School of Open Badges

Over the last couple of weeks a lot has happened with Open Badges and the Peer 2 Peer University. First off I was collaborating with Leah MacVie around what is the follow-on to the P2PU Open badges 101 course. And I was wanting to move my work of putting together a step-by-step into the P2PU as the platform for peer learning around badges. Leah had also done a bunch of great work in developing the first 101 course and had an outline for another... we were wondering how all this would fit together.

I was inspired by Leah's work so I drew on the outlines she had created, added my step-by-step guide outline into the mix and thought a lot about what would be a comprehensive Open Badges curriculum. I created a nine course curriculum and created really brief course descriptions and cane up with a course leveling (beginner, intermediate, expert, and master) approach and gave the courses numbers like 102, 103, 201, 202, etc... I took this work to the Open Badges Community Call to gather feedback. The feedback was outstanding and exemplary in relation to badge systems design, the two highlights were;

1. Don't create a prescribed type journey (get away from beginner, intermediate, 101, 102, 201, etc...) each badge should stand on its own and the related learning should be scaffolded into the single badge challenge (or course). I commented on how difficult this would be as often learning requires previous learning. The feedback persisted and they community challenged me to put down the spoon and think way outside the box. So I did...
2. Creating a nomenclature for naming the courses, but they really don't have to imply any kind of leveling or achievement, they are just names. This made sense to me and as I was reviewing my proposed nine courses I jokingly said... "like a flower with nine petals".

With this feedback I edited the table and leveraged the flower analogy to the point where I fit different parts of the flower into the matrix. And to a small extent I fit the part definitions into the course themes. all good.

A description of this matrix will be in a subsequent post.

To use the flower analogy even further I tried to create a graphic of a nine petal flower. Where each petal represented a course. What I ended up with was quite computer science like... but it worked. And fortunately, I was able to get assistance from Leah and she did her magic and turned what I had created into a beautiful flower. You can view the two versions here, and I'll let your guess who did which.

  

Version 1

  

Version 2

The most meaningful parts to all this are threefold; first, we ended up with a really nice looking curriculum design graphic; second, we determined the p2pu open badges course matrix; and third, we ended up with a working example for badge systems design.

Creating Online Learning Communities

Thank-you Bill Pusztai

My recent work has taken me back to thinking about and discussing the effective creation of technically focused online learning communities. Learning online is something I have been doing for a while. And given both my pedagogical and technical background, I often get into the nuts and bolts (or bits and bytes) of building online learning communities as well as the actual building of the community. Much of my recent reflection has been about engaging and building learning communities, particularly technology (or digital literacy) focused learning communities. This post is mostly about the engagement and pedagogical side of this community building. Another post about the technical side of building online learning community may come, but is well articulated in this slideshare from a while back; http://www.slideshare.net/prawsthorne/building-onlinecommunities

Background
I believe some background information on where I am coming from in my thinking is important. There have been a number of experiences (professional and otherwise) that have set my thinking about building technically oriented online learning communities.

• Being a software developer and working extensively with lean and agile teams - what is important: most developers are self-directed life-long learners and they owe a lot to their peers who have contributed to what they are reading and learning.
• Being an enterprise architect and encouraging enterprise2.0 thinking - what is important: collective intelligence and learning/teaching is knowledge management. being patient.
• The musings of Zuckerberg vs. Poole - what is important: anonymity encourages contribution, nuf said, read my post;  http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/2011/03/ignore-copyright-and-blissfully-create.html
• My time as a early contributor to WikiEducator - what is important: recognizing contribution, doing it in the open, monetize activities wherever possible, and governance can be done exclusively online and in the open. love your volunteers.
• Implementing seven major projects in three years with CLEBC - what is important: open approaches work in closed shops. API's allow distributed approaches. recognizing areas of practice (or communities of practice) is important. Video resources can be long-tailed. love your volunteers.
• My graduate studies were exclusively online - what is important: face-to-face and blended opportunities are worth every moment and should be encouraged if you want greater depth to learning. This may seem against the creation of online learning communities and favoring traditional learning environments, but the point I am making is that if the opportunity to get together in the same physical space with any community member presents itself, seize it!
• Communities can be built in many places by many people - what is important: often communities can fracture into other communities, or seasoned contributors will disengage, move-on or start other communities. Be supporters of this action for it increases the overall size and reach of the subject and its growing content.
• Authenticity can be community policy - what is important: based on an articulated policy the authenticity of the dialogue can be increased. While anonymity can create contribution and authenticity, the community can also set and enforce policy to encourage authenticity.

Engagement, engagement, engagement
Contributors are the MOST valuable resource, they are the community! Yes, lurkers are also a huge part of any growing community, and lurkers sometimes convert into micro-contributors. The people who are, or see themselves as, stewards of the community need to engage often and with reckless abandon. They also need to encourage the stewardship to be a shared activity. Engagement should be across social media, and where possible use tagging to bring it all together.

Tagging For Community of Practice from Peter Rawsthorne

Freedom (without scholarly egos, well... all egos)
Its the micro engagements that grow into macro engagements. If people aren't given the freedom and support to make small contributions they will rarely make the larger contributions. And once a contribution has been made facilitating discussion should come from elsewhere (not the contributor themselves) with great encouragement and recognition being given to the initial contributor. An amazing community is grown with many small and meaningful events. People should never be made to feel badly about their contribution... and don't feed the trolls.

Small is beautiful
Encourage contribution in small chunks, build discussion and shared understanding around these chunks. Allow the chunks to coalesce into larger works. Trying to complete a larger works without community engagement, ends up teaching the creator. And the online community becomes passive...

Facilitators are stewards (and need to be tech savvy)
Online learning communities that are technical in nature need to be facilitated by the technically savvy, if they are not this is quickly noticed and the community will lose credibility. The facilitators must eat their own dog-food and be exemplars in engagement and encouragement.

Its all about love!
I know it sounds smoltzy, but building a great online learning community is an activity of the heart... finding people who are deeply committed to the subject matter of the learning community is essential for longevity and depth of learning. People quickly get a real sense of a community (online or otherwise) and if it is not genuine people will recognize this.

Building successful online learning communities has a lot to do with reaching-out and encouraging others. And for technology focused learning communities this includes drawing in people who make small technical contributions who often contribute in small and quiet ways. Surprisingly, it is often these small contributions that have the biggest impact.

1/2 finished posts have been chosen

A month back I was musing about my > 20 half-finished blog posts, I decided to put it out to vote. After three weeks the poll was closed and my next few posts have been chosen. The immediate blogging with cover the following six posts; with injected posts from my work with open badges, building online learning communities, popcorn.js, and other pedagogical subjects I am inspired to write about. The poll results can be found within the original post, and my next few posts will include;

1. Computer Science taught as an art (33% voters)
2. Learning is Knowledge Management (33% voters)
3. Traditionalists, Reformers and Outliers (28% voters)
4. Not everyone is social (28% voters)
5. Learning Platforms for People (28% voters)
6. Using smart phones within a connectivist approach (28% voters)

As of the poll closing day, 21 of 204 viewers voted. And the final results were different than those a week after the poll had opened.

wrapping screencasts in popcorn.js to enhance learning

My work over the last month has been to create screencasts for the Mozilla open badges initiative. I am building screencasts to provide online tutorials describing the different technical aspects of the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI). There are many scholarly articles discussing the effectiveness of screencasts on learning; a google scholar search on "screencast learning" provides a good listing if you would like further reading. One aspect of the screencasts I have been working on for a while is how to deepen the learning around the screencast. In a number of my previous projects, including CLEBC and AIM language learning, we enhanced screencast learning by including; chat, discussion, in-lined formative questions, and links to related resources. All of these enhancements helped in creating a more complete learning module by providing multi-modalities to learning.

What I believe is the most important is the clustering of resources into a succinct module. The idea being that the screencast is "surrounded" by many resources specific to the subject and contents of the screencast. Another technology currently being released by Mozilla is popcorn.js. This technology allows screencasts to be greatly enhanced by adding resources and screen elements as the video progresses. Popcorn is well described on the related Mozilla site;

"Popcorn.js is an HTML5 media framework written in JavaScript for filmmakers, web developers, and anyone who wants to create time-based interactive media on the web. Popcorn.js is part of Mozilla's Popcorn project."

What popcorn.js provides is the ability create a comprehensive learning module where a screencast is clustered with other related resources. These additional resources can be explored while the video is in progress or referenced after the video is complete. The main point being the resources are available through links and are presented within the context of the progressing video.

To view the use of popcorn.js to enhance learning visit this growing repository of popcorn wrapped screencasts; http://badges.bit.bc.ca/guides/step01.html

Related readings:

• Farley, S., Breck, J,. (n.d.). Finding Knowledge in the Global Golden Age of Learning. Retrieved from http://globalknowledgeinitiative.org/news/judy-breck.html
• Mestrea, L. (2010). Matching Up Learning Styles with Learning Objects: What's Effective? Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01930826.2010.488975
• Oehrli, J.A., Piacentine, J., Peters, A., & Nanamaker, B. (2011). Do screencasts really work? Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/national/2011/papers/do_screencasts_work.pdf

Open Badges 3.3 - Hashing the recipient attribute

The last of three screencasts on the basic requirements for setting-up a server to be a badge issuer. In this screencast I look at hashing the earners email address with the slat value. This hashed value is then used in the recipient attribute of the json file. This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: Do you feel confident with a server side programming language like PhP or Python? If not, do you have access to programmer resources to assist?

Open Badges 3.2 - Configuring for the json content-type

The second of three screencasts on the basic requirements for setting-up a server to be a badge issuer. In this screencast I look at configuring the web server to support the json content-type. This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: Do you feel confident with your basic server administration skills? If not, do you have access to server administration resources to assist?

Open Badges 3.1 - Importance of a stable URL

The first of three screencasts on the basic requirements for setting a server to be a badge issuer. In this screencast I provide an overview of the basic server and configuration needs to issue a badge manually, and discuss the importance of a stable URL for the origin, criteria and evidence json attributes. This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: Manually issuing a badge is not the only approach to accomplish this task? Can you think of one (maybe two) other ways to issue a badge using the OBI?

Inquire, Paraphrase, Acknowledge, Advocate

So I was reading through the information streams created around this years OSCON. And it looks to be an outstanding event... focused on the impact the open movement has had at many levels and in many realms. All good! I am so happy to be a part of it and grateful to be a part of the Open Badges initiative with Mozilla Foundation. A lot of my current activity is with building community in and around the implementation of the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI). So what really resonated with me are the four traits for a good community as lifted by Tim O'Reilly from David Eaves keynote. The four traits are; Inquire, Paraphrase, Acknowledge, Advocate. But what does all this mean to community building? So I looked up each and what could each community member do to assist in building a strong sustainable and healthy community.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/roland/7436172034/

• Inquire - To seek information by asking a question; curious; probing.
  Always be asking questions and seek information to understand each community member and their positions and context.
  
  
• Paraphrase - A restatement of a text or passage in another form or other words, often to clarify meaning; clearness; rewording.
  Confirm that you have understood, add strength to another community members words by showing your understanding as it related to a particular issue within the community. Even restate within a different context as it relates to the community.
  
  
• Acknowledge - to show or express appreciation or gratitude for. to acknowledge a favor. To express thanks or gratitude for. To admit the existence, reality, or truth of.
  Let people know they are welcome in the community by acknowledging their contribution, engagement and presence. Confirm their contributions by tying them back to current and emerging truths within the community and its shared knowledge.
  
  
• Advocate - to support or recommend publicly; plead for or speak in favour of. to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly.
  Speak out for all the good work the community is doing. Choose the topics of interest to you, within the community, and speak passionately of them. Assist in keeping all things moving forward; network, engage, understand, promote, and share. Be positive... advocate.

References:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
https://twitter.com/timoreilly/statuses/225622408231534592
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/24859

Open Badges Step 2.3: Technical Prerequisites - Server Infrastructure

The last of three screencasts on the technical prerequisites for integrating with the Open Badges Infrastructure. In this screen cast I discuss the server infrastructure required for each of the three roles of; issuer, earner, and displayer. I mostly spend my time describing the server needs of the issuer, where the displayer is quite similar to the issuer, especially if it becomes a fat displayer. And by fat I mean it offers a lot of displayer services related to badges and their earners. Again, the earner requires the least infrastructure, but can require more if we begin down the road of federated backpacks. More on the federated backpack in a later screencast.This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: If the server infrastructure for the issuer is mostly about storing and managing earner, evidence, criteria and badge information, what information needs to be stored and managed by the displayer? Compare and contrast the server infrastructure needs of the issuer and the displayer.

Open Badges Step 2.2: Technical Prerequisites - Technology Stack(s)

The second of three screencasts on the technical prerequisites for integrating with the Open Badges Infrastructure. In this screen cast I discuss the technology stack(s) required for each of the three roles of; issuer, earner, and displayer. This discussion is more of a logical view of the technologies you need. The idea being we are building on ideas from the non-technical perspective. Getting deeper into the technology will come in later screencasts.This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: Why does the issuer require the most technology? Can the earner get away with having no technology beyond internet access and a facebook account? Can you think of a reason why a displayer would require more technology than the issuer?

Open Badges Step 2.1: Technical Prerequisites - JavaScript

The first of three screencasts on the technical prerequisites for integrating with the Open Badges Infrastructure. In this screen cast I discuss the basic javascript you need to know to manually issue badges. I also touch upon the prerequisites if you move beyond manually issuing badges and integrate with an LMS or other server application. This screencast is a part of a step-by-step guide built to support the onboarding of the non-technical OBI implementer.

Reflective Activity: If you are going to integrate badge issuing with your learning management system (LMS) or other server application, do you need more than just JavaScript?

WebGL Interview 2

My learning in the open journey in building learning resources for the Mozilla Ignite initiative continues. 8 days back I had the amazing opportunity to speak with Mozillians Benoit Jacob, Ben Moskowitz and Bobby Richter, the conversation created the following pocast. This podcast was a discussion about some of the ideas forming from the Ignite challenge and we discussed what would be required to implement these ideas using WebGL within the superfast-superwide GENI network. The purpose of this podcast was to further identifying technologies and approaches so we can create focused learning labs, and set up experiments that others can follow and use as learning resources.

WebGL Interview 1

My learning in the open journey in building learning resources for the Mozilla Ignite initiative continues. 10 days back I had the amazing opportunity to speak with Mozillians Ben Moskowitz and Bobby Richter, the conversation created the following pocast. This podcast was a blue-sky discussion about using WebGL within the superfast-superwide GENI network. The purpose of this podcast was to start identifying technologies and approaches so we can create focused learning labs, and set up experiments that others can follow and use as learning resources.

Open Badges Step 1: Claim your first badge

In this screencast I look at some of the technical resources available for introducing someone to the open badges infrastructure (OBI). The screencast is a part of the Introduction to Open Badges Step by Step guide. The main theme of this screencast is to claim a couple of badges and to look at a number of badge issuers.

Reflective Activity: Once you have earned, claimed and displayed a few badges take some time to reflect upon the three main roles of open badges; the issuer, the earner and the displayer.

Open Badges Step 0.4: P2Pu Open badges 101

In this screencast I look at Peer 2 Peer Universities Open badges 101 course. The screencast is a part of the Introduction to Open Badges Step by Step guide. The main theme of this screencast is to encourage people to familiarize themselves with and complete the course.

Reflective Activity: How could Peer 2 Peer University issue badges. Should they give badges for completing individual challenges or for complete courses? What other badges within peer based learning could P2Pu issue?

The followers have spoken

Well it looks like my poll asking for assistance on which half-finished blog post I should complete next has provided me adequate results. Other than the injection of posts regarding open badges and ignite learning labs I will spend my next while completing the following posts, in this order;

1. Traditionalists, Reformers and Outliers - 54% voters
2. Computer Science taught as an Art - 45% voters
3. Digital Me (Mozilla + Life-Long Learning) - 36% voters
4. Using smart phones within a connectivist approach - 36% voters

What fun!!!

Help me complete my half-finished blog posts

After reading a couple of posts on Boris Mann's blog, in particular; "The Posts That You Don't Write". I got thinking about all the half written blog posts I have. My blogging style is to write down ideas for blog posts as unpublished blog posts. As the ideas pop into my head I create the post, add notes and references, loop around, and often finish them off. This can take months, sometimes over a year... most of the time they get finished (or deleted). Currently, I have over 20 blog posts like this, some are almost finished some are not. So I wondered, what would happen if I put this out to vote.

 Which of these half-finished blog posts should I complete?
 

The WebGL ecosystem

After a couple of recent discussions and some further reading; two diagrams have provided some great insight into WebGL as it relates to the web and other related technologies... These two digrams and related posts are as follows;

http://electronicdesign.com/article/embedded/html5-and-webgl-fit-interactive-embedded-applications

http://phillihp.com/2011/01/27/waiting-on-webgl-html5/

Mozilla Ignite + WebGL: Introduction

Over the last two weeks I have invested considerable time reading about, talking with people, and watching the occasional youtube video on WebGL. I've been doing this to create some learning resources for the Mozilla Ignite challenge. I won't be creating the technical resources myself; I will be facilitating the discussions and thinking around the WebGL technology and how Mozilla can best support the ignite candidates to onboard themselves. In otherwords, what aspects of OpenGL ES, WebGL (and related libraries) does a software developer need to understand to implement their ignite challenge idea. And what learning resources can Mozilla create to assist these developers.

A concept map can go a long way toward developing an understanding of any subject domain. This simple concept map is my first stab at WebGL and will be added to as I deepen my understanding.

An introductory concept map for WebGL. What is WebGL?

To start learning about WebGL there are many resources and tutorials to assist with learning. These resources can be found with internet searches and will take you to many step-by-step guides and youtube videos. I strongly suggest you spend time searching for, and completing WebGL tutorials if you are wanting to deepen your understanding of the coding to WebGL. An excellent YouTube video that covered an introduction to WebGL with a whole lot of coding examples is from Erik Möller...

Learning in the Open

Learning in the open; Koh Lanta, Thailand.

People who follow this blog know I am a strong believer in open education, self-directed life-long learning, and the creation of open educational resources. I also believe this can be successfully done outside of traditional learning approaches and institutions. I also believe a familiarity and understanding of your metacognitive abilities combined with agility and pragmatism you can successfully learn all you need out in the open with only attending an online course or traditional institution when it best suits your learning needs. I believe this so much that I dedicate this blog to the subject of self-directed life-long learning. I am also in the process of writing a book on Agile Learner Design, a book about understanding your metacognitive abilities and how to create your own personalized curriculum and courses. All in support of your own learning.

One area of learning and OER development I am currently involved is with the Mozilla Ignite Challenge. With this project I leverage my 25 years in technology and software architecture, combined it with my teaching, instructional design, and open education experience and create some OER to assist Mozilla Ignite candidates learn about some of the technologies available in (and supported by) this challenge.

What is Learning in the Open?
Learning in the open is based on four principles and one model;

Progressive Inquiry

1. the principle of open learning - the learner is self-directed, independent, and self-guided.
2. the principle of metacognition - the learner is aware of their own learning style, and how to best develop their own skills and knowledge.
3. the principle of open - where everything they do while learning is done in the open, with transparency, reflection and frequent publishing of their knowledge gathering.
4. the principle of collaboration - engage your peers and learning cohort with frequency and without hesitancy.
5. progressive inquiry - provides the discipline and model to follow when working towards discovery and understanding.

How does this apply to the Mozilla Ignite Challenge?
By learning in the open, engaging others in my learning and publishing the artifacts of my leaning, I create a road-map for others to follow who want to learn the same. Over the next five weeks I will gather information in a variety of ways, publish frequently and coalesce the information into a single rich media artifact for peoples learning consumption. I will start with WebGL and finish with WebRTC. Feel free to follow along;

• http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.ca/search/label/ignite
• http://delicious.com/prawstho/ignite