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A Pledge, a Badge, a Convening

Office of Educational Technology – ISKME – Licensed CC-BY 4.0

This is another blog post about badges, namely one badge. Lately, I’ve seen quite a few examples of badges, places that give badges, and reasons why badges should be given. In our digital era we can show our support of causes by “earning” the right to display badges. Badges can also provide digital records of professional achievements and activities. The frequency in which I see information about badges could be because I’ve been made aware of badges through the study of OER…so now I see or hear about them nearly everywhere I turn.

Today I saw an announcement about a forthcoming OER badge that interested me. I want that badge! Here’s the skinny on how to get one for yourself.

In a joint effort to continue to build awareness and implementation of OER, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) and the US. Department of Education (ED) announced a new #GoOpen pledge and a virtual convening surrounding OER. Upon taking the pledge, each person will be presented with a #GoOpen digital badge to display their support for OER and #GoOpen.

Here’s the details about the #GoOpen Pledge of Support from the #GoOpen website. There is one pledge for states or districts, and one for individual educators:

The Pledge for States or Districts

The pledge is intended for a State Educational Agency (SEA) or Local Educational Agency (LEA) and represents a public commitment to the principles inherent in open education, demonstrated through support for the use of open educational resources (OER) for their principals, teachers, learners, and other interested parties. The pledge is intended to endure beyond changes in personnel at the SEA or LEA, and organizations will have a chance to renew their commitment every 3 years.

The [SEA/LEA] commits to support the #GoOpen initiative, and as a member of the initiative, we pledge to support open education by:

  1. Sharing new opportunities for open education alongside knowledge and evidence about what works, in our communications to all interested parties;
  2. Emphasizing open education as a means for providing equitable access to high- quality, flexible, low- or no-cost teaching and learning materials in our policies;
  3. Supporting ways for educators to adopt and use OER and include students as beneficiaries, contributors, and co-creators of OER, in our practices; and
  4. Offering rigorous and engaging learning experiences that are inclusive, culturally responsive, and accessible to all learners, in our commitment to equity and continuous improvement in education.

The Pledge of Participation for Individuals

The Department of Education also offers the opportunities for individual educators to take a Pledge of Participation to demonstrate their commitment to grow open education as part of their own work. Educators, leaders, and interested parties will have a chance to renew their commitment every 3 years.

As a Participant in the #GoOpen initiative, I pledge to support open education by:

  1. Endorsing open education as a mechanism for providing equitable access to high- quality, adaptable, low- or no-cost teaching and learning materials;
  2. Adopting OER and open educational practice;
  3. Sharing knowledge and evidence about successes and challenges locally and nationally;
  4. Supporting others to adopt OER and open educational practice, including students; and,
  5. Supporting learning experiences that are inclusive, culturally responsive, and accessible to all learners, in my commitment to equity and continuous improvement in education.

Invitation to the #GoOpen Convening

When: December 10, 2021, 11-2:30 Eastern Time
Where: Virtual via Zoom, details and registration forthcoming
Cost: Free of charge

The convening is to support educators in collectively working to expand access to high-quality open educational resources, toward scaling continuous improvement in education locally and nationally.

This special one-day event will feature a keynote speaker, a participatory working group activity, and Q&A. The event will span important open education topics, including diversity, equity, inclusion, problem solving within the classroom, and OER implementation and scaling.

Office of Educational Technology – ISKME – Licensed CC-BY 4.0

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The Ultimate Open Educational Resource

I didn’t know I had badges coming. I didn’t know I had even earned any. All I can remember is that I gave a few dollars here and there because Jimmy had asked me to donate.

This morning Jimmy sent me an email with these badges and another request to donate. The subject line was catchy: “We’ve had enough.” He went on to more or less explain what he meant by the subject line. He said he and his team were tired of the pressure they constantly receive to “compromise” the “neutrality” of Wikipedia’s content by selling ads. They also don’t like it when it’s suggested they capture and monetize users’ personal data.

Having made those statements, Jimmy went on with the pitch: “We simply ask loyal readers like you for a helping hand. Not often, but it works! So after 20 years of saying no, I can still say that you are our best option.”

“Loyal” readers! Well, he got me there. I love Wikipedia. And I loved it even before I started learning about Open Educational Resources (OER). It just felt right to have a space without advertisements (except Jimmy’s occasional “ask” that gets unobtrusively posted in the top corner of a wiki page). I liked that I had the power to edit when I felt something wasn’t right (and I have exercised that right a handful of times through the years).

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder

In his email, Jimmy asks us to give what we can. He then shares that “only 2% of our readers give, but we manage to serve hundreds of millions of people per month.” He then asks us to “imagine if everyone gave.”

Jimmy believes we could “transform the way knowledge is shared online” if everyone who uses Wikipedia could donate a few dollars. “We rely on our readers to become our donors, and it’s worked for 20 years,” confirms Jimmy. “This year, please consider making another donation to protect and sustain Wikipedia.”

All of us can help Jimmy out and give a few dollars to support this ultimate OER. I did. You may even get a badge in the mail from Jimmy!

————————————————————————

FOR FURTHER READING: Wikipedia is called “the ultimate open education resource” in a blog post by Cassidy Villeneuve who writes for https://wikiedu.org/. She makes Jimmy’s case for Wikipedia by stating:

Wikipedia is one of the most important resources for public education in the world. It’s free, openly licensed, and available to anyone who has internet access worldwide. No ads, no collecting or selling of personal data, and no fake news.

#intro2opened

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Quick Synopsis of OER Valuation Study

I like that this article provided some compelling reasons to adopt OER at institutions of learning. I put together this short video presentation that shows the reasons.

Here is the conclusion of the study:

This research suggests OER is an equity strategy for higher education: providing all students with access to course materials on the first day of class serves to level the academic playing field in course settings.

While additional disaggregated research is needed in a variety of postsecondary contexts such as community college, HBCU, and other higher education settings to increase the generalizability of this notion, this study provides an empirical foundation on which to begin to change the advocacy narrative supporting OER.

A new opportunity appears to be present for institutions in higher education to consider how to leverage OER to address completion, quality, and affordability challenges, especially those institutions that have higher percentages of Pell eligible, underserved, and/or part-time students than the institution presented in this study.

#intro2opened

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Quick Summary of John Hilton III’s article that reviews OER resources and textbook choices

I really liked the ease of reading this study by John Hilton III. I made a quick summary to help me better understand his methods and conclusions. I realize that this research was conducted several years ago and is now surpassed by new research, but it was good to see the review of the studies that were made at the beginnings of the wider use of OER.

https://spark.adobe.com/page/2nhUIOUstzotI/

Reference:
Hilton, J. Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Education Tech Research Dev 64, 573–590 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9

#intro2opened

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Let’s Get to 7!

In his blog post titled S3: A Holistic Framework for Evaluating the Impact of Educational Innovations (Including OER), David Wiley sums up and details his thoughts into an evaluation framework with three components: success, scale and savings.

He describes how he defines and measures each of these components. It took me a couple of close readings to understand what he is trying to do with these components. I decided it was first important to understand how components of the S3 framework work together. The above short presentation gives a hint.

#intro2opened

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The Idea of the Commons: Tragedy or Trajectory?

One of our readings for the week in my Open Ed class was a decade-old blog post by David Bollier (someone of whom I had never before heard) where he explained “the idea of the commons.” OpenEd is not even mentioned until almost the end of the article, yet from this collaborator with Norman Lear (someone whose works I knew and by them entertained), I learned some mind-opening material on the way to the OER.

Bollier clarifies the commons in very precise language, detailing what the commons is and what it isn’t. It’s a good read and I invite you to read it. I’m sure you’ll learn something! As I walked myself through the overview, I wanted to see if Bollier averted the tragedy of the commons in his definitions and suggested solutions.

All of his structures mention accountability in some form or another, whether personal or participatory through community. He even suggests adaptations of laws, changes in culture and public policy to advance the commons. Bollier argues against what he calls enclosure and dispossession, and I wondered if these definitions in his terms would be hailed by economists as ways to avoid the tragedy of the commons, instead of what Bollier delineates as the need for “innovations in law, public policy, commons-based governance, social practice and culture.”

I found suggested solutions to the tragedy of the commons that mention both the major practice now and the way of the “idea of the commons” as suggested by Bollier. One solution is the (1) “imposition of private property rights [and] government regulation” which would be through an economist’s point of view and the most common world-view today, and NOT a choice of Bollier. And the (2) “development of a collective action arrangement” which could get the stamp of  approval by Bollier if the commons was understood “as a verb as much as a noun [and that a] commons must be animated by bottom-up participation, personal responsibility, transparency and self-policing accountability.” 

We’re ten years down the road of when Bollier wrote these definitions and they still seem as actions fresh set for a sure trajectory. Is it because we as a community haven’t made much progress with the “idea of the commons” or we have tried and failed to implement changes across a major segment of society and they remain as “new” ideas in my purview?

As I continue to take this class, I’m going to see if I can find some answers.

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Wife Establishes Husband’s Creative Legacy by Winning Fight Against Corporate Patent Violator Giants Like Motorola, RCA and Zenith

Inventor Edward Armstrong and his wife, Esther Marion, at the beach with what is said to be the first portable radio. The radio weighed about 50 pounds. [Wikipedia]

In his Free Culture – How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity book, Lawrence Lessig mentioned how Edwin Howard Armstrong was “one of America’s forgotten inventor geniuses” (p. 9) but that “his work in the area of radio technology was perhaps the most important of any single inventor in the first fifty years of radio.” Lessig attributed this “unknownness” of Armstrong to heavy-handed corporations and the government’s tendency to be “subject to capture” by corporate interests—where the corporation was publicly hailed in media over the celebration of the inventor in this case because the government regulations were aligned with corporate greed (p. 11). I think Lessig was also making the case that the creative genius of Armstrong was broken by the strain of the litigation. One of Armstrong’s friends estimated that Armstrong was spending about 90% of his time defending his patents and fighting lawsuits at the time of his death. 

I was saddened by the story that Lessig told about the demise of Armstrong who eventually committed suicide, feeling hopeless after spending years of his life in fighting for the rights to his creativity. Armstrong had been challenged by the corporate giant RCA, who was headed by his friend David Sarnoff. Ironically, Armstrong had married Sarnoff’s secretary years earlier, as Sarnoff was working his way up the ranks of RCA. 

What was left out by Lessig, was a successful ending to Amstrong’s story, made possible by the dedicated work of Sarnoff’s former secretary, Esther Marion. I further investigated the developments of Armstrong and found that after his death, Armstrong’s widow Esther Marion Armstrong continued to fight his lawsuits for thirteen years and won every lawsuit  regarding her husband’s patents. She was compensated more than a million dollars in reparations. She formally—and legally—brought back Armstrong as the inventor of FM as she made cases “against other companies that were found guilty of infringement.” These companies included Motorola, RCA and Zenith.

Armstrong’s creativity was given the recognition he deserves, thanks to the work of his wife, Esther Marion, who honored his legacy by her fight for the resolution of the patents in his name and the creation of the Armstrong Memorial Research Foundation.

I was happy to find out this information as I looked further into the story of Armstrong and I celebrate his wife, Esther Marion, for setting the record straight. I hail her as a genius in her own right, as a champion for the rightful recognition of those who are the creators.

I also looked into David Sarnoff’s legacy and discovered that in Wikipedia, the only mention of Armstrong crossing Sarnoff’s path was that Sarnoff was “permitted and observed Edwin Armstrong’s demonstration of his regenerative receiver at the Marconi station at Belmar, New Jersey.” 

REFERENCES

Lessig, L. (2004). “Free Culture.”

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Esther_Marion_Armstrong

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/David_Sarnoff

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Inside the Creative Mind of Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and Soar.com

I had a chance to sit down with Paul Allen, CEO of Soar and founder of Ancestry, and ask him about what makes him creatively tick. As a PhD student in BYU IP&T’s Creativity and Educational Entrepreneurship Fall 2021 class, we were asked to interview the most creative person we knew. We were given a set of prompts. Paul answered these prompts in a series of eight short videos.

What about your environment enabled you to be so creative?

In this video, Paul talks about how his invention of games for his siblings when he was young and his two-year obsession with Dungeons & Dragons helped spur his creativity. Fun fact: Yvette and Paul share 304 connections on LinkedIn. Special note: Paul is photo-bombed by his cat during the interview.

What personal characteristics contribute to your creativity?

In this video, Paul talks about how his seemingly disparate interests lead him to be creative. Fun fact: Both Paul and Yvette love to read books and articles from many different fields of knowledge.

What barriers did you have to overcome?

In this video, Paul talks about how to better communicate the power of an idea and scale the execution. Fun fact: Both Paul and Yvette like open source and business process outsourcing.

Did the constraints help or hinder your creativity? How?

In this video, Paul talks about his experience as head of a start-up company and how entrepreneurs face “amazing” constraints. Fun fact: Both Paul and Yvette were employees of start-up companies.

What has helped your creativity? What is the future of creativity?

In this video, Paul talks about how his creativity is enhanced as he goes to conferences to hear new ideas. As for the future of inspirational creative works, he is voting for humans over AI since he feels that there should be personal “reasons” behind creativity that come from the soul of the creator. Fun fact: Yvette and Paul each have eight children.

How does your mind and thinking process work?

In this video, Paul reveals how his creativity is based on the “messiness” of visual stimulation. Fun fact: Yvette and Paul had extraordinary obsessions with their Blackberry phones before iPhones hit the market.

What is your best piece of advice in encouraging others to be more creative?

In this video, Paul talks about how a creative team needs “non-creative” team members. Fun fact: Both Paul and Yvette were part of a team that built a Facebook app that brought 90 million users to Facebook.

What did you do (what was the product of your creativity)?

In this video, Paul talks about his career as an entrepreneur and how he created products and companies by just moving forward in his ideas. Fun fact: Both Paul and Yvette have worked for start-up companies that monetized search engines to generate results for subscribers.
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The Process by Which I Came to AI and Started Down a Path of Study

Before I started the IP&T 520 class this Spring Term (2021), I didn’t even have the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in my head as a way to help with lifelong education. I just knew that there were some instructional design theories still undiscovered—according to Elder L. Tom Perry (1996)—and I wanted to find out what they were. As I stated in my Letter of Intent for my application to the IP&T program: As I’ve thought more about the quote from Elder Perry, I imagine that these “new” designs and learning theories will probably be centered around the personal learning environments of the individual and the integration of these personal learnings into a community of learners. 

About 15 years ago I took a class from Dr. Andrew Gibbons at BYU and became interested in design layers and design languages. I knew when I came back for a PhD that I wanted to look more into these areas as possible ways to help structure learning. I also came to this 520 class with Mary Parker Follett’s (1918, 1924),  observations about teaching and learning, and the teacher/student relation. I knew that I wanted to incorporate her ideas into anything that I would develop as a theory of design, and/or that the design theories I was looking for would possess a semblance of her ideas. 

As I mentioned in my 520 journal, my idea for AI in education and to find out if/how it is used, came about not from reading about it for education. I wanted a way for me to use AI to act as a memory storage and retrieval unit with some design layers mixed in to keep everything straight—and I wanted my “Aha!” learning moments to be preserved. I wanted AI technology to hold onto things that I had learned previously and preserve the emotional reactions from the moment when the learning had occurred. In tandem with the functions of this tool, I wanted AI to bring to mind—such as a periodical reminder through Siri or Alexa— things I had committed to memory over time so I could hang on to the learnings. 

When we were assigned in class to officially Tell Heather What You Will Do for Your Final Project I came up with the following: I want to write a literature review discussing AI as a curation tool for niche/personalized education and/or the roles of AI in Education, and develop ideas about design layers that may be involved in using such a tool.