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Teaching Effectively Online

 

 

Lesson Eight: Copyrights and Instructional Entrepreneurship

http://lone-eagles.com/teaching-lesson8.html

 

Return to the class homepage

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Required Submissions Checklist for Lesson 8

 

____Read through this lesson, including items marked “Read,” as separate from those marked optional.

____View the short videos also marked “View” as separate from those marked optional. (2 hours)

 

____Post to the class listserv teaching-L@netpals.lsoft.com Reflect and Contribute…

1. Your idea for a final project along with any resource needs you would like help with from your classmates, and include whether you responded to peer requests by sharing resources.

2. Your candid thoughts on the themes and issues presented in this lesson.

3. Having completed this course, what matters most to you now, and what are your goals for next steps? 

(one hour)

 

___Privately email your instructor your own individualized learning plan (ILP)

What are your next step priorities, now that you’ve completed the eight lessons?

State what assistance you might still require in order to meet your personal goals.

Confirm you have completed all required tasks, including submitting your final project via the class listserv to share with others.

Offer your final feedback on this lesson and the overall course; your candor is specifically invited. If you were to start over, what would you plan to do differently? What would you suggest the instructor do differently?

(one hour)


Instructional Entrepreneurship Trends; Looking Forward:

 

Looking forward five years; online, everyone will accept as common knowledge the simple fact that since everyone can see what everyone else is doing in order to learn from others what works best, it makes sense to be continually learning from each other. The accelerating pace of change dictates that we all work together to keep everyone up to the same instant of progress on a global basis since we are all interconnected at all levels. Just-in-time inquiry-based learning skills are recognized as essential to daily on-the-job problem-solving. Attention spans are shortening, as is the shelf life of useful knowledge. New knowledge is evolving at exponential rates, and often what matters most, is what we do not know that we need to know. New school and community synergies will create a functional local learning society where the exponential value of smart collaboration, both locally, with other communities, and globally, will be regarded as a given.

 

Instant access to validated best practices for any situation will be a concierge service that is highly competitive. The value of our time will be regarded as a priority, not to be wasted on unnecessary learning, second rate instructional resources, or obsolete methodologies. Our lifestyle choices will determine our priorities, automating as many routine tasks as possible, to buy more time for what we value the most. Fun, social, learning will become the most popular Edu-tainment social activity of choice as greater and greater global demonstrations of mass innovation continue to excite the collective global imagination for imagining even greater global impacts.

 

Alternative certification online training programs based on authenticated outcomes will be central to the global knowledge economy, where anyone can become an instructional entrepreneur based on their ability to deliver insight, motivation, encouragement, a sense of meaningful purpose, effective collaborative engagement, and fast-track visible outcomes using combinations of cloud-based services, apps, mentors, and web-based visualization tools.

 

In the Meantime, We have to BE the Change

Teachers with technology and online teaching skills are being hired by Elearning corporations. As schools lose their best technology teachers, and lose students to commercial Elearning businesses and alternative schools, the importance of partnering with their communities and local businesses to reinvent their relevance in the face of accelerating change will determine their sustainability. Students will have the option to learn without classrooms.

 

Teachers are finding they can effectively self-promote themselves as independent consultants, lifestyle instructional entrepreneurs, and offer online learning and support services, via blogs, websites, and social media. Anya, our textbook author, is a great example;

VIEW: http://diyubook.com   Note that the Gates Foundation has funded her, in addition to the Khanacademy.org, citing both as the future of education, which might suggest we pay close attention. Typically, the blog roll on the sidebar of most edu-consultants blogs points to their pick of the best of the best – as their way of showing off that they know who is who! Example Anya’s blog roll at  http://diyubook.com/about-anya/  and Howard Rheingold’s video blog (vlog) http://vlog.rheingold.com/

 

Reforming K12, to Starting Something New?

Read:    Ptolemaic Schools – Why Reform Won’t Work

http://www.skipvia.com/blog/?p=317

Build new, don’t reform old. To be, or not to be?

Skip’s article basically says there are too many forces invested in the status quo for serious reform to take place within our massive educational ecosystem and something new and separate is needed. Might an inclusive local learning society be already evolving?

 

Skip Via’s Youtube Channel (Optional)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=q6WVEFE-oZA

 

Teaching 2.0 – Are We There Yet? (Optional)
http://community.uaf.edu/~skipvia/blog/?p=59
Skip’s blog

 

 

Review: Great Examples of Educators as Independent Consultants

http://landmark-project.com/  www.davidwarlick.com

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/

www.rheingold.com/

http://www.steverubel.me/

http://novemberlearning.com/blog/

http://freetech4teachers.com

http://tektrek.wordpress.com   

 

 

How Birds of a Feather Are Flocking in 2012

You will find that birds of a feather find each other rather quickly online these days and tend to link up to share resources on an ongoing basis, whether via RSS subscriptions to other blogs using Google reader, or via twitter, or via Linked-in.com or Google+ and on and on.

 

Find one top social media in education consultant and if you are paying attention you are likely to find all their best peers neatly listed.

 

As it becomes more and more obvious that educators should be working together as opposed to not, we can expect to see bigger and bigger success stories, note Alan November hosts his own conferences, http://novemberlearning.com  Jason Ohler www.jasonohler.com offers a free Ebook on digital storytelling ( http://jasonohler.com/storytelling ) and has several print books for sale. Jason retired from the University of Alaska, SE, recently, but he is still mighty busy. Last I heard he had 10 international keynote presentations lined up. See where Jason has presented internationally at http://www.jasonohler.com/about/portfolio.cfm#keynotes

 

You saw a edublogs.org award winner http://freetech4teachers.com  and Steve Hargadon’s http://classroom20.com  ning site and how he is leading multiple global initiatives. Listings of other global education sites were shared, most started with an educator and an idea, including http://epals.com

 

The opportunities are growing rapidly for literally everyone that learns how to effectively teach others online. At udemy.com you can put your own price on your own video course, and if you charge $5 and hundreds sign up, if it is a self-directed course you are likely to make far more money than if you charged $150. And if you design for other than the self-directed format then the number of students who can enroll is limited by your own personal time and energy.

 

Amazon.com has seen ebooks sold for 99 cents that bring in tens of thousands in profit. Lady Gaga posted an album for 99 cents and sold so many she still made a lot of money. Apple’s Ibooks uses an Epub format to be compatible with Ipads and Iphones. Anyone can self-publish as long as they agree to Apple’s hefty commission agreements.

 

Social media best practices are being taught as promoting free ebooks, posting free quality content to initially attract a group following, supported by strategies involving integration of dozens of sophisticated tools, and more.

Example: http://www.challenge.co/training

 

If you have been watching for similarities on blogs and websites of educators turned consultants, leveraging instructional entrepreneurship via social media tools and marketing techniques, then you’ve seen common patterns emerge.

 

Youtube will monetize your youtube video channel, just as Facebook, Google, and nearly everyone other online business would like to help you learn to make money so they can take their cut from you, and millions like you, to measure their continued profit in the billions.  The book
Socialnomics” can tell you more.

 

Take a moment to think back to what you knew when you started this course, and your reaction when you first viewed the “Did You Know” video. Think about your role now as promoting innovation diffusion, but also your own experience feeling overwhelmed by new ideas, skills, tools, and creative opportunities. How alone, or supported, did you feel at first, and as this class progressed? Think about the intersection between local and global citizenship, world values, video journalism, digital storytelling, and how great educators might somehow find new ways to stay current in a world of accelerating change.

 

Instructional Entrepreneurship Issues to Consider

 

If a good educator can suddenly deliver instruction to anyone, anywhere, anytime, it raises many issues, opportunities, and perhaps even moral obligations. Who is your target audience, a classroom of students, and their parents, and the broader community? If your superior instruction can reach others statewide, nationally, and globally, and if you can take full control of your lifestyle, copyrights for what you create, and what standards of excellence you alone will decide to follow, will you know what steps to get you from here to there?

 

Political Issues

If you're offering an online course for college credit, you are likely to find yourself involved in the politics of competition between institutions of higher learning. Traditionally a given college has a defined geographical region and other colleges once agreed to keep to their own such regions. Today, any distance learning course can be taught anywhere, threatening these traditional boundaries.

 

Since college funding revolves around the number of students receiving instruction, turfism is a hot issue. It is important to be aware of who your online course may threaten and to attempt to coordinate your offerings to make friends before you create enemies. You should consult those in charge of extension courses at the college or university you're working with regarding any potential problems.

 

Competitive Pricing for Online Instruction

Courses offered through college continuing education offices generally pay poorly, but the option exists to set the price as high as the market will bear. Once more people have the equipment, basic online skills and understand the cost savings of not having to travel or reside elsewhere, the demand for online instruction will grow. The convenience of taking a course from anywhere, anytime, directly to the home will eventually be available to most of seven billion citizens globally. Teachers will be increasingly tantalized by the entrepreneurial potential good online teaching will create. If you save people time learning what they need to know, and make it an enjoyable experience, you should do very well.  Ex. www.quiltuniversity.com is a dozen women offering for-profit online courses.

 

Marketing an Online Course

If you can use Internet technologies to teach well, with less effort and time spent than your competition, you're likely to succeed if you can initially get the word out regarding your offering. A lone teacher attempting to promote an online class faces a difficult task. Partnering with colleges and other educational organizations for promotional purposes and accreditation makes good sense. Using the Internet's potential for advertising will also be a solution for many teachers.  There are a great many online course brokerage services, and online degree brokerage services.

 

Ed2go.com offers hundreds of continuing education courses via 1400 universities, who pay for a customized web site that makes it look like these are their courses. The end result is you can learn Ecommerce from a continuing ed online course from your regional university even if none of their faculty have any expertise in Ecommerce.

 

The growth of the University of Phoenix, and many similar Elearning businesses is well documented in our class text, and the author’s use of social media is well demonstrated at http://diyubook.com with a new site http://p2pu.org and that the Gates foundation is now funding Anya’s innovations as a result of her effective social media marketing, presents a model of success for the rest of us.

 

Review: See Anya’s blog roll, which social media feeds she offers, and learn all you can from her marketing decisions, noting her extensive experience as co-editor for Fastcompany.com  Here is Anya’s latest article, addressing K12 as well, and this is the last one from me, so now you will be on your own?

 

Read: Why Google is the Most Important Learning Tool Ever Invented

http://www.fastcompany.com/1791620/why-google-is-the-most-important-learning-tool-ever-invented

 

Quality Control and Alternative Certification

If anyone can create an online class, some measure of course quality will be needed. It is likely high quality courses may be produced by non-teachers, and low quality courses will be created by certified teachers. College credit is becoming less important as alternative accreditation programs are rapidly proliferating. Outcome-based results appear to be most in demand. This suggests the potential for all citizens to become both learners and teachers all the time on a global basis, with peer-assessment being the key measure of success.

 

Teacher Entrepreneurship and Conflict of Interest

Your school might claim conflict of interest if you're spending too much time, in their view, teaching online, particularly if you're profiting financially. Due to residency requirements, many degree programs allow only a few credits out of a four year degree to be obtained via distance learning. This is changing rapidly.  It will be feasible to learn or teach from anywhere, anytime. There is the risk that master teachers will abandon the traditional classroom in favor of higher salaries and greater personal freedom.

 

Will "teach-from-any-beach-in-the-world" programs become more attractive to teachers than the traditional school environment? 

____Read: Teach from Any Beach http://lone-eagles.com/articles/eagle.htm

 

Royalty Sharing with Commercial Education Providers

Corporations are collecting innovative instructional online resources from educators in a royalty-sharing arrangement, since no corporation could ever internally match the volume of innovative curriculum teachers are already creating! Teachers in the past typically lacked a productizing and marketing vehicle to disseminate their curriculum, but this is changing as our class text on the Coming Transformation of Higher Education emphatically demonstrates with dozens of for-profit examples.

 

We're already seeing many businesses adding a human mentoring component to their online services. See http://www.about.com which is a directory like Yahoo, but with human experts for each topic area who invite your questions. Fee-based tutoring services are beginning to become popular. Search for "tutoring," and you'll see many business models focused on tutoring services.


Science and math experts with Phds are available online from India and elsewhere at reasonable rates $10/hour to mentor your students via 2-way video, but one of a growing number of such services. 
http://lone-eagles.com/mentors.htm

 

Eleutian.com (search for their videos on youtube) has hired over 700 certified educators to teach English globally on five continents via Skype from tiny Wyoming towns with fiber optics. Online training with 7 days means you can start next week. Their competition is uncertified instructors in the Philippines who speak good English and will work for $1 a day.  Livemocha.com is a free language mentoring site, where many volunteers have begun to charge for their services. Everything is changing, and watching what’s working for others like you, is strongly recommended as “IT MATTERS!”

 

The Positive and Negative Viewpoints

The best positive vision would be that learners worldwide would find rich learning opportunities created by the best teachers worldwide, available in SDL, mentored and guided formats. Teachers worldwide would find a huge global market for their learning materials and would relish both the satisfaction of meeting the learning needs of potentially vast numbers of learners, and realizing a substantial improvement in their personal income and lifestyle options. The following is a prediction of the impact of Internet and online education I was asked to author for a national community networking listserv, as my viewpoint of the positive potential:

 

A Best-Case Scenario

A new global culture will appear, combining caring and connectivity, led by youth and seniors. Youth will prove to be key change agents and technology leaders in all cultures. Unmet needs will be matched with excess resources with radically increased efficiency. World cultures will learn to celebrate their diversity without censoring knowledge of alternative worldviews. We'll all have access to all our joint knowledge through a combination of social and technical systems.

 

Niche knowledge specialties will become a viable vocation for individuals, in collaboration with others, keeping the world's knowledge base current. Multiple tiers of appropriate human assistance and expertise will be available to all, for the asking. Context will enhance content and "less-is-more" will be the measure of value.

 

"Information condenses to Knowledge which condenses to Wisdom, and Value is created in an information economy."

 

Everyone will become both learner, and teacher; imparting such earned wisdom. Successful mentoring of others will be the measure of individual success, in association with creating effective self-directed learning opportunities which can scale to benefit billions. The BEST resources to benefit the MOST people at the LEAST cost will be identified, to be customized by local citizens, for the local context, as an ‘instructional entrepreneurship’ service.

 

It will be recognized that "Imagination is more important than knowledge," as Einstein first said. An individual's potential impact on global issues and citizens will be recognized as limitless.

 

We'll come to emphasize our abilities to imagine better ways to use the social and technical interconnections between people and knowledge. We’ll redefine "community" as those to which we give our time. The global cultural goal for the human family will be actualization of our joint full potential.

 

Transnational activism will evolve to engage daily votes on global issues which will involve more citizens daily direct participation than any past elections in human history. Ideational leaders will emerge, articulating the pulse of human emotion and thought in the face of limitless possibilities, on a daily basis.

 

A Worst-Case Scenario

How courses and curricular materials will be marketed has yet to evolve. Will independent instructors be able to market their courses successfully to this world market, or must they hire on to a juggernaut institution who can market their courses for them?

 

Perhaps, only the best learning materials will become successful, benefiting a few teachers while putting most teachers at a disadvantage of being unable to compete with these exemplary resources. Will there be enough opportunities for all teachers, or will the scalability mean that only the very best courses will be successful, leaving most teachers without a genuine opportunity? Teachers will be replaced by inadequate online teaching alternatives, and students will be without the human attention they need to develop as citizens.

 

Copyrights and Customizing Courses

Have you seen the sign in the library that says its illegal to xerox copyrighted print materials? It is behind the line of students and teachers xeroxing copyrighted materials as part of their daily routine. Did you know its illegal to use your VCR to copy TV programs if you keep them beyond 45 days? There are grey areas between what the law says, and what common practice is, even for responsible citizens.

Where you draw the line between right and wrong for yourself and your students can be defined by reading the suggestions of others at Stanford University’s Educational Fairuse site. http://fairuse.stanford.edu  

 

Here's a handy chart summarizing copyright issues for educators:
http://www.halldavidson.net/copyright_chart.pdf

When students create a web page with their own pictures, words and ideas, they need to understand what intellectual property rights they hold and how to similarly respect the intellectual property rights of others. When your students save images off the web for use in their own web pages, are they stealing? Many copyright-free image, and animation archives exist on the web, as listed at http://lone-eagles.com/webdev.htm

 

If you have access to a public domain course you might contract to customize that course for a specific purpose or organization, thus creating a marketable original work. At what point does your reworking of a public domain class constitute an original work? If less than 25% of the original material is included, you might be justified in legally claiming originality. There are still grey areas regarding the legalities of exactly what you can "borrow" from the work of others, and just what others can borrow from your work.

If you work for a school or University, they will likely own the copyright for your fine work, even that which you authored at home as their employee. You should know your rights and policies and not risk presuming what they may legally be.

 

Since the Open Source, Open Courseware, and Open Knowledge global movements are now in full swing, an alternative copyright solution has emerged.    The Creative Commons License www.creativecommons.org

 

In short, this authorizes others to use your work as long as it is for non-commercial purposes, and as long as they give you credit for what is yours. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

 

Some things cannot be copyrighted, like a list of links. Many websites specialize in copyright free resources such as photos, animations, and more; a few examples can be found at http://lone-eagles.com/webdev.htm with more accessible with simple searching phrases like ‘copyright free photos.’

 

Conclusion:

Where are we in the current evolution of online instruction? It is already a rapidly growing  multi-billion dollar industry, as billions of citizens worldwide find the means to access the Internet through new satellite and wireless technologies...in a world where half the population has yet to make a first phone call. The cultural impacts on 15,000 cultures could be disastrous, or wonderfully empowering.

 

The hope is that since more and more citizens will be involved with the Internet directly, real benefits for real people will result from common sense application of the wonderful potential the Internet brings to all of us for learning and sharing what we've learned. The more teachers are thoughtfully involved with steering the evolution of the instructional use of the Internet, the more hope we can all share that the future will be bright.

 

Finishing This Class: Your Debriefing

You have an eight-hour final project to propose to your instructor for approval and suggestions, to be web-based and related to your priority interests. Once your instructor received this final required submission your Pass for the Class will be sent to APU, which processes grades very quickly and will send you confirmation via email. New easy group instruction sites and online course systems have been offered: udemy.com, p2pu.org even Blackboard’s own free http://coursesites.com  Community engagement tools have been offered; wiki, ning, google groups. Free rich media tools have been presented; jing, goanimate, gamesalad, and dozens more.  And as new class participants continue sign up, we can expect a continual flow of newer and even better resources to be identified and shared.

 

You are welcome to remain on the class listserv, to continue to receive resource updates from your instructor, and present and future participants. You are welcome to continue to ask questions and interact via the listserv with both current and future class participants.

 

You will still have access to the class wiki, but might want to start your own wiki and cutnpaste the resources you want to have control over from all wiki pages related to this class. The instructor will be adding new wiki pages with the best resources shared in this class, and others, at http://web2fork12classrooms.pbworks.com  You have unrestricted access to all Lone Eagle online resources. (Over 700 web pages) This includes the content of other Lone Eagle courses as listed at http://lone-eagles.com/teachercreated.htm

(But you will still have to pay APU for recert credits.)

 

You will still have access to the class Ning, and our Google Group, but remember neither of these are public.

 

You are invited to continue to ask for assistance from your instructor, and are now in the elite group of those who understand that the power to change the world is at your fingertips.  Make It Happen!

 

Conclusion:

During this course, noting only a fraction were able to stick to doing a lesson a week, it was clear some had higher capacity than others to absorb new information, follow instructions, and to quickly ask the instructor for help, before allowing frustration to become an issue. 

 

The informality of this course was embraced by some, and others found this uncomfortable – wanting to know their grades, and assurances related to the traditional formal structure of courses and classes. This understandable tension is due to the reality that we are all transitioning from a traditional formal structure of learning to a new structure, as….. (to state it one last time)

 

Everyone both learner and teacher, both consumer and producer,

all the time!

 

Final Instructor Feedback on Your Lesson Feedback

My own learning is that I see it as inevitable that educators are going to need ongoing updates targeted to their individual abilities, interests, and both strengths and particularly weaknesses. Measuring their geekatude abilities and metering the right amount of new information both in volume, and at the level they are ready for, will prove essential. Individualized learning, with a process to accelerate one’s learning motivations and abilities integrating many new tools and methods appears to be the direction forward for education at all levels. We all really are going to need, and want, the best “best practices” delivered daily, to include classroom ready rich media units and updates so we can spend less time on class preparation and more time individually mentoring our students…as the Khan Academy video suggests is not only possible, but is quickly becoming a preferred best practice.

 

Lesson Feedback: Optional, but much appreciated.

 

You're invited to privately email your instructor:

       1. What areas, if any, did you have trouble with during this
            lesson?

 

       2. What questions remain now that you've finished this lesson?

 

       3. Approximately how much time did you devote to this lesson?

 

       4. What improvements would you like to suggest?