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From the site: "Digital Storytelling (also affectionately known as ds106) is an open, online course that happens at various times throughout the year at the University of Mary Washington... but you can join in whenever you like and leave whenever you need." I took part in the open ds106 course for a while. I am impressed that it keeps going and morphing over time. The dedication to openness - both the the tools used and the content being produced by the participants - is also impressive. Concepts taught in this course included remix, reuse and re-share are core to the concepts of OER and open knowledge.

While attending another work-related webinar, I heard about this web site and thought about this class. On the surface, this site looks like a portal to many, many other image and video repositories about the history and geography of the United States. Many are contributed by local public libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies. What caught my attention and connect to this course is that all the metadata of the repositories are open access, so that developers can take advantages of the metadata and create additional apps. In this sense, this site becomes a platform. The contents from the various repositories have different degrees of rights and restrictions for reuse, some are under CC, some are protected by copyright, but the metadata is all open!

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

Worldwide learning network of shared teaching and learning materials made freely available online. Grouped by subject area and grade level

OER Commons is a dynamic digital content hub, offering a suite of OER implementation supports.

A well developed website for Open educational resources

The Canadian Government promoting how sharing private content of someone is illegal. Having the internet and our social media tools, it is so easy to share and connect with people. It is great in many ways, like education, social life, work etc. but when it comes to personal life, maybe it is not as great. People like to share because it is easy and fast, there are no physical restrictions. There are consequences but because there are too many people doing it, it is hard to target everyone. With this digital age coming so quickly, maybe rules, regulations, and education are still trying to catch up. If I have not taken this course, I would not have known that sharing a screenshot on Whatsapp with friends is actually illegal. The point is when everyone is doing it now, and we were not deeply educated on this topic beforehand, how is this going to stop? When sharing screenshots has became a trend, how is it possible to stop?

I think this video does an excellent job of not victim-blaming, or casting any moral judgement. I think it's easy to say "don't take pictures", etc., but approaching it as a strictly legal matter may be a better route to take. Speaking of the general open access movement, I think some valuable lessons could be taken from this for raising awareness about appropriate uses of open access information. It reminds me of the Disney compilation copyright video we watched at the beginning of the course - using some very literal imagery to get a point across, and explaining what the law is, not what people are doing with it.

I think this PSA does a really good job of communicating a 'touchy' subject in a tasteful manner. The message is simple and very relatable for adolescents. Cyberbullying is a tremendous issue among youth in Canada and I am really glad to see the government taking preventative initiatives.

This video highlights ways in which educators (and parents) can incorporate 21st century skills in their lessons to digital natives. Admittedly, as a teacher, I get overwhelmed by all of the information out there and feel pressure to use technology that I'm still learning to be comfortable with. This is a good video that can show you how to get started, geared more towards middle/upper school.

The video begins with 3 minutes of visuals and - very annoying - piano music. I would have turned it off after 30 seconds because I assumed that there would be 13 minutes of this. But since fraup74 says it was a good video I skipped ahead to see if there was more. Otherwise, I would not have persevered. In terms of content, it is a good basic resource (a woman speaks, using screenshots to show how to use online tools). The video is not very engaging.