cogdogblog

Kotke on Metadata: "Metadazzle-Overfizzle"

Although I miss the literary references, I do like the spin that Jason Kotke puts on meta-data:

His graphic of a data encrusted blog post of no significance is worth a look. If your blog looks like this, then it may be time to think about writing, contextualizing, contributing something other than a link and a copy-pasted quote.

I think he aims at one of my learning object beefs- the overemphasis on metadata, tags, "repositories" and almost no attention to what matters- the stuff being described. After years of effort, we keep seeing more and more search and seek tools, more tag and bag tools, but where are the activity construction tools? Na-da.

Jason;s blog deserves the supreme praise it often gets. I would guess some has to do with clean design, but more to do with well-written, compelling stuff.

And you ought to check out the last link to "using Excel to write a love letter/"

LOP: Learning Objects Portal

From Seneca College in Ontario, Canada comes a new Learning Objects Portal Page:

There are quite a few places inside here, 9 sections: Information, Resources, Repositories, Tools, Best Practices, Issues, Activities, Who's Who, and About this site. Each one of these leads deeper and deeper. Additions include a project blog, an accessible version, and a discussion board link (but yuck! there are so many more 21st century board tools than WWWBoard, which is so, like 1996...)

Fun additons include things such as a learning object scavenger hunt or the Canadian "Who's Who in Learning Objects.

<tiphat>Tip of the blog hat to George at elearnspace</tiphat>

Cool Tools from UBC

An artlcle and links from University of British Columbia's e-Strategy newsletter (no RSS!) features some interesating tools developed at the UBC Arts ISIT.

<tiphat>Tip of the blg hat to my colleague Michelle, who has one of the funkier blog names for an educator ;-) </tiphat>

You gotta like the fun photos of the tool creators on the news story.

One is a WebCT Discussion board extracter, used to archive parts or all of threaded discussion for analysis or re-use, (see demo), which provides the threads rather than the linear list which WebCT exports. Apparently it also can create RSS feeds from threads as well.

The other is a Timeline constructor tool, which looks like we web page authoring interface to create interactive timelines presented as Flash (see demo), suggesting a way for faculty to be able to build these without "much fuss."

While this is the kind of thing I have been barking about (an over emphasis on meta-data and "repositories" and a lack of tools to build things from learning objects), and I know and respect Warren's work, the quote above is a bit of a stretch. It does allow faculty to create interactive timelines, which very well could be re-usable LOs, but it builds them from not learning obejcts, but media assets. It might be exponential if one could say build timelines from other timelines.

And while I like the concept, the timeline was a little difficult to handle- it is either moving left or right, mking it difficult to click the icons that make the music play or the videos appear (and to click the control buttons on these items). Also, it seemed like the years and.or the events on the timelines are hyperlinked (cursor changes to a hand), but nothing happens- it would be more useful to be able to link event items to external web sites, either to link to related information, or even to pose an activity question.

While I can crtique anything, I do find it is a wonderful first level concept as a tool, so hats off to the Canadians!

We need more tools to build things from learning objects, tagging, searching and finding still leaves you only with a pile of objects.

Learning About Learning Objects (LALO)

Here is another new learning objects "hub" site (a PHP-Nuke supported site) called Learning About Learning Objects .

I clicked and clicked and clicked trying to find the elusive "About" statement, failing, and found this on a site that seemed to be the prototype:

"SCCCD" would be the San Diego Community College District. The front page seems to be some sort of RSS/news gathering area, and there are links to "Faculty Objects" (must be learning objects created by faculty, not faculty members as objects!), "Weekly Example" (LO of the Week?), "Learning Object Training" (which seems to be information about this project), "Learning Objects""Project Overview" (now I can read what this site is about...)

In all of this, as a technology novice faculty member, would I find anything to convince me I can build something meaningful out of these "objects", it is yet another collection of disjointed things.

In the LO game we are still woefully short-changed and lacking the tools and strategies that would help pull the so-called objects together into something meaningful.

But keep your eyes on the distant horizon... from the west, a lumbering Loxodonta africana may be here to help.

3 LO Searches for 1 Query: Merlot's Federated Search

Zoom-zoom. More power for those looking for learning objects or instructional resources. MERLOT's Federated Search allows you to enter keywords (say "cell mitosis") and with one click conduct a search of MERLOT, Australia's )EdNA Online, and the Science Math resources of SMETE. Actually the EdNA folks had demo-ed this first at the MERLOT 2003 conference last August.

That is a lot of search power for you. Now if only the search results were savable as a URL... or federated RSS... or free wine...

<tiphat>tip of the blog hat to Brian Lamb for mentioning this recently</tiphat>

Cannot Figure out the Learning Content eXchange

On the URL name alone, it seems like the Learning Content eXchange (LCX) is of interest- it sounds like it has to do with reusable learning content. And the parallels in name/acronym alone to our own Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) are eerie.

But I cannot figure out anything tangible from the LCX site, even past the annoying, information scant, fading text flash intro. It is hard to take a web site seriously where the content is no HTML, just graphics of text (Someone send Bobby over right now and club this site with the 508 stick). The demo is behind a password. Shall I go on?

But beyond that, the pictures of text (same 1980s technology as the FAX machine) is just marketing gobbledy-gook:

Sounds like it was written by Wally.

Maybe someone can to a human translation and send it to me, but it smells like an objects for $ scheme.

NMC Presentation: "Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs"

If you were unable to attend the New Media Consortium (NMC)'s Online Conference on Learning Objects iin October, you missed out on some great sessions and exchange of ideas, as well as a brand new platform for online conferences.

All presentations were created with Marcomedia Breeze (in essence streaming audio narrated content delivered as Flash), and the presentation I did with fellow conspirators Brian Lamb and D'Arcy Norman, I have downloaded and put on our web server: Connecting Learning Objects with RSS, Trackback, and Weblogs:

Via Breeze, you not only can pick your path through the content, you get our stilted voices, plus the actaul voices of our scenario stars, Lora and Boris, who hopefully we can retire soon and highlight real faculty who are using learning objects, believe it or not.

League Bloggin': Learning Objects in the Real World

Turns out to be my last session attended at the League for Innovation CIT conference was from the Wisc Online - the Wisconsin Online Resource Center (note: link fails for Safari web browsers despite current flash plug-in).

The presentation pretty much as shown is available directory from their site (the "tour" button bottom center) as well as from the nifty biz-card sized CD-ROMs they provide.

Presenters Kay Chitwood and David Bunnow provided an overview and a good set of examples from the mroe than 1000 learning objects developed under this project. This 5 year old project supports the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Funded by a FIPSE grant in 1999, they started building learning objects but found more important to have a repository. A second grant from the national Science Foundation as supported new objects created for manufacturing areas. New funding from the state for adult education shows support is growing. They also have funding now from "eTech Wisconsin" the distance learning provider for the system.

Their definition of learning objects is "web-based self-contained chunks of learning... small enough to be embedded in a learning activity, lesson, or course. They are flexible, portable, and adaptable and can be used in multiple learning environments and across disciplines." The presenters admit a narrower than most defintion, but also not that with more than 1000 objects created and in regular use, they have met their goals.

The scope or defined granularity is small, and closer to what others would define as media assets (I am not so sure about that). From a handout (an approximation here):

      ----  Courses ------ Units ------ Lessons ----- 

    ------- Learining Activities ---| learning objects ------|

Their LOs are at or bellow the lesson level.

LOs are proposed and the content provided by faculty, for faculty, with assistance of Wisc-online development teams. Instructors choose content, instructional designers adapt content, and tech developers build it, reviewers and editors evaluate the object, teacher approves final. (so this is a model of tech staff building LOs for faculty). Faculty authors and technical developers are listed on each objects credit screen. Objects also include buttons to submit email delivered "reviews".

David makes judgement whether proposals are "Cecile B. de Mille" (too grand a production) or something so specialized that it could not be re-used. His key question, "Does it have legs?" meaning is it something that can have a high degree of use and re-use.

They have a team of 6 technical developers. They recruit students from CIS program as interns, paid $10/hour, they get real portfolio examples. Some get hired on full time.

All objects are developed as Flash (having gone through Toolbook, AutthorWare, Director, Flash is now the most prevalent playback platform).

Time for development> 1 hour of content development to 6 hours of development time, for a brand new type fo activity; if it is one of series, the subsequent ones are developed faster.

Objectrs are not open source, they are accessed directly from a link to the Wisc online site, so the ,swf files are not re-purposed in other contexts and the .fla files are not availablr. This is use for WTSC colleges, but outsiders can use but are asked to contact the author.

Examples shown-

• Sine Bar- measuring abgles


• Cylnderical Grinder- learn parts of machine


• GWAT Weld Pool- demonstrates welding process with video, an experience cannot be done directly with students


• Reading Indicator Quiz: practice reading gauges


• Using a goniometer- used in physical therapy, determines movability. Measuring angles, uses body figures created in Poser


• Socialization- a simple timeline or lifeline wiht fill in boxes, can be printed or emailed


• Conversions Pre-test - convert fractions, decimals, percents- this is just drill/practice, another one covers explanation of how to do it.


• Anatomy of the Ear

Also 300 LOs being developed for Anatomy and Physiology.

comments It is hard to argue against the sheer number of objects available. The are "re-usable" in the sense that they can be re-used in other disciplines but the media or objects themselves are not resuable because they only way to get to them is via the links on the Wisc-Online site (a use would be a teacher providing a direct link to students, or a link from a web course page).

A number of them are more or less click and read sequenced sections, maybe with animated text and wooshing graphics a la the old hypercard method of content with next and back arrows.Some are pure drill and practice, with just "correct/incorrect" for feedback. I would prefer to see a bit more randomness to these as students can get clued to test and practice patterns and repeated content.

Others have a higher degree of user control and are less linear, and it appears they are getting into ones that are feature virtual tools and manipulatives.

I can see faculty in our system getting some use out if these, if at least to give them some ideas.

But again, 1000 objects is a lot to be said for.

Derivative or Relating MLX Packages

I am just trying to flesh out a new idea for the Maricopa Learning eXchange. Since we have now real stories of how our faculty are using and modifying MLX content. I am hoping we can set up some new tools that can allow someone to create a new MLX item, and add that it is related to or derived from another MLX package.

For example, from our video interviews, we had an Estrella Mountain adjunct faculty (Marylyn) who teaches economics who described how she used the human organs supply and demand lesson package developed at Chandler-Gilbert, but in doing so, Marylyn had added some new components. We would like it if people like Marylyn could ultimately post a new MLX item to describe how the existing one was adopted and perhaps modified.

A tool for showing relationships would recognize use and re-use...

Technically it is simple, as it is just another database table to relate MLX packages to other ones. The easist route would be to build a tie into the Trackback tools already built into the MLX, but eventually trackbacks will drop off older TBs (I am ambitious after all that the traffic would grow that high).

I may just do both- build the relationships into the MLX structure but when they are created, also use the trackback function as well.

My thought is to provide another input field that would allow our package creators to provide the MLX package ID and a short blurb that can describe how their new package is related or derived from an existing items.

This way, new Package "Q" that gives credit to old package "D", would have a link from "Q" to "D" that states this relationship, AND, package "D" would have a link to the package "Q" as a "descendant" or "derivative".

And then (getting wild), let's say someone else creates new package "Z" based on "Q"- we could have a chain or relationships as packages are re-used, adopted, augmented.

Learning Objects: Focused Now? Blurry?

What follows, or rambles are some thoughts on today's NLII Focus Session (October 10, 2003) at Ohio State. I should say now that the best part of these events are getting to meet colleagues face to face, and without a doubt the attendance of 60 were all people I respect and value their varied work in this weird arena.

However, bottom line, I am not sure I have anything more in focus on learning objects.Frankly I thik it is a mistake to focus on them. They are not as important as the learning activities we can create from them.

Maybe it was a mistake to buy for the plane ride a copy of James Bishop's "Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist" a review of the life and works of my favorite acidic writer, Edward Abbey. In addition, I did miss the last 2 hours to catch a plane so I could be at a wedding tomorrow in Mammoth Lakes.

So....

Got to catch up over beers the night before the focusing with Brian Lamb, and enjoyed meeting during the session Evan Straub, from Ohio State, who shows her work at blog.IT "confessions of an instructional technologist".

So here is a gripe on the day's format- we travel from all over the country for about 8 hours of "focus" time, and there is still way too much singular upfront presentation (powerpoint, powerpoint, power.....) and reading of stuff that can be done electronically outside of face to face time.

And I could barely contain myself at the mention the learning object "virtual online community of practice", which at best has a cute acronym LOVCOP. That is about all. This has been essentially a non-community of not much practice and essentially dormant for months. It is not the people there, as there is a good group of experts included on the list. There were some good teleconference sessions last spring, but I saw absolutely zero community action or practice happening in LOVCOP. And to be honest, a bet a lot has to to with that horrible Worktools system, a fine web tool for 1997 maybe, but everything about the way it works compels me not to use it (getting emails of new items you have to log in to read and then finding out that it is just a link to an outside web site, the inane toggling needed to wade through discussion boards). Yechhh. Someone stick a fork in worktools.

The day's agenda was ambitious, packed, and I know a whole pile of work goes into pulling these things together.

There were active, small-group discussions on things such as the "learning objects ontology" which is an interesting approach, but one that I still try and say, "okay, we have this big map, what does it mean?"

Quite enjoyable was the energy and honesty of the presentation from Macromedia's Ellen Wagner. She raised the pending new object thing, Digital Object Idenitifer, something I never heard of and kept getting confused with connotations of being arrested for DUI. This ended up splintering into some heated lunch debates between a group of people passionate about various catalogging schemes.

Ellen also helpfully reminded that it is very early in the learning objects age, and there is much growth, adolescence to go through.

Overall, I keep seeming a lot of focus on the objects. I do not find learning objects themselves interesting at all (and what people seem to be calling them are pieces of media tossed into a web page, powerpoint, or flash thingie)-- I am much more interested in the things we create, do with them-- eventualy, ideally, the objects, the tags, should all be transparent, not objects of focus.

But if people still want to argue standards, and tags, and such, I guess that is fine. I will just sit that one out.

There were attempts to get to what LOs mean for "deeper learning" (which is good), although one group I was in ironically agreed that some good, basic shallow learning is not all that bad.

By lunch time I did not feel all that focused, but was hungry, and easier feeling to address.

Bu ouch! At lunch, I was chatting with Larry Johnson, chief of the New Media Consortium, which is running an online conference on learning objects next week (October must be national learning object month). Anyhow, as Larry sitting down with his food, he was starting to tell me a story about Stephen Downes and unfortunately, accidently placed the leg of his chair on his laptop, producing a rather unsightly, unsuable effect on his Dell machine. Now I would not imply that Stephen Downes broke Larry's laptop, but that was the context.

After lunch was the "Learning Objects Lounge", a poster-session type time with various projects demoing in small groups. I was set up to show my video interviews with our Maricopa faculty Learning Objects: Believe it or Not!- sadly I made the mistake of not bringing computer speakers so with all the chatter in the hallyway, no one could here the sound in my DVD. But hey, I can play their parts, and all of the clips are available online.

There was a decent session by Mary Marlino on DLESE, the earth sciences repository, pretty much showing it was a resource with a lot of buy-in from the people that use it.

So I did miss the last pieces, when all of the "work products" were being assembled, so I will retain a small microdose of optimism of some sort of clear direction emerging.

At least it was fun, the people intriguing... and the objects? I need new glasses because the focus ain't there yet. Or maybe it is just a smudge on my lens.

Anyhow, I am hoping to get some perspective from hiking aming the mighty Sierra Nevada peaks.

Learning Objects: Believe It or Not!

Here is a sneaky dog's first peek at Learning Objects: Believe It or Not!, the gist of what I am presenting 1:00 PM Friday as part of the "Learning Objects Lounge" at the EDUCAUSE/NLII Focus Session on Learning Objects.

Please do not alert the lawyers for the Ripley's enterprise. It was an irresistable metaphor.

Actually the format is a DVD (see a screen shot of the menu). The purpose here is to provide some real-life stories via video (not previous Maricopa Learning eXchange.

What I did was first to ask around my system a lot and try to identify these faculty, and then beg them to sit in front of my video camera for 15 minutes to talk about their MLX experience. A weekend of quick video editing, a bit of software wrangling (some cussing was heard), and voilá... a DVD was born.

What I found was that our faculty are using content from the MLX, they are de-contructing items to smaller pieces, adding one new ideas to published ones, picking up ideas other different disciplines than their own, creaing items big and small, caring about the context of their creations, and mostly, being energized about finding this as a resource. Re-use is happening. These are of tremendous value to our adjunct faculty. But each has one poignant phrase about re-use, granularity, context, value, and more.

And these are just a handful I could corner on short notice!

Be kind to our video servers- the clips were hastily compressed (sorry, all are done for broadband connections) and it is a humble server hosting the video.

More tomorrow on the reaction.

Lora and Boris Show (part deux)

Our learning object bloggers Lora and Boris are making a second appearance at the October 14-17 NMC Online Conference on Learning Objects.

Taking to a new level their story presented at MERLOT 2003, a garden varierty PowerPoint, for the NMC conference they have speaking parts as well, as the presentation appears via Macromedia Breeze, the platfom for the NMC conference.

More later on the "Breezin'" experience (is it a "mighty wind"?), but Boris and Lora are spending the weekend prepping. Their session becomes available to registered participants Monday, and later that afternoon, there is a scheduled live chat with the audience. It is an interesting format, let's see how it flies.

We are honored that NMC has given the dynamic duo the first day spotlight, given that the morning keynote is "Mr LOs as lego blocks", Wayne Hodgins.

After the conference, we should be able to provide a link to the show.

Phil Phinds Phriendly Trackback

Perched up at MIT, Phil Long is a key instructional visioneer, and in a recent Syllabus column he writes TrackBack: Where Blogs Learn Their Places.

It's a nice general overview of TB, yes, but Phil seems to not see as wide as we do by focusing only on what Trackback means in the blog world-- ignoring what D'Arcy, Brian, and I have been pushing since March 2003 [1, 2, 3]- using Trackback to connect a collection of Learning Objects with the external contexts where they are described or used.

Trackback is still an under-utilized, under-explored, and thankfully under-exploited (by spammers) simple technology.

<tiphat>tip of the blog hat to Scott Leslie</tiphat>

Repository of (Learning Object) Dreams

There is almost nothing more cliche than a Field of Dreams metaphor "If you build it, they will come", but it is all so fitting for those that get glaze-eyed at the potential of building a Learning Object Repository (ugh, I despise the connotations of the "R-word").

But I can guarantee you, that if you build it, they likely will not come, and if they do the pace will be one that gives you heartburn into the night.

However, do not despair. What follows is a tale of our efforts of growing our own collection, the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) story. And what we have tried, including saying "please", bringing out the dogs and ponies, bribery, competition, and good old fashioned nagging.

After a little over a year of focused effort, the MLX is just a whisker under 700 items. We realized at the get-go, it would take a lot to get this going. This was the way.

Make it friendly
This was a primary goal from day 1- the reason for our use of the "warehouse" metaphor, the concept of the items representing things created for learning as "packages" with shipping labels (a better term than "meta-data"), a place to enter and create new items, the "loading dock".

A great deal of time was spent creating and testing the creation forms, and all the feedback is unanimous that it is a process that takes no more time and technical skill than to compose a 2-3 paragraph email message with perhaps an included web site address and/or an attached file.

Remind, and remind often
We raised it in every possible meeting context where-ever possible, and communicated a great deal through the key technology and faculty development contacts at our ten colleges. We began a consistent and hopefully not a nuisance, campaign of system wide email updates, using a light writing tone and always including new examples of recently added content.

Take it to the people
We have been presenting and demo-ing the MLX at a large number of college, administrative, and project groups, each time customizing the dog and pony show with relevant examples.

It has gotten outside exposure, a poster and presentation at the MERLOT 2003 conference, it got 5 minutes of Fame at the 2003 New Media Consortium conference, an EDUCAUSE/NLII Learning Object teleconference, and a whole raft more I am too tired to cut and paste links.

Word has spread for us to via the blogosphere, thanks a lot to an early post in February 2003 by Stephan Downes and even a plug by Phil Long in Syllabus magazine.

Bribery and Competition
In late 2002 we decided to create an incentive program, with the first Great MLX Package Race. Between November 2002 and March 2003, we had the MLX tally how many new items were submitted by each of our ten colleges, and weighted this total by the total number of employees (which ranges from 167 to 640). The colleges with the top score got prizes of 25-license copies of Adobe PhotoShop, 10-copy license of Macromedia Flash, etc (we are able to get these at substantial discount via our Second race just ended a few days ago, and we are generally pleased with the 163 new items, many of them just the kind of small, but useful creative things we hoped would get shared.

On closer scrutiny, we are concerned. Out of 163, more than 40 were required, they come from the online reports from our internal grants program ( we built a report system that files results into both the grant site and to the MLX). At least 20 were ones that we actually entered manually in other people's names, from programs we hope to tie into the MLX. I had about 6 myself.

What we saw were a handful of lone pioneers at one college, where there is one person who alone sent 17, 16, 11, 6 and basically almost no other un-solicited contributions.

Build Value for Groups into the System
The whole foray into RSS syndication for the MLX came from an interest in being able to provide mini web services to our colleges, so they could do things like display a dynamic list of their college's contributions to the MLX in their own websites..

Three colleges have done so:
Estrella Mountain Community College
GateWay Community College
Mesa Community College

Next we came up with a way to create URLs that produce lists of packages that have been associated with academic disciplines:
Biology
English

And we came up with other links that would provide all the items contributed by a single college OR all the ones created by an individual, a mini-portfolio:
Mesa Community College
Alisa Cooper
Marla DeSoto
David Weaver

even showing in a demo how one faculty could add to her home page links to her colleges and her own MLX items:
Donna's Home Page 1 (links to MLX to left)
Donna's Home Page 2 (links to MLX embedded with RSS feed, scroll to bottom)

Recently we also added an optional feature to "tag" packages to be associated with specific groups, so we could have links to MLX Special Collections such as a fellowship program's final reports. This functionality came with another bonus- we franchise the MLX search routines out to other sites, so that this program can have its own search interface of a subset of the MLX, using the same MLX database and search code.

Where is that tipping point?
We know that at some point, there will be enough items of general and specific interest in the MLX so that people visiting it will find things they can use or generate ideas from, and that in turn should compel them to turn back and share. Where is that point? Is it 1000 items? 2000? 10,000?

At my demos I keep saying if every employee rummaged around their computer or past projects, and shared 10 documents, powerpoints, web sites, we would have a powerful collection (nearly 10,000 employees in our system).

We Regularly Squander, Hemmorage, and Diffuse Our Intellectual Capital
What we ask for in the MLX is a change of culture in how we create and manage the things we create. Currently the most prevalent mode of communication in our system is email. People spend hours of time composing HTML messages for projects and events (rather than creating a working and usable web site), or blast out messages with attached documents. This is information that is diffused and often lost.

One of MLX's frequent patrons,David Weaver, provided a great example of someone who has his shift together. In July, we attended a conference held in town, the International Conference on Thinking, and in his Weaver-esque style, created a 12 page word document that had his notes, pictures from the conference, and web links to the conference topics. On his own, he said, "Rather than just sending it to my college's email distribution list, I created an entry in the MLX and then sent a much shorter email with this link." And now the content has some permanence, is retrievable by our search tool.

Here is another (ironic) symptom of the bleeding of intellectual capital in our system. Every year, there is an Innovation of the Year program, where each of our sites nominates one project or program as its Great Innovation. They complete an application form, and a committee then picks one of these to be the grand innovation awardee from Maricopa. In 2003, the MLX was actually the Innovation of the Year for the District Office.

For the Innovation of the Year application process, this is what you must provide:

This is correct. To submit something as innovative in 2003, you must personally hand on a floppy disk down at the Marketing office.

Last year, I tried to gently suggest that this could easily be done via an electronic process, much as we have done for the application and review of our Learning Grants.

Then during the interview process for the committee's final selection, they let me know that there was a large number of projects submitted as innovation of the year for our district office site. But no one outside of this committee would ever know this existed because of this process. Now multiply this times our 10 colleges. Can you see the torrent of lost creative capital?

I have suggested with one simple process change they could reverse this trend. If they changed the application process, so that anyone submitting their project as an Innovation of the Year, write it up and post the same application form in the MLX, we would remove the need to drive down here and turn in a floppy disk AND we would be able to capture not only the selected finalists, but all of the programs submitted as innovations. Aren't they all worthy to know about?

And there are many many programs in our system that involve summer projects, development programs, curriculum infusion grants, sabbaticals, that if they even have a reporting mechanism, that it is often paper based or just emailed Word files, and they just end up rotting alone, un-seen in some filing cabinet.

The Hope
If you got this far in the story, here is the plot turn. We see signs of change. We are getting word that faculty are actually finding and using things from the MLX. One new English teacher reported that she read through 350 different items, and found all of the lesson ideas she would need for her first semester, and we hear of faculty getting teaching ideas from ones submitted for other disciplines. More and more people besides myself are suggesting the MLX at meetings. It is getting recognized as another acronym in the Maricopa language.

(At a demo I did at one college a year and a half ago, someone asked if I was black, getting it confused with "MLK").

We get regularly feedback that our adjunct faculty use it quite a bit, as they often do not have the time to create new teaching materials.

The Answer
Time.

That is what it takes, like the expression my Dad used to give me on, "Time, Patience, and Perseverance".

It takes much more time than you would ever think, much more patience, to have a new systemic model catch on.

We are not there yet, but I can feel the ship turning.

Stay tuned.

Building a Fence (real object) and Building Things out of Learning Objects

Last weekend I built a fence around a vegetable garden in our yard (view image). I am not really much of a craftsman, but this project came out pretty nice. Working with the hands got me thinking about (reaching for the metaphor) building things out of learning objects.

I have harped before that there has been way too much emphasis on the creation of the "repositories" and the piles of meta-data, and the search tools- and almost nothing on the craft, the art, the magic, of building something out of the things inside the collections.

Last week at one of our faculty instructional technology meetings, we were trying to get some commitment to taking on the learning object issue. There was the usual tired, over-trodden attempts at definitions, a lot of shrugging, and then the often worded desire for some sort of magic, point and click tools that would assemble LOs into meaningful learning activities.

As the line goes in the hilarious Ausitralian comedy The Castle:

But as I worked on that fence I thought about what an un-realistic, un-attainable, expectation this dream places on technology...

It goes back to what good teachers have always done.

The know their field of expertise, they look at and review materials from a wide variety of resources (books, articles, films, other projects, newspapers, libraries, etc), and then they assemble something new by hand-- there was never a push button lesson planner for the classrooms of the 1960s why would we expect a dumb computer to do it now?

When I was building my fence, I had to define in my mind what I hoped to create (objective). I made measurements, drew up some plans, made some sketches, looked at a bunch of existing fences. I went to Home Depot !a tremendous repository of objects!), and sought out what I thought I needed, making changes because they sold 2x4s in 8 foot sections rather than 10. Maybe our learning object collections need some helpers in orange aprons.

Working on the fence, I had to adjust also when things did not work out, or where I got a better idea how to join the boards, or realized that some caulk would really be good for sealing the corners.

Do you see how iterative a process it is? How un-automated? How it is not just about the objects? How much I sweated because it was 105 degrees?

Sure I built this fence out of simple pieces of lumber, deck screws, hinges, paint, but these objects alone do not make a fence. And yes, I could have gone an easy route, and paid someone to build it, but where is the pride or growth in that?

Learning too cannot be built at the click of a button- we put something of ourtselves into things when we build it by hand, when we craft it.

So get out your saws, hammers, drills, etc. It is time to get to work and out of the dreamland that a bunch of lego blocks are going to string together a learnign experience.