Video Sharing

Sorry It was a late submission. I got lots of work in school and I was ill for a couple of days. The weather in Jakarta was not so friendly these day. Very hot in the morning till noon and rain at the afternoon until late night. Anyway, I have visited youtube, teachertube and blip.tv. I found the teachertube friendly user and useful for teachers. I used one video on ecosystem from teachertube to teach my student on how the ecosystem works. I uploaded the movie that I took during my robotic class to blip.tv. Blip.tv is also friendly user with some additional tools to link to other network media, for example blog. Well, I consider that this article is not finished yet. I still want to explore more on the topic, since I find it interesting to utilize it in my teaching. I just got the problem with uploading the movie that I took from teachertube into my blog. First I download the movie into my computer before I upload it into my blog. Both downloading and uploading went smoothly, but the next day when I and my students visited my blog and wanted to play it, it did not work. The comment said that the video is currently not available. If anybody might know the reason why, please inform me. Thank you

Sharing Audio

Oh well. I have started doing the assignment since last Monday. I had a problem with my microphone. Finally I managed to record my voice with the help of audacity software. I tried to export the result to MP3 but failed as I need to download the lame_enc.dll for coding the file. I finally export the file in wav format. After I was done with the recording, I tried to upload mine to odeo but it was so complicated that I finally used the switchpod. I found switchpod more freindly user than odeo. I finally uploaded the audio and you can access it by clicking here.

Podcasting is giving more information in Open Education system. Sharing an audio is a step a head of sharing an image only. Before sharing an image was a step a head of only sharing information through writing. Finally, when we could share the video, which is a combination of image and sound, we could share a lot better information to others. Since human have 5 senses in getting information from sorrounding, why don't we use all media inoder to share information to others. I agree with the article of podcast for education in wikipedia.Please click here to link to wikipedia.

Uploading Picture

This is my new Experience in uploading picture to flickr and LeMill. I took this picture when the school assigned me in the School to School Program in November 2007. They are students of one Elementary School in Banda Aceh after the Tsunami disaster. I did some editing on it first in the Photoshop and save it in the tmp file. I signed up for Flickr and it was easy and found no problem at all. Then I visited the http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ to put my work under the Creative Common Licenses.

And then I sign up for Lemill, luckily I have a yahoo mail besides the hotmail so the sign up ran smoothly and easily. I don't know why I think that signing for LeMill is easier than for Wikimedia Commons. I should try again to sign up to the Wikimedia Commons some other time. The process of uploading the picture in LeMill and Flickr is just the same. We need to add the title, description and tag. It was fun. I like it. I will add some more pictures later.

Wikimedia. Excellent!

This article was late because I was not in a good health condition. I went through the Wikimedia projects. Amazing! that is the only word I have after I visited some of the wikimedi projects such wiktionary, wikiquote, wikibooks, wikisource, wikinews etc. I had never visited the other wikimedia projects except wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). So for me it's amazing. I found wiktinary very helpful for determining difficult English words. I found a good reference for teaching and learning ESL in the wikibooks since they have the English book in simple English. In the wiki source I found the translation of Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. In wiki media commons i found quite alot graphics under the creative common licence which can be used for teaching aide. Surprisingly, I could find the page about species in the wikispecies which is translated in one of the native languages in our country "Sundanese".
In the future, I hope wikimedia will cover the other area of information and knowledge. And I start believing that it will definitely happened as all the wiki community has a commitment to freely share all the knowledge to others.
OER is the movement of provide a free online resources for education. I believe the wikimedia is the resource for education as well as a place to share what we have learnt to others. An information, a picture or a piece of knowledge will trigger of another information, pictures or knowledge done by other people. It looks like a snow ball for me. It is getting bigger and bigger because many more people involved in the wikimedia.
Since everyone has an access on editing and uploading information in the wikimedia projects, will the wikimedia be bias. Bias in the sense that the world of information and knowledge will be dominated by several group of people who master the computer technology only. Will the information and knowledge be misleading? Because one day, I had an input from the parents who were concern on the correctness of the information available in the wikimedia, especially the wikipedia, since the parents knew that the wikimedia a collaborative work of many people. It would be interesting if we could share the opinion on this questions. But it doesn't mean the idea of having wikimedia is not correct but this is the only way of making it more useful for the society.

Copy Rights & Free Cultural Works

I visited some sites on the topics. I visited wikipedia and read about copyright and its history. I also visited http://creativecommons.org/ about approved cultural works, licence your work, http://freedomdefined.org/definition, leemil on learning resources and copyright by hans poldoja. Honestly they are quite a lot definition under the tittles. But by reading those I know so much new knowledge. Good for me. I agree with the the sentence written on the freedomdefined.org saying "The easier it is to re-use and derive works, the richer our cultures become". It means that all the people in the world got the equal rights to use and develop cultures. There is no barrier of nation, relegion and cultures. But actually there is still a barrier of the technology mastery. If all the works which are free, are digitalized, only the groups of people who has the technology can access them. The poor people and not "educated" ones could not get an access to the information and knowledge. But It doesn't mean that the non "educated" or "poor" can not contribute or do not have anything to contribute. They might have a certain wisdom that we don't get from the formal education. There is still a gap. The format of digitalization will be the barrier of the freedom. This fenomena will also create an exclusiveness in our global village. The copyrights nowdays is bring the economic to run besides of the negative access of broaden the gap between the wealthy /powerfull group of people and the unfortunate/powerless group of people. If the free cultural works will enrich our cultural, will it also make the engine of economy runs at the same time?. For example, in the future there will not be any publishing company which print and publish books.

Information for Knowledge is Public Domain (3rd Week)

World is only exist because of human perception. Human perceives everything sorround him by the help of his senses. His brain with the help of billion neurons perceives information coming inside through his senses (eyes, ear, skin, nose, mouth). Perceiving information with the previous of information will construct knowledge. Knowlegde is made through the development of information that human gets from their environment. That is the reason why information is very important to human life. Without information, there is no life, no world, no coffee, no burger, no juice, no things. With the information, we human develop our quality of life. That is also the reason why information is human rights. Human is given by God all the senses to get information for free. It is given. Only natural cause which can prevent human from getting the information. No any single human being in this earth can prevent any other human being from getting information because all the senses are given since we born. If only we don't have any of the senses so we could not get the information. But nowdays, the blindman or woman are helped by the others to get the information.
This information will be pilled up in our brain becomes knowledge and skill. Education is the way how human being update their knowledge by comparing the new information with the previous ones. The process of comparing between prior knowledge and new information will formulate a new concept. The new concept is becoming a new knowledge. That is the process of human being educate himself. The education can only happened if there is a lot of information. That is the reason why information is important to education.
Before the enlightenment movement in Europe and England, information was kept in certain area such as in monastry where all priests lived. Information was an exclusive rights of a certain group of people called themselves "holymen". Until then, some of the schoolars such as such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and David Hume questioned and attacked the existing institutions of both Church and State.
Knowledge needs to be communicated and acted (Habermman) in order to get the highest quality and truth. Knowledge is collaborative work of people not just a certain group of people (exclusively). As it is a collaborative work, knowledge will always be updated and renewed. Education as a system of updating knowledge needs to be active (Rousseau), modern (Paulo Freire), genuine (Paulo freire), creative, free and collaborative (Grundvig).
In education the participants should take an active role. The participants should act in order to get inform. The participants is not a "bank" which needs to be filled by information. By doing things, the participants will experiece new things. New experience will lead to new information. New information will lead to an updated knowledge. The participants needs to actively share their findings to other inorder the get the truth from other perceptions from other people from different background. The sharing activity will also gain the local wisdom from the other group of people. The sharing activity will also prevent the education from a tool of colonialization. The movement of spreading and forcing a certain believe or values to the other part of the world. All of the people has the right to share what they think right or true without forcing other people to except it. More over, we try to understand why they think right or true.
The sharing activity happened in the institution called education. Before we have schools as a place of education,the sharing activity happened in the family, inside the tribes or in the place where the expert lived. In that era, it was common to send away a child to a place where there was an expert, with the hope that the child will get the knowledge from the expert. After that the schools was made, parents send their children outside their family, their tribes and their region to go to school. When the printing technology improved, books had become a tool of sharing knowledge and information. Experts wrote books to share what they knew. The problem then, book has become a comodity which people needs to spend some money to get one. From this era, the information is no longer a public domain. It becomes a private domain, where only a certain group of people can access it. The group which has some money to buy books. The information is limited not by natural causes such as the disability of our senses, but by individual or a certain group of people. A group of people can be a government or a coorporation. If the situation is continually happening there will be a disparity of knowledge. Knowledge is exclusively kept by certain individual or a certain group of people. The local wisdom or any original concept which do not come from this "group of people" can not enrich the knowledge itself and can be vanished. There will be the colonialization of knowledge and information. If this happens, there will be a economical gap in the world. The gap is getting bigger between the developed country (possess knowlegde & information) and developing or underdeveloped country (no access to information and knowledge). The group of people (countries) which has an access to information or knowledge will not be able to "sell" their product to other group of people (countries) which has no access to information because they are poor. If the access of information is improved, the flow of knowledge will be equally spread through out the world. The gap will not be so big that the process of exchanging resources (natural or else) will be balance. But this idea is not accepted by all groups of people. For example if all books are digitized and put in the network so everyone can access them for free, the printing company will lose the business and collapsed. According to JJ Rousseau, mostly the wealthiest and most powerfull members of society will be afraid of losing the power and business if there are an improved and free information or education. The questions now is "Are the education and information humanright?" "Are we ethically allowed to make a business on education and information?" Please Give comment on them. Thank you.

My Trip to Wikiuniversity

This is my first time exploring deeply into wiki sites. I mostly used wikipedia to search for information or theories. I honestly has not provided enough time to explore deeper this week because the amount of work in school lately was unbearable. But I have been saying to myself that I don't want to give up and I don't want my names dropped from the participant list. Besides my internet connection at home has problem. Anyway, that the situation I had this week. I am glad that I could visit some of the participants blog and read some comments to my blog. Thank you Peter and Teemu. I visited user:Exkan Yilmaz and agree with some points especially the time spent during the course which is always authomatically more than we were expecting. I also visited the learning projects about The Peloponnesian War which I have not read the details yet. And then I went back to my own user in wikiversity tried to learn how to make the project by my own. I went to user talk, guided tour (to know more about the wikiversity), browse page, major portal, school pyshology ( the topic that interest me lately), educational psychology, learning project ( wants to know how to make one), template, learning project boiler plate ( as the template of making one ?) and end up to direction. I felt confused at the first time. But by time passing and more clicks that I had done, I could feel the light on my head. I believe that I have to revisit the projects and try to find sometime to make one this week. I have made my profile done. We'll see. I'll put my best to cope with the task.

Links

http://oercourse.wordpress.com/
http://www.hanspoldoja.net/
http://jaiku.com/channel/oercourse/
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Participant_of_the_composing_free_and_open_online_educational_resources_course
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Composing_free_and_open_online_educational_resources

Open Education Projects On line

After I open all the open education projects on line, the five of them, they have similarities. They are open for everyone in the world to use the information available on their sight to enrich theier knowledge as well as donating their ideas to anyone in the world using the same website. In this situatiation we are asked to learn and as well as enrichment the body of knowledge that we are learning at that time. There are two simulatanious actions between learning and acting, storing and donating. I like the idea of Richard Baraniuk that the body of knowlegde or information needs to be put digitally and on web format. But the questios is how many countries in the world or how many sociities in the world that do not have PC and their PCs are not connected to internet. If Their PCs connected, how much money do they have to spend to pay the connections, as the internet connections in many developing and under developed countries is very costly. If all the world has been connected with the internet what we have now, Open Educational Resorces or the digital library or books are the best way to tranfer knowledge and information as well as developing the knowledge itself in the matter of minutes or seconds. Anothers thing is most of the open education resources do not offer certification which might be important to some of the learners as theier society need the certificates.

Open Educational Resources: What they are and why do they matter

I agree with the points written by Ilkka Tuomi about open educational resources. I agree that education is not only obtaining knowledge from the source of knowledge or fill out our brain with some new information, but also enable us to act in the frame of information or knowledge that we currently learn. That is why the open educational resources needs to have this soul. Besides that the OER needs to be available to everyone with any social, economic, and skill background. OER also needs to be able to be accessable for everyone at the same time without reducing it's quality. OER is also available for everyone to take part in constructing the content and share it to others. If the OER accomodates all the principles of openess, I believe that OER will change the traditional education system. OER will challenge the traditional education system which is costly , get easily outdated, an not providing enough space for collaboration among learners and space limited ( only a few people from certain place of world at the same time). Attending a course outside the country to benchmark what has happened outside will take a lot of money and time. OER will provide the same quality course of education at the same time for unlimited number of people from any places in the world without spending a lot of money ( if you have basic PC connected to internet). The cost you will pay only the cost for PC which you can be used several times and the cost of internet connection. At the same time you will also be able to collaborate with the other learners as well as the instructors. In collaboration you are not only users but you can also be a creator if you think you have the better ide of what the learning process should be done.
The only questions I have is that the openess in the OER will reduce the value of the product offered. Will this economic values reduce the willingness of people in creating a new things. As the one that has been created will be shared to people for free without royalty. In the market, product is valued by some money that the product can give to the creator. For the open educational resources, how the products can be valued?

My Profile

Hi, I am Boni. Now I am teaching elementary students in a private school in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am taking this course because I want to know more about open educational resources. As we know that the development of the educational resources nowdays is fast. In order to get to know better and faster , I think we have to get the knowledge of what is the educational resoources provided on line. Hopefully by joining this course I will be able to update my knowledge in open sources especially in open educational resources. Because attending course abroad nowdays will take so much cost. I believe my knowing the sources, how to get there and how to share ours to others will cut down the cost with obtaining the same quality as we are attending the class abroad. Please feel freee to leave any comments in my blog concerning the open educational resources of anything related to education. Now I am also persuing my master degree in educational management. Happy learning. Chao.

Effective School

If we are talking about schools, we will definitely talk about human as a main part of the school. School is a place where human being educate their young ones to be able to survive in the world later when they grow up. In prehistoric time, people taught their children how to live (to hunt, to process food, to build house, to make an outfit) in their own family or group (tribe). The knowledge on how to live prosperously and happily has already developed rapidly since the prehistoric time. The way and the tools of hunting for food has been developed. Every groups of people developed their best way to live. The communication and the interaction among group have arisen the parents to send their young ones to learn knowledge outside their home and group for some periode of time. That is the history of prehistoric schools. The strong effort to learn for a better life has encouraged parents to send their young ones out of their home and group to go to some people who have more knowledge and wisdom of life. In that sense, actually school can not be seperated from what is actually happened in the students' life daily. The curriculum shoul have been set up to enable to students to understand what life is, what problems they may face and how to solve them. In order to achieve that goals, schools should understand the nature of their students. The nature of the students are their cultural background, their ability, their interest and their family values. The three components of the student's nature will make every single schools in the world unique. Some concepts may apply generally to every schools, such as the value of respect, peace, communication, open minded and inquiry. Although some some concepts may be the same, the contents and how to implement them are definitely different from one culture to another. In order to accomodate the whole components in the curriculum, a school should invite the whole stake holders (owner, teachers, principle, students, parents, and the residents) to sit together to formulate the vision, mission and the action plan of the school. The curriculum of the school should be based on the vision, mission and the action plan which has been formulated by the stake holders. If the steps above has been done, hopely the schools will be effective. Effective school is the school which fit to the need of the owner, students, parents, teachers, principle and residents where the school is located. The process of learning will also be fun for the students, because in formatting the vision, mission and the action plan, school listens to the students need. Effective school is not an exclusive institution which is seperated from our real life. Let's make a school as a second home for our children, the sanctuary to learn wisdom of life.