Community: The Only Path to Open Education

This past week I helped all of us celebrate Open Education Week. I joined Teachers Talking Teachers, participated in the Mozilla webmaker challenges, joined the Teacher badges Alliance, and engaged with many of you on social media.

I am left with one overarching theme. You cannot have Open Ed without community. You cannot have open web standards without community. You cannot have Open Educational Resources without community.

In many ways you cannot have education without community.

Community of Writers

CC 3.0 UX Designs as Communities of Practice. murdocke23. flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/murdocke/7356625068

I first celebrated Open Ed by lurking, possibly even trolling, during the ConnectLearning.tv event on #DS106. For those who do not know #DS106 is an open format class on digital storytelling. It exists mainly because a community emerged around a digital hub and then spread like weeds through different social networks.

I stress the role of community for my teacher candidates when we discuss the teaching of writing. I explain that the best writing spaces I have seen have a shared vision, experts and novices, and recognized practices that support developing writers.

The same holds true for Open Learning and Open Educational Resources. One of the greatest writing projects I contributed to this year (and only on the peripheral) was the development of Mozilla’s Web Literacy standards. The initiative, lead by Doug Belshaw, not only epitomizes how open ed works but resulted in the best thinking designed to prepare online research and media skills.

Community Necessary for Assessment

Community: The Only Path to Open Education

CC 2.0 Badges and Assessment. DML Competition. Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmlcomp/4980762084/sizes/m/

I realized among all the talk of assessment and badging during the Teachers Badges Network Hangout on Air that community needs to come before competencies. Christina Cantrill, of the National Writing Project, stressed this point over and over again.

Badging will never be about rigor. Badging is about relevance. There has to be a community around a specific credentialing system in order for badging to succeed. This community would then help to establish skill trees. They might decide what constitutes the criteria and evidence for a badge.

Plus, maybe most importantly, a community would recognize the value of a badge once it has been awarded.

Community Necessary in the Workforce

Those that understand the role of community will have marketable skills. Gina Trapani, an open source advocate and co-founder of Think -Up recently commented on the importance of community on the latest episode of TWIG. She stated that in looking for potential employers and mentees that being a developer goes beyond coding.

Gina, noted that most importantly Think-Up looks for those who understand how different communities work. Only then can they provide insights to users. She also noted that developers need to break from the mindset that you need to know code. Instead the act of developing, takes quality writers, designers, and thinkers. As someone who quit coding in 1989 when I was in 6th grade, this idea resonated with me. We need emergent leaders and thinkers who work collaboratively if we want students to be college and career ready.

So What is Open Ed?

I wonder if I am any closer to answering this question than when I was a week ago. I have learned while playing in so many new spaces this week that Open Ed, if not a set of principles, is a shared mindset that cuts across so many different communities.

I want my students to learn in the open. I want to model what it means to think, fail, and reflect in the open. I want to try and use OER in my teaching. Maybe, just maybe, I am contributing a little back to the Open Ed community.

Behaviors Versus Competencies in Badging System

Applying for the Web Ninja Badge

Shifting Southern Connecticut State University to Open Badges

#MNLI13 Day 3 Reflection Coding Community

Karen Brennan sparked my thinking today. She presented her work on using Scratch. The programming, games, and stories children created made a large impact on everyone at the conference.

For me it wasn’t the take away of creative computing I found most moving. It was Brennan’s point that making take two things: creating and community. She argued that you can’t have interactive writers without both.

I witnessed this yesterday, but it wasn’t with coding,computers, or even a classroom. I saw the synergy of creating and community in a dingy basement in a dark dusty bar.

Ian and I were heading home after dinner and wanted to stop in somewhere. We like dives. Dust on the floor, ripped stools, and low lights. That brought us to CanTab in Cambridge. It also brought us to a community of creators.

After sitting down we saw a steady stream of people heading to the basement. We asked what was going on. Turns out CanTab is the home venue for the Boston Poetry Slam team. Turns out Wednesday is Open Mic night. Turns out this was the last open mic before Boston hosts the National Poetry Slam.

What we witnessed encapsulated Brennan’s lesson about community. The camaraderie among the poets flowed through the room. Poets did parodies of each other’s work. Talked about revising together. Read about being struggling artists.

For the CanTab crowd community leads to creation, and creation leads to community. This was Karen Brennan’s take away. So what does this mean for teachers and participants at MNLI?

Community of Writers and Readers

When I am awed by quality literacy teachers it always comes back to community. The students in the room feel, no they know, that they are among readers. They know they can turn to other writers for support. Just like the students in Brennan’s study who remixed, offered feedback, and helped each other grow. A great literacy classroom builds upon community.

PLC???

Each year at MNLI some of the administrators choose the creation of a PLC, professional learning community as their project. I cringe a little. You can’t force community. Most PLC’s that exist in schools are simply committees that meet more frequently than others. Can schools use PLC’s? Yes, but they need to be interest driven and faculty lead. They need to have open memberships and recognize and build expertise.

Coding as Poetry

The CanTab experience was a serendipitous connection for me. I have little experience with code. In 6th grade I did a show and tell using Basic and made a rocket ship take off based on a dice role. Then during my dissertation work I had to edit XML files as we made a simulated environment. I do not know code but I do see poetry in code. I see these patterns that somehow standout like stanzas. What I saw at CanTab was the type of creating Karen Brennan wants out our students.

It isn’t just about creative computing and interactive writers. We also just need learning experience that create a community of learners both offline and online. We need interest driven classrooms that recognize student expertise. We need connected learning.