Authenticity is key, don’t worry too much on making everything beautiful and perfect is the message when creating online resources. Visualisation is important to grab attention, and imagery can portray powerful messages but follow the substance over style to start with. Authenticity can be seen in a range of ways from the delivery, to the content created with the target audience in mind for a personalised approach to education. Yes something more visual may be more eye-catching and engaging but we don’t all have the skills, resources or time to create such masterpieces (slide-ology). Just add this skill as part of your professional development or outsource it to an expert.
Focus on authenticity, engagement, participation, collaboration and learning new skills. Try to forget about worrying about the type of learning management system or password protection in the learning environment. Technology develops so fast that why not go with the free and open technology to prevent wastage of valuable money? It’s an expensive lesson when technology does not meet your training needs, becomes quickly outdated and requires specialist training for staff to understand and engage. Also if the resource was quick and cheap to make, your more likely to update and replace this resource than an expensively created one that you hang onto and over time becomes obsolete. In the real world, consider where you, your colleagues and students are communicating, it’s likely not in a learning management system. In everyday lives we use social media to network (socially and professionally), so why not engage and set some learning tasks in the online domain? Provide support to guide discussion around the topic and maintain confidentially (check your employer and national body social medial compliance rules if your the facilitator).
Learning Networks
Don’t forget using different media and resources can allow greater connection and engagement to a wider community of students, professionals and experts. Become a global citizen, who want’s to work in silo’s anyhow?
Task
Dedicate some reading time from the resource section below, focusing on the potential benefits of how an open pedagogical approach can benefit learning for both student and educator. David Price (OBE) book on education OPEN: How we’ll work, live and learning the future is a fantastic look into the school, higher education and workplace of the future.
Inspiration: Take a look at this bio on Sir Tew from Wikipedia and using open access in education, “The end of throwaway assignments and the beginning of real-world impact for student editors”.
Skills Learnt
- Digital literacy
- Collaboration
- Engagement
- Creating
- Authorship
Aspirational
Keywords
#InternetAsThePlatform, #PersonalLearningNetwork, DigitalLiteracy, #FOANed, #FOAMed
Resources
DeRosa, R. (2016) My Open Textbook: Pedagogy and Practice. Actualham.
Blackall, L. (2016) No LMS- an argument for when your institution comes to reviewing their Learning Management System. Leigh Blackall Blogspot.
Price, D. (2013). OPEN: How we’ll work, live and learning the future. Crux Publishing Ltd. [sample here]
University of South Australia. (2013) Resourcing and Materials – Teaching and Learning Languages: A Guide.
Wikiversity (2015) Human Vision and Function.