TEaCHandLEARN | MagandangBalita.com

How about a school that you can take anywhere? As long as there is a computer that can read a flash disk, you can.

In a post about a big dream, several ideas were presented for a free elearning school. A commenter wisely asked what I have been doing since that time. Though there were some advances made in the areas of networking and knowledge build-up, there were significant manifestations of progress.

Until now.

Last Saturday, I made a presentation about entitled e-Learning: Open, Free and Portable. Here is a short summary.

About 10 years ago, e-Learning existed. The main problem then was the use of expensive software and proprietary content. Almost always, budget was a constraint.

Fast forward to 2008.

e-Learning is Free. The proliferation of free and open-source software has benefited all sectors of society, including and most specially education. While commercial tools are also available, dependable and arguably affordable, there exists a whole gamut of no-cost applications downloadable and free. Even support and help can be had from the forums and communities. The following “suite” can already create engaging content.
Moodle - Learning Management System
GIMP - Image Editing
WINK - Screen Capture
Audacity - Audio Recording and Editing
Though varying degrees of expertise and skills are needed, the mere availability of the software is an enabler to developing countries like ours.

e-Learning is Open. The internet has made available an abundance of knowledge never before seen in our history. With a click of a mouse, millions of pages worth of information is freely available. With MIT leading the way in sharing their resources through the MIT Open Course Ware project, many universities have followed suit. There are some projects that I know of commissioned by CHED which will be released through a similar vehicle. The people behind Wikipilipinas are to embarking on a repository of OER (something I wanted to do with eLearningport.com, which will now become a connector of sorts).
With content being open and shared, education can now be a distributed faster, better and more efficiently.

eLearning is Portable. Internet access, or rather the lack of it, is one of the barriers to eLearning. While doing eLearning online clearly has great benefits, it may be necessary to develop courses that do not need connection to the web, or at least constant connection.

School inside!

eLearning is portable, Now, you can put your school in a flash disk.

The point that I wanted to get across was really the last one. Instead of using a presentation software for by visuals, I used Moodle in a USB drive. I got StickyMoodle from VLEMiddleware which packaged all the requirements for a Moodle installation.

A portable school. School in a flash. Education in your pocket. Learning with a stick.

What a concept!

Wouldn’t it be great if those who couldn’t go to regular school be able to have the chance to get an education too?

Filed under Bright Ideas, TEaCHandLEARN, Tech

Found via Fr. Stephen Cuyos, MSC’s website - The Tagalog (Pilipino) translation of A Blogger’s Prayer.

Plumatek is an online friend I’ve been following for her use of blogging as an instructional tool for teaching Filipino. I came across her post when she was still in the process of translating it. Now she has the complete version, along with the references and citations.

Very academic Menchu! I hope somebody from wikipedia or wikipinas takes note of your work.
Great job!

Filed under Bright Ideas, TEaCHandLEARN, InForNation, BlogLight, People

• 2 comments

While blogging my be one of the more popular routes for communication and self-expression it can also be a good tool for elearning. Sir Martin has used it extensively, and so has Ms. Lacs. I’m sure that there are more teachers out there that I have not come across (and I would appreciate it if you make them known to me. Or you make yourself known, ok?). It is my opinion that anybody who wants to use technology for education should start and keep a blog.

Most bloggers would generally be victims of spammers in all forms, shapes and sizes. A form of spam blogs, scraping content from different sources, have targeted a lot of local bloggers like Yuga, as you can probably see at the end of his posts. Though I am nowhere near Abe’s league, I have had some brushes or two siphoners which fizzled out after a while. (I don’t know if I’ll be mad or thrilled, swinging from “Why don’t you write your own stuff!” to “Is my content not good enough for you?”). RSS Aggregators have made it very easy to do just that. While some copycats have actually copy-pasted manually, RSS has made it possible to automatically suck off content.

Though we may fume at the temerity of this practice and blame the creators of the aggregators, a new positive application for this technology has been gaining praise and approval: using WordPress as eLearning platform using RSS aggregators/scrapers (like wp-o-matic the (”spamblogging” plug-in) to collect a series of posts/courses. Here is a try by David Wiley which looks very promising - and anyone who would want to learn about new media (Blog and Soul Movement, this is a great resource to use for schools! Or anybody for that matter). A technologically-similar undertaking by Stephen Downes can be found here.

The eLearning community, especially the open education and resources (OER) advocates are quite excited about this resurgence. Though many admit that it has surfaced before, it is now that is gaining steam and ready for a comeback.

Translation for the Philippines: Imagine the top 10 teachers of of the same subject using the same curriculum. They put their course content (text, images, video, etc) in their blogs under a CC license. A new teacher can re-use, remix content from them and greatly improve the quality of his course. Imagine that being done to all subjects. On all levels.

Then, use WordPress Multi-User… What do you have?

A free online school!

If you can get all these content, courseware, applications and systems inside a USB drive and have a UMPC like OLPC or the Asus EEE and tweak it so it could run by itself, you’ll have a school in your computer!

Scale this globally and we would have revolutionized education as we know it.
There is no probably little or no problem for GoogleReader to be a school with this scheme. I’d like to see them put a big effort to make this one work without making money out of it (read ads or fees). Just because it’s a good thing to do.

Would Microsoft, Yahoo and the others be left behind? Just ditto re: bold line for Google.

To teachers and anybody who has good content to share: PLEASE PUT YOUR CONTENT ONLINE AND SHARE (use the CC license models)!

To the techies: Can you help make the steps of putting this up, maintaining and monitoring easier, faster and more efficient? Maybe a desktop and online application that is widgetizeable, customizable and open source? I’m sure you can make it as easily as I think it.

Would this solve (at least partially) a great engineering challenge of the 21st century.

Filed under Good Business, Bright Ideas, General Interests, TEaCHandLEARN, BlogLight, The Future

• Comment

Do we really have our own? Do we need it?

Yes there is one.

And yes, we need it.

From the CC website:

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

Though I am not a lawyer, I see the benefits of having a license that defines what one can or cannot do with a “work.” You can just head on to the Creative Commons or Philippine Commons site (an affiliate of CC and are the lead to make CC compatible with Philippine Laws) for more details .

We applaud the efforts of CC-PH led by Atty. Soriano and Atty. Guerrero with the recent launch last January 14.
PS: PH Bloggers and those who are interested in CC (PH or otherwise): The Deputy Lead, Atty Berne Guerrero also blogs and is a friend. We can set things up with him and his group.

This effort has a lot of implications, especially in this much digitized world. A lot of movements in different industries are already using these licenses with their work. Blogs are the most common I’ve seen so far. Music and other “artistic” outputs can put out their creativity and have the whole world benefit from it. On its social effect, it makes innovation easier with the “Share, Remix, Reuse, - Legally” concept. The CCs just tell you up front what can be done.

This has led to a more “open” world. I dare say that about 90 - 95% of the world is willing to share his work with very little constraints and just a little recognition. Which brings me to EDUCATION.

Bayanihanbooks.org of Greg Moreno had something going with the this post, which I agree with in principle. (we hope to get together with other like-minded people and see what we can come up with.) I hope to do the same for eLearning using the open content or open education concepts. A lot of software have been released under these licenses or have equivalent licenses (am still confused with the lingo) and other sectors have their own contributions too.
The main idea of the CC license I think not only giving credit where it is due, but also sharing and innovation and improvement and moving forward.

So, on this date, Magandangbalita.com and MabutingBalita.net articles are released under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Philippines.

Filed under General Interests, TEaCHandLEARN, InForNation

• Comment

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.–Michelangelo

To settle. It is one of life’s greatest tragedies. It means to let go of a higher goal which may be harder to achieve and replace it with a lower objective but would entail less inconvenience or risk.

Dream big and aim high. Reach for the stars.

Now approaching midlife, I realize that life is not only about the endpoint. It is also about the journey, and maybe more of it. In longing for lofty ideals, it is inevitable to experience pain and failure. But along the way, we pick up pieces of the puzzle toward our chosen destination. Reaching it is important but it is not the be-all and end-all of life. In case we don’t succeed in finishing, our efforts are not wasted. They are immortalized in the essence of our convictions that life is meant to be lived, that we should be active participants and not passive observers.

When somebody tells you to stop dreaming, run fast — away from the dream-stealers. Pursue your dream relentlessly. Put your best foot forward and never waiver.

Dream on.

Just envisioning your success already makes you one.

Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.–J. Hawkes

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.–Ralph Vaull Starr

Credits to The Quote Lady.

The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not disgrace to not reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim, is a sin. - Benjamin E Mays, former President of Morehouse College, Atlanta

Filed under Good Business, Improve Your Self, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, TEaCHandLEARN, Inspirations, People

• Comment

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