Tools for Leveraging Open Education Resources

We are experiencing the democratization of education.  There are numerous free and open resources for learning on the Web:

• Khan Academy
• YouTube University
• TEDTalks 

While these sites have terrific videos, they have a limitation inherent to such content; they tend to be linear and difficult to change once published.  In order for them to be more useful to students, the teacher often may want some control over the content so she is not stuck with what the creator of the video created or intended.

• She may want to use only a part of the content of the video, and then link it to another part of another video
• She may want to add some questions or additional content to the video
• She may want her students to create a project that is like a collage - containing parts of videos they find and stitch together.

The good news is that there are now many services that are popping up to help

TedEd has a beta project called Lessons Worth Sharing that allows you to flip a YouTube video and add questions, resources and discussions.  Here is a screenshot of one of the most popular flipped videos

YouTube has a somewhat similar capability to ask questions that pop up during the video.  You can find more information here.

I just found out about Weavly which allows you to do online drag and drop editing and trimming of videos from YouTube and audio from SoundCloud.  You can interpose text to add questions and comments.  

Recently James Sousa of Phoenix College made his fabulous collection of mathematics videos available via Creative Commons by attribution license.  I have looked a some and they appear to be higher quality content than some of the Khan Academy videos with nice graphics, models and animations.  

Looking at one of the videos on Similar and Congruent triangles, I was struck by the questions I had above.  The content starts with basic concepts of congruent triangles and moves on to similar triangles and several numerical exercises.  It then comes to the application of using this to find the height of a building or a tree.  What if the teacher who wants to reuse the video in her class, wants to actually present the practical problem of finding the height of the tree first and then allow the students to think about which math concept would help them solve this?  And then present some clues and then allow them to view the basic concepts if they want?  

Well Weavly can help you do this.  Here is my 10 minute effort on flipping this video.  

You can try out Weavly here.  It is free and does not need a manual to get started.

As more Open Education Resources (OER) become available, educators will need to stay current not just with the OERs but also tools that can help them customize these for their own learners or create projects for learners to customize these for themselves and peers.

Add:

Since I posted this, I found out about Mozilla Popcorn Maker which appears to be a terrific tool.  Here is a clip of a flipped TEDTalk.

Does the Medical Profession need to lighten up?

Recently the Israeli Army (Israel Defense Forces to be precise) reacted to its soldiers doing the Harlem Shake and posting the video on Social Media.  Some of those responsible were put in jail!

STOP right there!!
What are you thoughts at this point?
Most likely if you do not have a close connection with that part of the world, you are thinking, "What's the big deal?  They are just young adults, let them have some fun, keep their sense of humor!"
RIGHT?
OK hold that thought.


Now take a story closer to "home".  If you are related to the health care profession or close to someone who is, you know that we take our professional image very seriously.
We hear stories of how students were forced to take down a video of them dancing with skeletons.  Most would side with the school authorities due to the disrespect to the dead and those who made the ultimate sacrifice by donating their bodies for education and research.
But, remember the skeletons are plastic models and not human bones. Clearly there is a fine line between entertainment and disrespect to our patients or the dead.

Many medical schools have theater programs where students present parodies of the medical profession and these are supported by the school administration with the proceeds from the ticket sales going to worthy charities.

Are we fooling ourselves?  Does the general public feel the same way about our reaction to the medical student videos as we feel about the Israel Defense Forces reaction to the soldiers' video?

Are we too close to this?  What do non-medical people think?  If we think that we should not risk disrespect to the dead or a threat to our professional identity for just entertainment value, what if videos were used for patient education?

What if a video full of sexual innuendo increased the number of patients getting flu shots?

What do you think?  Does the medical profession need to lighten up?

Top Reasons to use Google Drive

Why do I use Google Drive?

1. Cloud storage with files available from anywhere, using any (web-enabled) device.  I have not had to use a flash drive (Thumb drive/USB drive in a long time).
2. Avoid sending large files by email - just share the file or send a link.
3. Ability to have offline files (when there is no Internet access) and still edit them - even on a tablet that does not have specific word processing software
4. Collaborative editing with any device - earlier today, my laptop battery drained and I used an iPad to co-edit a meeting notes.
5. Ability to share and edit files collaboratively synchronously during a hangout
6. The commenting feature is terrific - you can carry on a conversation around a document by responding to comments - if you @name someone it notifies them via email
7. The auto save and versioning means you never lose any data 
8. The spreadsheet allows for custom scripts which have been used for many purposes, my favorite is a auto-scoring online quiz.
9. The ability to create online forms and surveys that save the data to the spreadsheet.
10. You can publish documents to the web essentially creating web pages

AND its FREE!