• 16Aug
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Education, Technology Comments Off on Opening to Openness

    What does ‘open’ mean in the context of education? Many have shared their opinions on what they think ‘open’ represents, but that’s not really the point, is it? I mean, sharing our views may contribute to the discussion, it may open some eyes and maybe even change a few perspectives, but it hasn’t led us to the answer yet. Does that mean no one really knows the answer? Merrily skipping a little further down this stream of thought, I wonder, if no one really has the answer, there’s no reason for me not to share my point of view too. What’s the worst that could happen – I look silly, unaware, perhaps a touch confused? However I look, everyone else is varying shades of the same color, so here’s me jumping into the debate.

    To this humble student of life, ‘open’ education means accessible education. If it weren’t for openness, I wouldn’t be picking up my masters degree in a few weeks, I wouldn’t be singing the potential benefits of technology to whomever will listen, and I most certainly wouldn’t have had the pleasure of collaborating with brilliant minds from all over the world, all interested in pursuing their passion to explore how technology can impact the way they learn and teach.

    ‘Open’ doesn’t necessarily mean free, but it definitely means affordable – at least to the consumer. Case in point: I am still paying off my undergraduate loans, but I closed the account that funded my masters quite a few months ago. ‘Open’ may not necessarily represent the cheapest option for the institution, but once all that front-end heavy investment has been made, it most certainly has the potential to represent the most efficient, scalable and transferable option. Perhaps if I had waited just a few years, I could have accessed my graduate course materials for free on iTunes U where the OU ranks in the top 5 most downloaded sources in this fruity academic database. That wouldn’t make me eligible to receive my coveted competitive ammunition (a.k.a. my degree certificate), but that doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t be smarter for it.

    To technologists, ‘open’ has a lot to do with trying to figure out how to avoid reinventing the wheel. For legal teams, it’s predominantly about how to navigate the slippery slopes of copyright laws. To academics…well, that one is a bit difficult for me to answer. You see, I’ve spent many years working on the ‘other side’ of the academic profession. I was a part of university administration, which essentially means that I was not ‘one of them’. However, I did have the privilege of working with many of ‘them’ (to at least attempt) to expand their awareness of what educational technology could mean to them and to broaden their understanding of ways in which ed tech could be incorporated into their worlds if they decided to give it a chance. So you see, all I can do is tell you how I perceive the way academics interpret ‘open’.

    There is one school of thought that shuns the concept of digitizing any intellectual materials that it undoubtedly took these brilliant minds centuries to cultivate. These ‘inner two-year-olds’ barely feel comfortable releasing 8th generation photocopies of PowerPoint presentations to their well-paying students (6 per page so as to ensure maximum note-taking real estate). The idea of adapting their materials to fit an electronic learning environment suitable to enrich the lives of an exponentially larger group of eager beavers is simply out of the question. Why? Good question.

    The other school of thought, the one with which I had much more of a pleasure working, accepts the notion that perhaps there may be some benefit to learning new ways of communicating. They concede that there may in fact be some truth that changing the way we communicate might better enable the current generation of teachers to convey information to their audiences in inspirational ways. As you can see, the title of ‘information sharer’ fits this Generation 2.0 of teacher much better than the ‘sages on dusty stages’ that precede them. Think of it like an iPhone versus a telegram – both get a message across, but the quality of the message, the way we go about receiving it and how we choose to interact with it are very different. Students may be sitting in lecture halls, texting and doing their very best to provide evidence of just how many twits there are in the crowd, but in this unfortunately common act of ignorance, they’re also sending a very valuable albeit crudely packaged message to their leaders and guides: we use technology to get our messages across, why aren’t you?

    I realize I’m generalizing, but at this stage of the debate about openness, it’s difficult to deny that we haven’t yet come close to finding a middle ground. But why look at technology through bitter colored glasses smeared with resistance? After all, technology is as much a vehicle of information transfer as paper is. The difference is that whereas paper can be viewed as the byproduct of massacred forests, the Internet (for to use the term technology would be much too gnarly a maze to navigate in the context of this discussion) could just as easily be seen as a voracious devourer of our privacy. The production of paper is contaminating our planet. The Internet is home to evil predators. Producing paper pollutes our water supplies. Surfing the electronic waves of the Internet is dangerous because ‘they’re watching you’.

    Is it at all clear how ridiculous the argument against anything can become whenever we refuse to bend our perceptions just enough to see things a little differently? Paper has also been an invaluable tool facilitating communication through generations. Some of the most important decisions made on the planet have been recorded on paper. Art, history and love have been created on paper. As for the Internet, it has provided access to medical care in some of the most remote places on this planet, given the opportunity for children to learn in areas where traditional schools don’t exist, and facilitated the cultivation of countless communities of like-minded individuals seeking ways to connect and contribute value to society.

    And what about teachers teaching teachers? Isn’t it possible that there are new instructors out there, just entering into the world of knowledge sharing, who would greatly appreciate a benchmark approach to course development? Wouldn’t having access to some of the most renown higher education institutions’ courses (Yale and MIT come to mind) have the potential to add value to the educational offerings provided by any countries at all interested and able to access and make subsequent use of the information, regardless of whether it’s to inject new lifeblood into university, high school or even elementary school curricula?

    All I’m saying is…try being open. The middle ground isn’t that far away.


  • 25Jan
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Education, Technology Comments Off on The student becomes the teacher

    So it’s been a while. I have to admit that ulterior motives have propelled me back into the blogosphere. I’m returning to VS not because I’ve been particularly moved by an ed tech article or because I’ve come across a funky new technology I wanted to show you.  To be quite honest, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my short stint away from anything and everything related to online learning. You see…

    I finished my Masters in Online and Distance Education in December ’09, and from the moment I submitted my final piece of work, there was a part of me that knew I needed to take some time to recover. Perhaps that’s a common response felt by many a grad student, but the way in which I’ve been repelled from all things technology (even my shiny new iPhone at a certain point, or the untouched iPod shuffle that’s been sitting on my desk in its original box for over a month now) was quite surprising to me. After all, one thing I’ve learned about myself throughout this process has been that I have a natural tendency to seek out new technologies, determine in what ways they work within an educational context, experiment with new applications, and join emerging groups excited to share their common interests in the field.

    Maybe it was a case of me just overdosing on technology, but funnily enough, I didn’t suffer from the often paired imbalance of information overload. In fact, I’ve been deliriously delighted diving into books – the real PAPER kind! – ever since I officially parted ways with my student self and reentered into the adult world. I’ve even succumbed to redecorating my workspace in an effort to reflect my internal desire to reconnect with the less virtual literary world with which I think I might remember briefly engaging back in high school for a day or two.

    I’ve unapologetically started piling books onto my revamped workspace – not elearning books, not research books, not even learning and teaching books – but the kind of books that you want to fall asleep reading at night and reopen in the morning as you take your first sip of steaming caffeinated goodness. My home office is now adorned with candles propped up on rounded glass plates, next to a crystal hourglass that’s been sitting in its original gift box somewhere in the back of my closet for long enough that I can’t remember when I got it in the first place. The coffee mugs are still there (for what an empty cerebral world it would be without them!) but no more do I have to burrow myself in piles of file folders stuffed with printouts of assessment criteria for upcoming assignments.

    So back to those ulterior motives. They relate to this adult world I speak of, so often associated with mountainous career paths to climb and saturated weekly calendars to survive. It’s time to enter into the working world again, and for many of us instructional designers, our blogs are our calling cards – even more important in many ways then our CVs. So, I welcome this New Year, albeit slightly late, with this first post of twenty ten. Getting back in the game as it were… But now that I think of it, perhaps I did read something recently that’s sparked this train of thought…

    I received a mailing a few days ago from my Alma Mater inviting me to join its graduate association. The group’s slogan is “In my end is my beginning” – a sentiment that so brilliantly encompasses my current state. I suppose you could say that I feel accomplished, but coupled with a presumably organic sense of achievement is this bittersweet taste of being back at square one again, and no matter how many coffees I gulp down, the bitter taste doesn’t seem to be going away. Maybe it’s got something to do with the unemployment rate or with the economy, or with the general uncertainty of the times.

    In any case, regardless of my recent momentary shun of all things technology or of my desire to temporarily disengage from the virtuality of so many of the worlds we live in these days, I have continued to do one very important thing through this whole process. I’ve been determined to remember that many of my experiences as a student in the world of educational technology are most probably also experiences that other online students have shared. And now I find myself holding these thick tomes of lessons learned and knowledge gained close to me as I begin to look around for a new place to put them down so that I can share them with others.

    I think that in the end, the most cherished lesson I take away with me from graduate school is of how important it is to be as observant, tolerant and open minded as we can be when we are students because that is the best way to ensure that we are heard when it is our time to teach.


  • 16Nov
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Technology Comments Off on How is technology enriching your holiday season?

    Holiday Ribbon 3

    Strange question? Well, perhaps at first glance, but when you think about it, technology can easily become a part of so many aspects of our lives. Whether you have committed to studying online on a full-time basis, or you’re wondering if maybe a part-time option is more manageable for you, there are many many options from which to choose!

    Something that I noticed after I got comfortable in my ‘online learning hat’ was that the ‘online’ or ‘e’-learning or ‘technical’ part of my learning experience very quickly melted into the other parts of the process. Soon, I began to see it as my customized, border-less and self-empowering learning experience minus the ‘e’. As time went on, it became less important to isolate the ‘online’ part because the technology became one of the many important aspects of my learning experience.

    So that brings me back to the holidays! I know that not everyone celebrates at the same time, and not all of us share the same traditions, and there’s certainly quite a lot of travel that takes place during this time of the year, so I think it’s safe to say that not all of us celebrate in the same place either! But, what I’m really interested in talking about here with you, is how (or even whether) you’ve incorporated technology into your holiday traditions. To start us off, I’ll share a story…

    I was hiking in Big Basin Redwoods State Park yesterday with a couple of friends. One of them asked me if I had any ideas about organizing a dinner or some sort of party for our social group. I started thinking about it, slept on it over night, and then inspiration hit once the alarm went off this morning! With coffee in hand, I began sifting through all my cookbooks, and put together a menu for a potluck dinner. Then, I started thinking about how to give people access to the menu and the recipes and, a little while later, I came up with an e-vite as well as a dinner menu plus all the recipes! How? Technology! Yes!

    Now, I know that a paper and pencil would have worked too, or even making photocopies and mailing them out would have gotten the message across. But I think that technology represents the option to do things differently. I’ll even go a step further and say that one of the most important things that technology allows us to do is to communicate differently. That’s what online learning represents to me – a different way for teachers to get their messages across to students, and an alternative way for students to receive those ideas and form educated opinions about them for themselves. And if you consider how unique and multifaceted each of our perspectives are as we look around in this world and try to make sense of it, we can use all the alternatives we can get!

    For some of you, it might still be too early to talk about the holidays, while for others, you’re already planning guest lists and wrapping gifts. I’d like to share my little dinner invite with you, as well as the menu items and recipes. If you’re inspired, you’re more than welcome to use them to create your own events. Or maybe…they’ll inspire you to think about others way that you can use technology to make your holiday season more festive and enjoyable!

    Holiday Dinner Invite

    Holiday Dinner Menu