Since my college has been engaged in a fairly recent push to indigenize curriculum and teaching and learning practices, the majority of educational resource sharing between colleagues has been Aboriginal resources. It’s not that this has not been done before at our college and in our department; in fact, it’s been ongoing, but we’re just making a concerted effort. And sharing has been a big part of this concerted effort.
Take this resource that a colleague shared yesterday, from the Kamloops area school district, for instance: http://www3.sd73.bc.ca/education/content/fn-cross-curricular-secondary-resources Most school districts have a resource page of links to aboriginal educational resources; however, SD. 73’s page is particularly comprehensive. A big part of reason for this comprehensiveness is the Secwepemc people’s willingness to share some of their traditional knowledge (TK). See #traditionalknowledge on Twitter, as well. This is no small act of sharing. For hundreds of years, western mainstream culture has devalued and even ridiculed TK as folklore and superstition. And, in more recent decades non-aboriginal people have made money by using stories, art and knowledge without permission. Perhaps the most lucrative use has occurred in the realm of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), where the traditional knowledge of medicinal plants has contributed to the production and patenting of pharmaceuticals. For certain, this example is intellectual property theft, and it’s on a long list of thievery committed against aboriginal peoples including stolen lands and stolen children. However, despite having no good reason to trust mainstream society and institutions, aboriginal educators continue to trust in their traditional knowledge and believe in the moral imperative to share it (to borrow phrasing by Dean Shareski) with the rest of the world. One of the elders-in-residence at the college recently said to me that now that non-aboriginal are finally interested in what aboriginal people have to say, sharing traditional knowledge will lead to greater understanding and better personal and working relationships. There is both truth and optimism and a generousity of spirit in that approach to sharing.
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“We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go” (Cape Town Open Education Declaration, 2007).
I am skeptical when I hear or read the words, “We are on the cusp …” because I can think of several times during the past 25 years that western societies, or the world as a whole, have been on the cusp of one paradigm shift or another that never really came into fruition (on a the cusp of a post-racial society comes to mind). The potential of “global revolution” has always been there with these other cusps, and it’s present with this one of “educators and learners creat(ing), shap(ing) and evolv(ing) knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.” Educators and learners deeply invested in open education (OE) espouse that OE will contend with (and perhaps it already is contending with) and eclipse traditional formal education, but degrees from Harvard, Oxford, MIT, UT, McGill, etc. will be valued above a package of MOOCs for some time yet. However, there’s no stopping the evolution of OE now, and it’s already eroding the exclusive walls of venerable institutions and enhancing access to what they have to offer. For instance, Edx and other MOOC developers are partnering with top universities to offer open education. Then there’s University of the People, founded in 2009 and “located” in Pasadena, California, which claims to be the only OER university in the world. UoPeople offers degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science. One of the criteria of OE is that it’s free. Shai Reshef, president of UoPeople explains that the degrees at his institution are free of tuition and textbook costs (OERs are used) but exams for each course are $100, making the total cost for a degree (which are now accredited) about $4000. See Shai Reshef’s TED talk at: http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_reshef_a_tuition_free_college_degree?utm_medium=on.ted.com-none&utm_content=roadrunner-rrshorturl&utm_campaign=&share=1a6775cd26&utm_source=l.facebook.com&awesm=on.ted.com_i0XkL The vision and mission of UoPeople are admirable: The University of the People (UoPeople) believes that access to higher education is a key ingredient in the promotion of world peace and global economic development. It views higher education as a basic right, and believes that it can both transform the lives of individuals and be an important force for societal change. UoPeople believes that education plays a fundamental role in strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in promoting understanding and tolerance. The mission of University of the People is to offer affordable, quality, online, degree-granting educational programs to any qualified student. http://uopeople.edu The New York Times published an article in 2013 on UofPeople titled “The Value of a Free Degree: Where are the Graduates of University of the People?” Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/education/edlife/where-are-the-graduates-of-university-of-the-people.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 But rather than being critical of UoPeople as the title might suggest, the article discusses the positives and the evolution of the university, while including the admission that the majority of employers still question the legitimacy on an online degree. Me, I do not question the legitimacy. When I first heard of UoPeople, I did question the choice of name. It sounds new-agey, like University of the Human Beings, or maybe even Marxist. But, I don’t question the name anymore. While they’ve had only about 1500 students (from over 150 countries), the educators and administrators have a huge vision that could grow without limit. Perhaps they’re on the cusp of the OE revolution. TED-Ed Lessons Worth Sharing ... and they are
Like most people, including teachers, I am a big fan of TED and TEDx, so I was delighted to discover TED-Ed. I have used TED talks to inspire student writing in my college English classes. For instance, I’ve used Jamie Oliver’s TED talk, “Teach Every Child About Food” at http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver to inspire research writing regarding health issues, and Mac Barnett’s “Why a Good Book is a Secret Door” at http://www.ted.com/talks/mac_barnett_why_a_good_book_is_a_secret_door to practice rhetorical analysis. I have used other TED talks in a business writing course as examples of effective presenting skills with the students evaluating the speakers using a rubric. Many of my colleagues use TED talks in their lessons as well, but I was unaware of TED-Ed until my OLTD 505 instructor, Alec Couros, informed me of it. There are several aspects that I like about the TED-Ed OER. The first is its visual appeal, and this has always been a strength of TED. On the home page, visuals of the most popular lessons are shown and can be conveniently selected. It’s best to set up an account, though, and select your subject areas of interest and level of education that you are teaching in order to customize searching. When you select a lesson (and there are thousands to choose from), a video appears, ready for play and with a brief summary written above it, and beside the video screen are four headings: Watch, Think, Dig Deeper, Discuss. When you click on “Think” a few multiple choice and/or short answer questions related to the video lesson appear. When you click on “Dig Deeper” you find prompts and links that connect to further possibilities of exploring the topic. When you click on “Discuss”, there is a prompt(s) to inspire deeper critical thinking about the lesson. On the page, below the video, the creators of the lesson are given credit complete with photos of each. Some lessons are created entirely by teachers; others are created by educators collaborating with audio-visual and tech professionals. TED-Ed makes it easy to create lessons to share as well. First of all, you can take an existing lesson and customize it for your own purposes by modifying the content of the Think, Dig Deeper and Discuss sections. You can also create a an entirely new lesson by using an existing TED talk video and writing the content for the summary of the video and the lesson and by creating the prompts and questions you want to use in the Think, Did Deeper and Discuss sections. When I have time in the summer, I will certainly create and share some lessons to use in my fall courses. "Appropriation" and "copying" are not pejoratives; however, they have become so.
I finally got around to watching Lawrence Lessig's 2007 TED talk: Laws that Choke Creativity at http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity#t-7623 and it got me thinking about appropriation, specifically, cultural appropriation. Let’s take Aboriginal cultural arts, for instance. In the early 1990’s, I had the privilege of being taught to carve cedar planks into animal designs of the Coast Salish style by two Penelakut First Nation carvers. After a couple of years of practice, I exhibited about 20 carvings that were a hybrid style of Celtic and Coast Salish design (I have three Irish grandparents). Some would say that I appropriated a First Nations cultural expression, but I would argue that the expression of my pieces was a transformative mix of Coast Salish and ancient Celtic influences, and I have always given credit to my carving teachers. Am I in favour of a whole bunch of non-Aboriginal people carving and selling totem poles and masks in west coast First Nations style? No. That would be appropriation, because there is no transformation of the work, and that, to me, is what makes it unethical to earn money from the work. Let the people who were born to do the work, do it and transform it their own cultural way and make a living from it. Teachers are a notoriously generous bunch (as were my carving teachers). By nature, by profession, we are sharers. Sharing by a colleague has saved my bacon more than once, especially in my early days as a teacher. A high percentage of teachers are also creative (even the ones who say “I haven’t got a creative bone in my body”) so they transform resources. This is the user generated content (ugc) of the profession and schools (and Pinterest) are full of it. And they do it, as Lessig’s presentation says, “for the love, not the money” And while public education is not a free market, sharing and transforming are critical for successful teaching and learning. Just give us the funding and the class sizes that allow teachers the time to create transformation with resources and with their students. On Monday, May 4, I'll begin teaching my first online course. It's a first year university English writing course. I am both and excited and nervous, which I think is appropriate. This week, I have checked and re-checked the content and the links and played with the Blackboard Learn LMS. I have taught this course numerous times f2f, and it is my favourite course to teach. I am curious to learn how much I will enjoy teaching it online
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