Day One EDD800 - Summer Residency

     The day started with an inspirational charge from Dr. Kathryn Polmanteer.  We are part of the "Great Experiment" - an innovative approach to the doctoral program.  Dr. Karla Hughes followed up with a great directive to "rekindle curiosity and creativity".  I think this sums up my journey so far with the program.  I am humbled by how little I know, and inspired by all that I am learning.  I find myself engaged in conversations with other professionals at a higher level of thinking and feeling my confidence rise daily as my ideas are valued and shared. 
     Our keynote speaker was Stepnen Downes of the National Research Center of Canada.  We listened to his thoughts on open educational resources and personal learning environments.  His out of the box thinking drew many points to my mind that I would like to discuss here.  Although a lot of what he said was in a "NEW LANGUAGE", I do agree with him on his philosophy of knowledge output. "The more sense you make of something - the more you will remember it"  What we do NEED TO REMEMBER - is the case in point here.  The Induction Model allows the flow of information to influence another thought to another and another; in otherwords -  One thought leads to another.  It is data in and then processed with activities that makes sense of it all, to the putput of knowledge or Knowledge Remembered.  The Act of Experience is the growth of learning. 
Stephen Downes is a proponent of Connectivism.  There is no real curriculum.  The product is the Learner.  Knowledge is so complex  - so it needs to be navigated.  That is where the teacher comes in...to be connected is to be engaged.  The process is aggregate, remix, repurpose, and feed forward.  The learning is immersive and complete for the individual and how that is done is on an individual basis.  That is why he believeds in open eduational resources and repositories.  This environment provides phases of openess:
                                                 Learners can access courses
                                                 Open support - academic volunteers
                                                 Open assessment
                                                 Credit for degree
                                                  Receive a degree
     He talked about Learning Management Systems and how they support physical instruction in a classroom.  Our school system uses Moodle and I have become familiar with Blackboard through MSU.  He shared about Grasshopper as a course tool that utilizes RSS feeds or input from the user:  All types of input and organizes it the way that the USER wants. 
     I see open resourcing being totally used in higher education, but I feel that I would use it cautiously on the middle school level.  There would be instances where such open ended resourcing and thought would provoke good conversation, critical thinking and problem-solving on the part of my students.  I don't know how "mature" some of this thought processing would go, but it would be worth the venture.  Just experimenting with the "Language" that middle schoolers have would be a window to a much wider community.  Administrators would have to make things possible, remove constraints and open up access to these resources.  Right now our school corporation is very filtered and the learning environment is not open, but very closed in my opinion...but that is due to fear.  The fear of too much information.  Growth needs FLOW - that constant activation and interaction. 
     He ended with Defining the four measures to weigh openess against.  Is it diverse? (lots of information from lots of different people - proves diversity.  Is there openess?  Is there Autonomy?  Does each individual manage their own growth in their own way?  Is there Interactivity?  I love the autonomy factor and feel that this is really what the doctoral level is all about.
     Lunch provided a time of free-flowing conversation and comment about the presentation and a chance to catch up quickly on each others lives. The afternoon was filled with numerous and interesting capstone projects.  Amy and I were in a group with P-12 administrators and it gave us an interesting perspective on the many issues surrounding each of their school systems.  I continue to learn more and more about Kentucky education and the communities in the eastern Kentucky area.  I feel that I made some new networking contacts and hope to share some ideas with these gentlemen in the future. 
     But for now - my future involves discussion board comments and an Instructional Design that needs my finishing touches..so until tomorrow...