This presentation was almost a month ago, and is pretty much (at least for now) the cap of my TRU Fellowship, but we just got ahold of the video. Brian Lamb and I were invited to do a live streamed presentation from the University of Victoria (thanks for setting it up, Valerie Irvine).
This was the end of a series of webinars for Open Education Week that were coordinated by BC Campus (and thanks to Clint Lalonde for making it happen).
The title of our talk “The Open Web (a) Lost (b) Reclaimed (c) Co-claimed (d) All of the above?” was meant to get at what we see as un-necessary dichotomies in ed tech (and also to poke at multiple choice). This was the landscape setting to talk about the work we did at TRU during my stint, both the SPLOT tools and the You Show open seminar.
We started by describing the assertion that there is an open web that was lost (an excuse for me to slip in Another Web Bites the Dust). But the real catalyst for what were conversations Brian and I had at our branch office at the Fox and Hound, was the observation by Martin Weller:
But I don’t see such a big change 2010-2015 – which is not to say lots hasn’t happened. In specific areas I’m sure people will say “assessment has changed radically” or similar, but I don’t feel there has been this major social technological change that has then impacted upon education. It’s been a case of making the existing things better, bigger, more world-controlling. So does this mean we are due another major change soon? Or do we we enter a period now of settling down, of existing stuff expanding?
We went through the multiple choices in the title, by reviewing the idea of Reclaiming the Web or my middle of the road idea of Co-Claiming the Web. In the Challenges of Open Education pointed out some of the side taking we saw when our friend (and You Show Star) D’Arcy Norman blogged about the False Dichotomy of LMS vs the Open Web (agreed that the dichotomy is not only false, but not needed).
For the TRU work, we started with an overview of the SPLOT Tools and The You Show. We ended with examples of what TRU folks did with these tools and in the You Show.
As blogged earlier, we did our presentation inside a WordPress site, meaning the presentation is itself the resource (chuck full of links).
Brian and I also teased and set things up with a bit of role play via twitter, in which we seemed to be taking un-necessary sides ourselves, and play arguing. Some thought it a bit much, but I say pfffffft it was a performance before the show.
Has it really been a month since I left TRU? There are some stray bits I still hope to do; the SPLOT tools all need a bit of documentation in the github repos, I went through the still syndicating hub of the You Show and one clicked posts to add to the highlight reel (hey, there is even a post to describe how that is done).
And then there are the papers I hope to write… well there are some notes on paper.
Portions of this presentation will feed into one Brian and I hope to present November at the 2015 Open Education conference in Vancouver.
Yep, stuff is never quite done.
As mentioned, we got the keys to the video archive: