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Reusable MOOC: When massive sync is lasting async |
| Friday, June 15, 2012 |
Introductory Note:
This is my third MOOC-related post in 3 days. There will be two more. All are indexed below.
Prior Posts:
Day One (June 13): Jarl Jonas Director of CourseSites by Blackboard reflects on first MOOC
Day Two (June 14): The EvoLLLution from Toronto to a Global MOOC
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And now for today...tomorrow...and the next day...
Day Three (June 15): Reusable MOOC: When massive sync is lasting async
Day Four (June 16): Twenty Thoughts on the Types, Targets, and Intents of MOOCs
Day Five (June 17): Unabridged Interview on MOOC for Chronicle of Higher Education
Five Forms of Openness to Learn from My MOOC
Naturally, when you teach a massive open online course (MOOC), there is an emphasis on openness. In fact, I have tried to document and put on display this openness in the prequel to my World is Open book titled, "Sharing...the Journey." Hence, I better be as open as can be about the MOOC resources or the critics will come out yet again.
First of all, the MOOC that I did last month with CourseSites by Blackboard remains open. Register and explore this course or other ones from the CourseSites open course series. I am fully aware that, for various reasons, some people might be hesitant to register for it and explore the materials. So...
I move on the second form of openness (i.e., this blog). In this blog post, I list the links to resources for all five synchronous sessions that we held each Wednesday in May 2012 (the 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th). If you scroll down to these links, you can click and get a color PDF of any of my presentations and polling questions. Use whatever you like. The world is open to you. But please be a good pirate. You can also watch the archive of each session in Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). These archives include the video stream from my camera, the audio file, and text of my PowerPoint slides or Web resources displayed. If you want to quickly find a particular segment of a synchronous session, you might watch the YouTube file that was created each week from the Collaborate stream archive. In the YouTube file, you will get the audio file as well as my PowerPoint slides but not the video stream from my camera. While the course has officially ended, you can still self-pace yourself through the contents and earn a badge. You can also share these contents with any of your friends and colleagues, and even your parents and grandparents.
Third, if you want the original PowerPoint slides or any articles or videos of mine that we used each week, just write to me at cjbonk at indiana dot edu. I am happy to reply.
Fourth, if you are shy or do not want to write to me, you can go to my PublicationShare.com Website for many of my articles; at least those that are free and open access. At PublicationShare, you will find technical reports, book chapters, journal articles, and magazine and newsletter pieces. Access, read, download, or share them. Up to you. And many of the Web resources from the synchronous sessions are posted at TrainingShare (see Archived Talks and Resources). You have to believe in the power of sharing!
Fifth, in Week 4, we used the 27 video primers that I had created 1-2 years ago for IU faculty member to help them teach online. The School of Education at IU decided to make them free to the world. The full name for these shared online videos is "Video Primers in an Online Repository of e-Teaching and Learning" or V-PORTAL. I realize that the videos in the V-PORTAL are not high production grade quality (the budget was basically a course release), but they are just primers and they are free. And with Tandberg picture-in-picture capability, there is a multimedia component in each one. Use them if you wish. Ignore them if you wish. If you use them, we took a liberal Creative Commons license on them. As a result, you can watch them, download them, share them, remix them, snip them, post them, translate them (see Arabic version that my friends at King Khalid University (KKU) did last year, for instance), etc.
Clip them or snip them? But how you might ask? Well, Tubechop is a tool that one of the MOOC participants, Stephen Bright from the University of Waikato in New Zealand (lovely place Waikato), told me about that I think is out of this world. You can select any part of a YouTube video and chop it up. This way, you are not wasting 5 minutes of class time showing a 6 minute video when only 40 seconds of it applies to your particular class. How cool is that? It is simple to use, fast, and highly useful. Put TubeChop on my top 10 list of technology tools that I will use in 2012.
By the way, Stephen Bright has done a Scoop.It with many more such tools and resources related to the use of online video in education, including Vialogues and Grocket Answers which foster commenting, discussion, and interaction around the use of shared online videos, instead of just passive viewing. And, of course, in his Scoop.It, he included highly popular links to resources like the TED-Ed, the Khan Academy, and talks from Salman Khan on reforming education. He also included more novel educational video portals that I like to show such as History for Music Lovers from my very inspirational and fun friend Amy Burvall. Do check that one out if you have not seen it; especially, if you love music from the 1960s to today. And Stephen linked to something I had not heard of called Grovo, which is called a "field guide to the Internet." It supposedly has thousands of videos on different Internet products. I have checked a few out and found them upbeat, informative, and crisp.
You might notice that Stephen also mentions the V-PORTAL in his Scoop.it. Each video in the V-PORTAL is about 9 or 10 minutes long. You can find videos on the use of wikis, podcasts, blogging, and shared online video, as well as videos on how to give feedback in online course, create communities, assess student learning, handle plagiarism, and how to manage and online course. Still others are on blended learning, archiving and ending a course, the future, and so on. Where are they, you ask? Well, you can find these videos in my YouTube channel (TravelinEdMan) as well as from the Instructional Consulting office in the School of Education at Indiana University (the latter come with extra resources but might play a tad slower).
So that is five ways that I am trying to share aspects of the massive course. A recap is below. You can...
Recapping Five Ways to Learn from the Blackboard/CourseSites ("Bonk Open") MOOC:
1. Register for the course and find all the free resources;
2. Use the links from the MOOC synchronous sessions provided here in this blog post (see below);
3. Write to me for original documents or files;
4. Check out the open access documents and resources that we used in the MOOC that are posted in PublicationShare.com and TrainingShare.com;
5. Check out the free and remixable videos in the V-PORTAL.
You can even write to students who were in the course and ask them for their takeaways and resources. In addition, CourseSites people are planning to send out a document in the next day or so recapping all the online discussions and blog forum postings, resources shared, controversial issues raised, questions asked, answers given, etc. You must register for the course to receive that document, however. The world opens wider and wider each day for learning. These are the forms of openness in this particular MOOC. Other MOOCs will have their forms of openness and different openness providers. Tomorrow I plan to blog on 20 different types of MOOCs and forms of openness.
The Participants
Of course, with over 4,000 participants enrolled, I am bound to meet some new friends (as well as some critics). I hope that my new friends find use for some of the links mentioned above and below. These new friends of mine are from from Dallas, Florence (Italy), the Ukraine, Boston, Escanaba (Michigan), Sydney, Liverpool, Louisville, Washington DC, London (Ontario), Paris, South Berwick (Maine), Fitchburg (Mass), Albany (GA), Homer (Alaska), Brussels, Cape Town, Dubai, Edinburgh, Alamosa (Colorado), Mobile (Alabama). etc. Great people. Wow what a fantastic experience for me to be able interact each week synchronously as well as asynchronously with K-12 teachers like Meeyong Kim from Korea (who was supposed to be my post-doc this year but could not get her Visa approved at the last minute), military trainers (like my friend Major Tom from Sweden), American composers and authors (like Paul Beaudoin from Fitchburg State University), and Web entrepreneurs (like Christine Malina-Maxwell from the University of Texas at Dallas who founded the McKinley Internet Yellow Pages back in the mid 1990s and now helps run a start-up company focused on big data analysis and security called Chiliad). What a mix of people!
So many interesting, highly engaged, inquisitive, and appreciable individuals. As the course ended, many sent notes of thanks about the free experience. Some sent me songs, artwork, funny quotes, and other things. One of them, Michelle Tillander, from the University of Florida Art Education Department, sent me the picture below.
Blackboard/CourseSites Massive Open Online Course (MOOC):
Topic: Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success
MOOC Info (from my Blog); Intro video (12:24); Registration; CourseSites Course Info
Synchronous Session for Week 1 of MOOC (May 2, 2012):
Part 1: The TEC-VARIETY online motivation and retention model.
Curt Bonk Week 1 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate/Elluminate recording; YouTube (1 hour 6 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.
Synchronous Session for Week 2 of MOOC (May 9, 2012):
Part I1: Where Are You R2D2?: Addressing Diverse Learner Needs with the Read, Reflect, Display, and Do Model.
Curt Bonk Week 2 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 55 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.
Synchronous Session for Week 3 of MOOC (May 16, 2012):
Part III: 50+ (actually 75) Hyper-Engaging Ideas: Critical, Creative, Cooperative.
Curt Bonk Week 3 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate Recording; YouTube (1 hour 48 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.
Synchronous Session for Week 4 of MOOC (May 23, 2012):
Part IV: The Rise of Shared Online Video, the Fall of Traditional learning.
Curt Bonk Week 4 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 44 minutes); Color PDF of Slides.
Synchronous Session for Week 5 of MOOC (May 30, 2012):
Part V: Participants, Questions & Answers, Demonstrations, and Reflections.
Curt Bonk Week 5 Presentation and Q&A online from Bloomington, IN.
Available: Blackboard Collaborate recording; YouTube (1 hour 55 minutes); Color PDF of Slides
In Week 1, I offered dozens of ideas for motivation and retention online using my TEC-VARIETY framework. I am working on a book related to it at the present time that I hope to give away as a free PDF document with 100+ activities. I also intend to offer the TEC-VARIETY book cheaply in hardcopy format through Amazon CreateSpace in a few months. I may test out chapters as mobile apps as well. Anyone wanting sample chapters should send me an email request. Happy to share. I got half the book done and would love to get your feedback.
In the second week, I went through a few dozen more activities and ideas related to my R2D2 (Read, Reflect, Display, and Do) model. I already have a 100 activities book completed on that model that I wrote with Dr. Ke Zhang from Wayne State University. It was published by Jossey Bass back in 2008. Yes, I do like Star Wars. As the picture below indicates, I also have a full functioning light saber. But it is more the mnemonic and simplicity of the model that is important. Those wanting to read more about it can see the eCampus news piece that I wrote back in December 2009. There was much positive reaction and immediate implementation of both the R2D2 model and the TEC-VARIETY model. Some of the ideas and activities shared by the participants were amazing and well beyond my expectations. Hence, by Week 2, we already had much success from the MOOC appearing.
In the third week, I went through some ideas and activities for fostering critical and creative thinking online as well as teamwork and collaboration. I have been teaching a class on alternative instructional strategies (R546) for more than 20 years now. It has a Website called the Bobweb that has evolved since back in the Stone Age (i.e., 1996 ) and is still in need of much work. Still, you can find much information about creativity and creativity testing in the Bobweb and much, much more. Given my 20+ years of experimentation in that class and related writing, there was much to share in Week 3.
In the fourth week, the ideas strictly related to the use of shared online video as a means to enhance learning, reflection on key course concepts, and interactivity. See earlier paragraphs for shared online video tools and resources that you might use.
The final week was for student question and answers from the students of the course. Near the start of the session, my Dean, Gerardo Gonzalez made an appearance. He had just returned from a trip to Cuba which was his first visit there in some 50 years. Dean Gonzalez seemed thrilled to have been able to return to the place in which he was born. The class loved his stories. Also in Week 5, we shared pictures, ideas, and map locations of the participants. My doctoral student, Donggil Song, came in and sang a couple of songs, one in Korean and one in English. In effect, we did more of the social side of the course in the final week, instead of in Week 1, though, of course, there were introductions online in CourseSites in that first week. Week 5 ended with an explanation of what CourseSites had to offer from Jarl Jonas, the CourseSites Director.
So, I hope all this has been helpful. As I stated earlier, this is an example of where synchronous sessions can find later use as asynchronous resources. Given the wealth of resources saved, archived, and made freely available, this becomes a reusable or repeatable MOOC. Perhaps some people (i.e., you) will take advantage of that. It was not easy to teach this course but it definitely was fun. Having all the synchronous sessions archived provides a semi-permanent record of what took place each week. We also had a discussion forum, blogs, wikis, and other components to the course.
A picture of me and my props in Studio 101 in the School of Education at IU from Week 2 is below. Stop by and visit me someday and I will give you the grand tour of Studio 101 and beyond. Bloomington, Indiana is a lovely place.
Labels: Amy Burvall, async, Blackboard, CourseSites, IU, massive open online course, MOOC, open education, PublicationShare, R2D2, Salman Khan, sync, TEC-VARIETY, TrainingShare, TubeChop, V-PORTAL, World is Open |
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Interview with Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona: A bit of history of "History for Music Lovers" |
| Wednesday, October 12, 2011 |
An Interview with Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona (History for Music Lovers):
Last month, Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona were announced as invited speakers at the E-Learn 2011 conference in Hawaii next week. I was excited since I had read about them in the Washington Post and many other places. Yesterday I got even more excited when they agreed to keynote the conference next Wednesday morning (as a late replacement for someone else).
Who are Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona you ask? They are some of the most innovative people I have ever encountered. And I will get to meet them in 6 days. Among his many skills, Herb is choir director choir at the Kamehameha Schools Hawaii Campus. Amy is known as a leader in educational technology professional development programs at both St. Andrew's Priory (where she taught for 8 years) and Le Jardin Academy International Baccalaureate School. Amy also teachers Theory of Knowledge and World History at Le Jardin Academy. There conference talk is titled "TechnoTroubadours and Teacherpreneurs" (see their bios). Their talk is very impressive as I got a glimpse and so can you. See their prezi presentation with embedded videos. It will be great to have K-12 teachers keynote E-Learn 2011. Fortunately, they are located in Hawaii, though Herb must fly in from the big island.
Amy and Herb are known from their musical creativity with their History for Music Lovers channel in YouTube. Superfantastic stuff. I am amazed by their historical song parodies. I really like their version of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" as a way to remember the Trojan War. Another one I sing along with at least once a week is Mansa Musa (i.e., "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" by Culture Club). When you land on the History for Music Lovers homepage, you see highly creative song about the history of India, "The Mahabharata" (i.e., "Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band). Nearly 600,000 people have seen Amy sing about The French Revolution to "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga. I find it hard not to cry when listening to some of their oldie songs such as the Battle of Agincourt ("As Tears Go By" by Marianne Faithful).
Check their channel out; there are dozens of songs to listen to and learn world history. If someone ever asks you were e-learning can make an impact, well, this is a prime example--mashing up history and music and making it open source for kids all over the planet to listen to and learn from. How cool is that? Very cool! If only my high school such teachers. Perhaps we soon will be turning kids on to not only history but geography, biology, etc., with music.
The lyrics are highly inventive and catchy. I read somewhere that Amy has songs pop into her head when driving home from school and just has to write them down. I understand that since I sometimes experience that when on a plane or a train. Unfortunately, I cannot play music like they can. If Amy and Herb ever go on tour, I think I could listen to them all afternoon and evening at a summerfest stage in Milwaukee. They are highly talented and fun. I think we are going to get spoiled next week and want them at every e-learning conference.
Ok, I need to introduce them next week at the conference so I decided to interview them via email. With permission, below are their responses to this interview. I list Amy first since she was the one I corresponded with.
Curt Question #1. Do you see yourself in the e-learning field when you create a video?
Amy (and Herb): I think at first, not particularly. But certainly after we started posting to You-Tube and responding to fans (mostly teachers, students, and history buffs) and doing various interviews in the field, we did. There is definitely more pressure now as we work on new projects, but we still try to keep it fun and light-hearted, drawing from our own passions instead of catering to others. We’ve certainly learned a LOT about e-learning on our journey!
Curt Question #2. Did you expect to be celebrities in the e-learning space? What is this like?
Amy (and Herb): Haha no way! It’s surreal. I heard from a friend, for example, who was in a coffee shop in Oregon and heard some college kids singing our “Renaissance Man” song [i.e., "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes]. One fan wrote he was in a museum in Washington and they were playing some of our tunes in the gift shop! And when my students travel they always tell me they meet other kids who know about us. So bizarre. But what is most boggling is that it’s very rare that someone lets you know when they’ve written a blog post or article about you. We sort of have to google ourselves sometimes. And even more crazy was when I discovered one of our lyrics (fleas on rats) was an actual Twitter hashtag!
Curt Question #3. Which 2 music history videos that you created are your favorites and why?
Amy (and Herb): I really love the look and sound of “Elizabeth I”, to the Zombies’ “She’s not There”. And musically, my favorite is “Canterbury Tales”- plus nothing beats that Middle English rap segment. The way I envision “Guernica”, which is in production, might turn out to be my ultimate favorite. For Herb, I know he is most proud of “Joan of Arc”, because we also tried to parody the original White Stripes video…it took quite a lot of time and effort on his part to edit. As far as lyrics go, I think Herb’s lyrics were genius in “Chinese Dynasties” [i.e., "Mambo #5" by Lou Bega] and “Viva Roma #5” [i.e., "Vogue" by Madonna]…I prefer sticking to really specific topics, but he has a gift for synthesizing the broad topics.
Curt Question #4. What is the process like in creating a new video? Any interesting technology challenge that comes to mind?
Amy (and Herb): The biggest challenge for us is time…and now, geography, since we live on different islands. When either of us is inspired to pen lyrics, we do so, because that surge of creativity doesn’t happen all the time. I can go for months without writing a single line and then spew out 6 songs in weekend. Herb then creates the music, and we schedule a time to record. To me, recording is the most fun, and it really doesn’t take that long (maybe a half an hour for 1 song). He mixes/produces the tracks when he gets the time and then we brainstorm what the video should look like. I can never praise storyboarding enough! When we are ready to film I gather all the costume and make-up pieces and props and we head for a green screen. Herb uses a high def. camera and Adobe Premiere and After FX software. When my students make videos, they use Garageband and iMovie. The editing is the most time-consuming, but the more Herb uses the programs the better he gets. I always want to do crazy things that we probably need a Hollywood studio for, but Herb seems to make them happen. He is also a master at Flash animation, an some of our favorites (Henry VIII, Crete, Renaissance Man) are done completely in Flash.
Curt Question #5. What are your hobbies and interests?
Amy (and Herb): Herb is a classical musician at heart and plays for the Kamuela Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Hawaii symphony, and the Kona Music Society. He teaches cello and piano privately, and is an experienced arranger and composer, who has even written 3 operas performed by the Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus. He enjoys hiking and has been involved in Boy Scout leadership.
Amy is obsessed with anything relating to design – graphic design, interior design, fashion design, etc. – and typically is involved in some related project. Her creative outlets are singing, writing, and photography, but more recently her attention has been on the use and implications of online curation, personal branding, and social media in education. She is often called to train peers in tech integration, and enjoys presenting on the topic. More recently, her interests have drawn her to the “Gutenberg Parenthesis” theory and the work of media philosophers Marshall McLuhan, Thomas Pettitt, and Alejandro Piscitelli, as well as the “EduPunk” movement.
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Hope you enjoyed the interview. I also hope to see many of you at the conference next week. If you see me, tap me on the shoulder and say hi. See also the blog post below for the E-learn Preconference Summit at the University of Hawaii next Monday afternoon. The program was just announced and it will be worth it.Labels: Amy Burvall, E-Learn 2011, e-learning, Herb Mahelona, History for Music Lovers, historyteachers, historyteacherz |
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