Education of the Future: Openness

Capturing the spirit of open, networked, and participatory communities in our learning environments is something that is rapidly growing around the world today.

OER, or Open Educational Resources, allows for knowledge to be redistributed to others online, where they are able to take the information and remix, revise, reuse, and share it again.

Students are already doing this with their learning, with or without the help of others, but what they could struggle with is separating their personal and professional identities and how much they want to let those two mix together.

Open, in terms of education, is used to mean freely shared. Education is not immune to selfishness, but sharing counter acts this, and benefits not only the students, but other educators as well. Knowledge has the special property where it can be shared from one to another without the person who shares the knowledge loosing anything. This could be really the only thing that doesn't contribute to entropy. When a person shares their knowledge in a tangible form such as a book, there is a limit to how many people can access their information, however when it is shared digitally there is no longer competition for access to that knowledge.

"This advance- to give without giving away- is indescribable." David Wiley

The only adversary to this infinite way to share are policies in place that are put there by outdated thinking that is reinforced by law. You would think with educational resources so available the people with the outdated thinking would be able to teach themselves something new.

With the growing demand for education and the impossibility of creating enough classrooms to satisfy the demand, I see us turning to digital classrooms, where the occupied space would be in the student's head, on their digital device, and possibly in whatever physical form they choose to represent and record their new found knowledge.

If education progresses in this direction, there would be no cost to governments and institutions to give the people what they want, but that also means there wouldn't be any money to be made.

So its hard to say where I see the future of education.

Sharing Your Work

It is very important that teacher and leaders get in the habit of sharing their work. I mean come on, the president even uses social media! We should all share in whatever format we are most comfortable using, and for those of us who are not very comfortable with social media (like myself) I can direct you to some advice by Dean Shareski. 

Social book marking is a good beginner way to start sharing and it feeds into the anonymous voyeurism people are most comfortable engaging with online.

Another great way to begin sharing is with a free BlogSpot blog is what I have recently created and what you are reading this on.

Start small and just lurk for a while, but eventually push yourself to engage by leaving a comment, or sharing a link.

Found on http://search.creativecommons.org/

Creating a new teaching method and sharing it online with everyone benefits the entire community and it also can make you feel like you made a difference, not only in the lives of your students, but the lives of other students whose teachers used your idea. Your district might not even know how much you enrich your school by sharing and incorporating strong communication.

"The moment we focus on protecting our work we become the antithesis of a teacher." DeanShareski

Well how does one decide what to share and what not to share?

I believe you share not only your best practices and what you are passionate about, but also the successes of your colleagues and students. We should always be open to input and growth.

A few things you could ask yourself if you're not sure if you want to share something or not is ask yourself:

• Is it helpful?
• Is it entertaining? 
• And is it something you could show your mother?

Sharing should be view as a way to put you best foot forward and start making a name for yourself even when you are young. Sure students will make mistakes, I'm still a student myself and I am making mistakes all the time. But what students should learn, in my opinion, is that how they want to be viewed is there choice. Sure people will always have criticism for you, but its how you respond to that criticism that will show your character and its your character that will help you put your best foot forward. 

Don't just share your work, but share your process.

Traditionally classroom teaching is face to face, which can be effective, but to really make a difference a teacher should push their students to engage with the topic material outside of the classroom. Not with homework, but with communication with peers, parents, family, and even the strangers who follow you. Share your stories and continue to tell them until they resonate with the people around you.

And by sharing what we are learning with the world around us it is important to make sure we present it in such a way that it is easily digestible. An article that is poorly formatted or full of errors will not engage the reader and make the author seem less creditable. 

Finally I leave you with this question to help me answer.

• How can we begin to create a culture that encourages transparency?

Introduction: My First Post!

My name is Alecia Dinko, and I am aspiring art teacher at the University of Akron. What lead to my decision to start down the path to becoming an art teacher is my passion for the arts. I honestly enjoy working with every medium, and I especially enjoy when different areas of interest overlap- such as theatre and math, or visual arts and science. I have considered myself an artist ever since I was 4 years old and my preschool teacher trusted me with a pair of "adult" scissors. 

My mom told me later that after a project that involved cutting out pictures from the front of greeting cards and pasting them together, my teacher came up to her and showed her my work and said, "I just wanted to let you know your daughter is a Matisse." She had no idea what that meant, but after all these years of following my passion, I am able to tell her that Matisse was a revolutionary painter in the early 1900's who introduced the idea of creating shadow with a color that wouldn't normally be used to distinguish depth. He was most known for painting with red, blue, yellow, green, black, and white. 

Green Stripe (Madam Matisse), Henri Matisse, 1905

I have really enjoyed learning so much about art throughout my life, however there is a practical element to my career choice. I love creating, however I could not have it as my profession, there is too much stress in deadlines and competition. I know I have the capabilities to go to an expensive art school and excel in what ever medium I choose, but that's the thing. I don't want to choose just one medium and I don't want to graduate with $200,000.00 in debt with little to no grantee of a steady income after graduation. So I am now investing in another passion of mine, and that is to share art with young minds and be an instrumental tool in helping them success in the field of art. I want to revolutionalize the way students learn. Through art I am more tolerant and open minded than I ever could of been, and art is such a wonderful tool broaden one's world view. 

One thing I have always struggled with is technology, and so there are not many drawing soft wares, reference libraries, and social media applications I am familiar with. Currently I use Facebook, Tumblr, Gmail, and infrequently Pinterest. With my Educational Technology course I have created a Blogger and a Twitter to be used to grow my Personal Leaning Network. Here and here are other great references for those wanting to grow their Personal Learning Network. 

After reading A Teenagers View on Social Media I feel I am more in touch with my generation's social media use, and having my own experience with the social media I use, I would have to agree with his view points. The article and this course have really lead me to reconsider how I represent myself on social media. As of late, social media has been for personal use, and I am excited to use it as a learning tool.