – Switching to educational materials that are openly licensed enables schools to repurpose funding spent on static textbooks for other pressing needs, such as investing in the transition to digital learning. In some districts, replacing just one textbook has made tens of thousands of dollars available for other purposes.
• Keep Content Relevant and High Quality – Traditional textbooks are perpetually outdated, forcing districts to re-invest significant portions of their budgets on replacing them. The terms of use of openly licensed educational resources allows educators to maintain the quality and relevance of their materials through continuous updates.
• Empower Teachers – Openly licensed educational resources empower teachers as creative professionals by giving them the ability to adapt and customize learning materials to meet the needs of their students without breaking copyright laws.

Katrina Schwartz in her latest article "How Teacher-Created Free Online Resources Are Changing the Classroom" (July 11th, 2016) discusses the implementation of #GoOpen Campaign and experience of teachers and whole schools who are using it.

Keeping information fresh and up to date in a quickly moving world is claimed to be one of the biggest reasons why districts in the US are starting to get more serious about the power of teacher-created open resources. Districts typically adopt new textbooks on a five-year cycle. At that point, some of the information is outdated. Another reason why teachers are excited about this movement is the ability to adapt resources for their own use. If a teacher believes a lesson plan found online is not completely aligned with the standards taught in his state, he can modify it until he is comfortable with it.

However, many teachers still have big questions about open educational resources that will determine how many of them choose to adopt this approach to teaching and curriculum. Teachers are familiar with the amount of time and energy it takes to create good learning materials because many already curate and remix lessons. As the infrastructure to search and share those lesson plans becomes more robust, some teachers wonder whether they should share lessons they created with the world when they were never compensated for the time they put into making them. Others worry about issues of intellectual copyright. Despite that US governments supports the idea of open educational resources.

The Office of Educational Technology is supporting districts to #GoOpen in a few ways. First, staff members are trying to ensure that there is infrastructure in place to make teacher-created materials more discoverable. Amazon has brought its recommending and search prowess to the project with Inspire, a platform where teachers can upload their lessons, tag them and make them freely available to other teachers around the country. Inspire is still in beta, with several district around the country testing its functionality. The plan is for the Inspire platform to be compatible with third-party learning management systems that many schools already use, so teachers can search the learning registry from within their school’s platform.

This is a great example how government initiative can support learning and teaching and foster progress in the country. It can become a model for other countries to follow. And, I hope, Kazakhstan can soon adapt it for our system of education in order to popularize open educational resources.

References:

Office of Educational Technology. (n.a.). Open Education: Openly Licensed Educational Resources. Retrieved from: http://tech.ed.gov/open-education/

Schwartz, Katrina. (2016). How Teacher-Created Free Online Resources Are Changing the Classroom. MindShift. Retrieved from: http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/07/11/how-teacher-created-free-online-resources-are-changing-the-classroom/

Jing - a perfect tool for individual feedback

I discovered Jing about two years ago. A friend of mine has been using that a lot. I heard about it from her, but it sounded quite complicated. However, when I started rediscovering things for my Genius Hour at university, I accidentally faced it and realized that it is a great tool!

The image is retrieved from TechSmith official website. They provide a free opportunity to download and use Jing here.

If you want to try it, you can watch the following short tutorial.

I am going to use it to give feedback to my students and capture some pictures from my screen. Probably, I will try creating screencasts of presentations later and for any other purposes as well. Enjoy using Jing with me.

10 ways to use video in education

These are 10 ways to use video in the classroom. You will find the name of appropriate program in brackets:

1. Flip a lesson (Relay, Fuse);
2. Teach when you are absent (Screencast);
3. Personalize feedback (Jing);
4. Parent and Community communication (Screencast);
5. Stop repeating yourself (Relay);
6. Record experiments (Coach's Eye);
7. Authentic assessment (Relay, Fuse);
8. Create a professional development library (Screencast);
9. Student video projects (Relay, Jing);
10. Formative assessment (Jing).

You can watch full video below if you want to get more information:

Salman Khan reinvents education with his Khan Academy

My latest discovery was Salman Khan's Academy which proposes an idea that you can learn everything. I would say that it would be everything for an English pupil, but not everything for a learner of a foreign language. However, it is a really great source which we (English teachers) can use to let students learn something new with the help of English.

Some interesting statistics:

• 4200 free micro lectures
• 100 - 200 watched videos a day
• over 1 million of students

Moving education to a new level so that learners:
- watch video at your own time, at your own pace;
- review video when necessary without being embarrassed to ask to repeat;
- when you acquire a new concept, there is no one around with a question "Do you understand this?";
- comfortable in your own room or wherever you like.

Teachers can now flip the classroom:
- use lectures at home, do hometasks in class;
- use technology to humanize the classroom;
- make classes interactive.

The Process: 
- video, video, test (some hints are included);
- from simple to more advanced;
- can teach and learn everything.

Teachers can see student's progress. It is shown in an overall table or can be individualized.
Colors represent the level of proficiency:
- Green - proficient;
- Blue - working on it;
- Red - stuck.

Teacher can intervene learning of those students who have red areas and give them extra explanation and practice, or first put student with green with another one with red in the same area together and let them learn from each other. It is peer-to-peer tutoring.

The main aim of Khan Academy is to make teaching and interaction as productive as possible.

Teacher can create a class, add students there and know exactly:

• what student did;
• how long they spend every day;
• what students have watched;
• when they pause videos;
• where they stop watching;
• what exercises are they using;
• what they have been focused on.

IT IS A GLOBAL ONE-WORLD CLASSROOM

Salman Khan presented his speech in 2011 at TED Talks in California in March 2011 and received a standing ovation. His full speech you can find here.

The website of Khan Academy is https://www.khanacademy.org/ It is in English, and it is the most developed resource. However, today they have translated in in several languages. The Russian version of this resource can be found here. It contains the same information, but it is difficult to navigate on this website.

This is how Khan Academy main page looks like:

And this is the choice of subjects. Isn't it amazing?!

Nearpod modifies the way you can use presentations interactively

A completely new experience is what I had today!

It is amazing that so many new tools appear to improve and ease out teaching!

One of them is, definitely, Nearpod - a resource where you can create and add presentations online as well as make them interactive and let students use devices to follow you during a presentation and participate as well.

I tried it this evening and found it pretty easy to use. I liked the fact that you can add direct links to online resources (videos, articles, etc.), create quizes for your presentation, use polls to collects some opinions, and many more options. You can play with it if you go to https://nearpod.com/

Create your own account and start enjoying it!

Here are some tutorials which will help you to get used to this resource quicker and apply it into your teaching.

Try it and bring High Tech e-learning into the classroom!

YouTube++ as a limited tool to adapt video for the classroom

It seems as if I haven't posted anything for ages! Despite the fact that only two days past, I have learned so much and would be happy to share that with you.

I have been studying how to use video in the classroom. I have found several amazing resources and I would like you to express your opinion on that.

First, let me start with one tool, which in my humble opinion has a limited value, but some of you can find it pretty useful.

It is called "YouTube++" extension for Google Chrome where you can:

• "cut" video;
• select only those episodes which you need;
• change the order of episodes you have chosen;
• save particular time points which you can find easily later;
• set a function of auto-replay of particular part.

Unfortunately, you cannot;

•  save this video as a separate one;
• use it anywhere else but youtube.com;
• use this option in another browser (different from Google Chrome);
• understand how it works at once;
• watch any tutorials on that but one, which is added below.

It took me about an hour to getting acquainted with it and adjust my first YouTube++ video.

I hope, you will find it useful as well and be able to implement it. I think, if you just want to delete some inappropriate scenes or cut down the video, YouTube++ will serve you right.

DIGITAL NATIVES. Think differently with technology

DIGITAL OR NEW LITERACIES

Module from Middle Grades Curriculum

There has been a ot of discussion about how technology influences our learning and acquiring information as well as the whole process of cognition.

Podcast: http://www.americanradioworks.org/how-do-we-learn-better-digital-or-print/

Katz (2016) in his article "How Do We Learn Better: Digital or Print" provides a podcast of Stephen Smith about how digital technologies change the way we learn. It is inevitable that digital learning changes the way we acquire information. Smith claims that our brain shows different types of cognition when we play digital  game rather than board game. People approach and interpret information differently while doing the same activity in real life and digitally.
We as teachers should take it into consideration and make a shift between digital and print documents in order to provide better learning. Scientists have found out that digital learning creates concrete and factual interpretation of data while information learned from printed resources develops our abstract thinking and lets us make any necessary connections with other sources of information and the situation in the world.

It all makes learning more personalized and it is inevitable. Richardson (2012) in his article "Preparing Students to Learn without Us" claims that we live in a moment where personalizing the learning experience is not just a possibility - it is almost an expectation. However, we should differentiate between personalized and personal learning. According to Downes (2011), it is autonomy that "distinguishes between personal learning, which we do for ourselves, and personalized learning, which is done for us." Richardson's only hope is that classroom and teachers should help a learner become a passionate, patient, connected learner who is empowered to truly learn whatever and whenever he needs to.

Learning is becoming personalized. As a result, our brain is getting personalized too. Science correspondent O'Brien (2011) looks at what is happening to teenagers' brains in our multitasking world of gadgets and new technologies.
Our time and technology provides a shift from single-task activities to multitasking. Students more and more often combine several activies with the help of technologies. They video chat with friends, chat in Facebook or Twitter, do their homework and talk to their parents. Isn't it amazing? Modern lifestyle creates a generation of tech addicts.
However, scientists claim that we cannot do two tasks as well as we can do each one separately. Marcel Just from Carnegie Mellon University says that multitasking is possible but efficient multitasking is a myth. There is always a cost which we pay to divide our brain concentration into several activities.
Nevertheless, it is a world tendency and we are living at the time when we are collectively building better brains, or at least different.

However, teachers and other adults are not always ready to such changes in students' learning habits and behaviour. Some teachers say that laptops have changed the way they teach: less lecturing, fewer worksheets; more student projects, more lessons customized to the learning needs of each student. But in many schools where computers are introduced, nothing changes about how teachers teach or about how students learn.
The first thing to do, according to Hanford and Smith (2013), is create a new mindset in teachers in order to change the way they teach rather that simply change books into computers. This is an idea which is implemented now in the USA.
Unfortunately, here in Kazakhstan this change will take much longer because nowadays there are still very few teachers who take advantage of new technologies in their classroom and implement changes to their way of teaching.

References:

"Digital or New Literacies" Module from Middle Grades Curriculum

Hanford, Emily, & Smith, Stephen. (2013). One child at a time: Custom learning in the digital age. American RadioWorks. Retrieved from: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/personalized-learning/#1

Katz, Ryan. (2016). How do we learn better: digital or print? American RadioWorks. retrieved from: http://www.americanradioworks.org/how-do-we-learn-better-digital-or-print/

O'Brien, Miles. (2011). Is technology wiring teens to have better brains? PBS News Hour. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8jmKHlXvU

Richardson, Will. (2012). Preparing students to learn without us. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0kJUUs48nTbazJZcDB2My0wNjg/view 

Our student's reaction when they get their results

I personally believe that important part of assessment is correctly created rubrics. They minimize risk of being subjective, equalize criteria for assessment and give clear feedback. Teachers should not underestimate importance of written feedback. It gives students direction for futher improvement which is our initial goal.
You can probably say that rubric does not refer to educational technology, but still I find it essencial in the process of teaching. Therefore, I include this topic to the blog.

Rubrics: Assessment and Learning Tools

Teaching and learning cannot exist without assessment. There are many different forms of it. Formal and informal assessment are well known, while terms of formative and summative assessment are used by professionals only. This response concentrates on one tool for grading student's performance which is called "rubric". Rubric is not a new concept and it can be considered inappropriate topic to discuss in this blog, but I found a new type of rubric which teachers can find valuable.

After reading two short articles about several types of rubrics, I decided to summarise them in this response. Banow (2015) in his blog post "Single-Point Rubrics: Exceeding Expectations" compares analytic and single-point rubrics and expresses his attitude towards them. He describes a long process of creating an analytic rubric and compares that to quite easy way of developing a single-point rubric. In addition, the author includes in his post a video called "Assessment Using Rubrics" by Dr. Michelle Prytula (2013) which is a really valuable sourse of information about advantages of using rubrics for both teachers and learners. Another article under consideration is called "Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics" by Gonzalez (2014) where the author compares three types of rubrics and expresses ger preferences.

Summarizing information from two articles and the video, I would like to describe advantages and disadvantages for all three types of rubrics below.

Holistic Rubrics

Advantages:

• easy for the teacher;
• needs little time to create;
• fast to grade as a teacher chooses only one holistic score to the whole work.

Disadvantages:

• does not provide proper feedback to students;
• not clear reasons for grading so student cannot get explanation.

Analytic Rubrics

Advantages:

• clearer picture for students;
• no need to explain everything to student.

Disadvantages:

• a lot of time to create;
• difficult to formulate satisfactory criteria;
• students do not usually read it all.

Single-Point Rubrics

Advantages:

• less language that analytic rubric;
• open-ended areas of concern and excellence;
• students are more likely to read it;
• less time to create.

Disadvantage:

• can include much writing while grading if there are a lot of areas to improve.

Conclusion

There are a lot of variations on these three basic types and they are all useful and necessary for particular situation. However, what all scientists mention is that single-point rubric is the most valuable type of rubric to assess students' performance.

The first time I faced this rubric was five days ago. Therefore, I can claim that single-point rubric is quite new concept in Kazakhstan. That is the reason why it is worth talking about and using in evryday classes.

References:

Banow, Ryan. (2015). Single-Point Rubrics: Exceeding Expectations. Retrieved from: http://words.usask.ca/gmcte/author/rnb024/ 

Gonzalez, Jennifer. (2014). Know Your Terms: Hoilstic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics. Retrieved from: http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/ 

Prytula, Michelle. (2013). Assessment Using Rubrics. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKFvrN-KL_w 

Townsend, Brendan. (2015). What is a Rubric? An Evaluation Form from Simple (Holistic) to Highly Complex (Analytic). Retrieved from: http://slideplayer.com/slide/8457865/ 

Inviting the World into the Classroom with Blogs and Twitter

I think my colleagues who teach at school will find this information amazing! I have never thought of a child in the first grade creating a blog. However, I suppose it can be used the same way at university too.

The idea of following the improvement of a child / student with the help of blog is the one I would like to implement in September this year. Using Twitter to socialise with the world is also very easy to use at my workplace with both students and colleagues.

Social Media in the Classroom: Twitter better than Textbooks!

After watching this video I have got some new ideas for my classroom.

What are the benefits of social networks? Boston College Professor Jerry Kane has received a National Science Foundation career award to study the use of social media technology in the classroom and in business.

In the classroom, he has experimented with using Facebook as a classroom meeting space (not best suited, he found) and now uses a class wiki. This semester he requires students to develop quality Twitter messages to better understand the benefits. On the business side, he is examining the risks and rewards of opening business communications over a social network, weighing the more open communications with privacy comcerns.

Using wiki for group projects is a good idea. It is not new but it is still used very rarely in the classroom. I have tried that once and would like to continue this experience. Using Twitter is a brand new idea for me. I think it would be engaging experience for both me and my students.

I like quotes because they describe what I feel in very nice words! :)

I am going to share what I find out in order to bring all that new knowledge into my classroom in September 2016 and make it work. If you find this information useful, I will be glad to know about it from your comments. I hope to make this blog a tool where we can discuss advantages and disadvantages of using educational technologies in the classroom. I am always open to new ideas. Suggest a topic for discussion and we can learn together! Join and help me build better education with the help of new technology.

PS: I have created this picture with a quote by myself. It is very simple:

• Choose a picture and a quote you like. I found very good quotes about education and technology here
• Google "create image with a quote" or go to this website to make it fast and easy
• Add your picture, type or insert your quote and press "Create" button
• Adjust the font and the size and download it to your computer
• Done!