Helton, Design Journal 3

I am slowly making progress on my final project. I've decided to go with EdApp, and I've scaled back what I originally proposed.

Ready OER Not has two basic threads: the technical side of learning how to find and use OER, and the theoretical side of how to use sociocultural theories of learning to think about classroom practice. Together, they allow teachers to use open education practices in ways that give students more space to bring more of their experiences and interests into disciplinary learning.

I'm going to focus on the technical side for the EdApp course. This is much more objective information that you need to be able to navigate OER. Things like where to find OER repositories, how to read Creative Commons licenses, the differences between how you can use OER and educational fair use of copyright. These are things that have right or wrong answers and that teachers hopefully learn and remember through the course. EdApp is well suited to this, as it allows you to present information in small chunks and have short assessments / learner feedback built in. I'm a little bummed it's mostly linear, but I'm working with it. I've finished the first lesson, titled "What is OER?"

As I was choosing the types of slides (informative, quiz, game, etc.), I was thinking about the Parrish article, and while I didn't flesh out a complete narrative, I did try to have empathy for my learner. I know how busy teachers are, so I focused on the most important pieces. I did decide to include a word search, which takes a little time and is non-essential, so I included in the directions that you could skip to the next item once you had clicked the board. Fun for those who want it, but (hopefully) not a roadblock for those who don't.