[IAEP] OERs and collaboration

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Valerie

Thanks for the helpful comments.

A problem of educational resources developed by an open source community is that people have 'scratched their own itch' and there are lots of disconnected education resources but little overall structure. This is not a criticism of the community, without the community, the resources would not exist. 

I started blogging rather than adding to the wiki for what I suppose are the usual reasons: not wanting to mess with another's document, being unsure about my work's quality and relevance and wanting to own my own work. Later I changed my mind but kept blogging to be consistent.

Anything which makes the invitation to edit a wiki more explicit is good. Any tools that make it easier are good. But many will still want to manage their own resources. I think the idea of Delicious style tagging is good, but I am not sure how you would implement it.

The following examples of sites have good resources in the 'turtle graphics' space occupied by TurtleArt, Scratch and Etoys. A search facility that could find all of them (and more) would help teachers. Its unrealistic to expect that all the resources would be on the wiki, regardless of how easy the editing was.

http://sites.google.com/site/solymar1fisica/fisica-con-xo-investigacion-
http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20189623/The-XO-Laptop-in-the-Classroom
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Aplicacion_Problema_de_Pizzas
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Gravity.odt 
neoparaiso.com
http://ictmindtools.net/scratch/
http://www.waveplace.org/resources/tutorials/


The issues (also addressed in Valerie's http://wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/Learning_objects,_personal_learning_environments,_study_guides) which make bringing all the resources in some way under one umbrella difficult include:

Difficulty and inconsistency in finding and navigating to resources
Different formats of the resources, wiki, blog, image, pdf, doc
Different depth in the resources, ranging from as little as a single image to a book
Patchy coverage of the subjects
Different languages, primarily Spanish and English
Difficulty in assigning a resource to a subject or year level
What are the limits of what is relevant?
Authors may be unaware of complimentary resources and not incorporate or cross reference
Authors' reluctance to add their own work to a wiki (or tagging) in case its not good enough or relevant enough
Abandoned partly completed projects

That's a list of problems, unfortunately I don't have solutions.

Thanks for the comments on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt

Yes its a big document. Walter has started the steps to breaking this up into smaller documents, its already 9 sub documents stitched together (click view source to see the structure) Will breaking it up make it easier to comprehend and more inviting to edit? Any comments on the structure welcome or just edit it yourself.

Glad you like the 'Challenges' section. Would you rather see it closer to the top? Does it need a run through of what TurtleArt can do first? In how much detail?

"Provide a way to showcase and contribute learning objects - basically
challenge descriptions with categories / tags - subject, degree of
difficulty, ... and optional information like learning objectives and
additional information for teachers or students - setup, curriculum
integration, links to more advanced related challenges. There should
be a mechanism for adding reviews to challenge entries, too."

Can you flesh this idea out a bit? Or even better do it? I am a bit vague on degree of difficulty & curriculum integration for the existing samples, this needs feedback from teachers in the field. Getting feedback is important. 

Would you let the tags just grow organically or should we work out some hierarchy of tagging? Is it worth making a start with something like Delicious? I suspect that reprogramming the wiki is too much to ask for at this stage.

You said you had made a TurtleArt sample. Please add it to the wiki. Feel free to restructure the existing pages so that its addition makes sense in the larger structure.

Thanks again for the feedback

Tony









> YOU are systematic. It is the rest of us who need help.
> 
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Valerie Taylor <vtaylor at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >> I think there is merit in having a public repository like the Sugar
> >> Labs wiki to encourage educators and others to see what is being done,
> >> and build on that in a systematic way.
> >
> > We are not exactly systematic about it, but Tony links to his most
> > relevant blog posts in the wiki. Please see
> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt#Tutorials and
> > http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Using_Turtle_Art_Sensors
> >
> > As far as how to make these posts have more impact, we are open to suggestions.
> >
> Good example - the first encounter with the Turtle Art page is a
> little overwhelming - Obviously tons of wonderful information with
> pictures and code...
> 
> Some us need to know "what can it do?" and "why do I need to know all
> this stuff?" (rather than "how does it work?"). The Challenges are
> great! This is where it starts to make some sense for me.
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt#Challenges
> 
> Provide a way to showcase and contribute learning objects - basically
> challenge descriptions with categories / tags - subject, degree of
> difficulty, ... and optional information like learning objectives and
> additional information for teachers or students - setup, curriculum
> integration, links to more advanced related challenges. There should
> be a mechanism for adding reviews to challenge entries, too.
> 
> The Turtle Art page is sooo organized that it doesn't invite
> contributions or collaboration. If there was a "button" that said "add
> your own challenge" or "add a review of this challenge" it would
> create a safe way to contribute. A form pops up with boxes to fill in,
> including some options, save and it is added to the page in the proper
> place without the risk of messing up what is already there.
> 
> This would also help educators (and students) find challenges to try
> themselves. Once they locate a couple of challenges that seem
> appropriate and interesting, then they will be motivated to work
> through all the terrific material provided.
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