Scenario
Imagine
you are constructing a course in digital skills for an identified group
of learners (e.g. undergraduates, new employees, teachers, mature
learners, military personnel, etc.). It is a short, online course aimed
at providing these learners with a set of resources for developing
‘digital skills’. It runs for five weeks, with a different subject each
week, accounting for about six hours study per week.
- Devise a broad outline of the topics to be covered every week. Don’t deliberate too much on this; it should be a coherent set of topics but you don’t actually have to deliver it.
- Now see how much of your desired content could be accommodated by using OER repositories. Search the following repositories and make a quick evaluation for each week of your course of the type of content that is available.
- You can use the following template for your evaluation. In the final column judge whether the resources are good, medium or bad in terms of suiting your needs.
Digit Skills: Laptops 4 Learning
Identified Group: KS3 (Year 7 to 9)
Week 1:
Topic: Laptop Care (Physical)
The physical care of the student laptop in terms of heat, dust, dirt, keeping it clean.
Resources:
- nothing - nothing
(Staffordshire University, )
- Picture of a laptop!
A number of images of laptops and then health care.
- nothing - nothing in first 3 pagesCare of your notebook (paper!)
nothingSlow to respond - slowest of the lot
slow, slow, slow
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 2:
Topic: Connecting to the Domain/Network. Mapping drives. Internet settings
Resources:
- nothing Network security
- Nothing - Nothing - NothingMore relevant to the topic but nothing that I need for this.
Suitability (G/M/B):
Bad - nothing suitable despite a range of terms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 3:
Topic: Backing up data
Resources:
- Nothing - Nothing - irrelevant - too complex, specific to certain data types.A bit old - from 2007, lots of text but short sections is okay. Free software link to outdated software, online scan link doesn't work,
Recommends: Vandalism in Cyberspace:Understanding and Combating Malicious Software. - doesn't work. Too old, 2004, when searched.
- irrelevantSuitability (G/M/B):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 4:
Topic: Printing Installing and configuring. Dealing with typical problems (paper jam, out of paper/ink)
Resources:
- Nothing http://dspace.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/10949/998
Okay - a bit technical re: network communication - downloaded the package but it seems to need a specific reader or something. Will check it out tomorrow.
STOPPED HERE.
Started again
Received my OER Understanding badge - whoopee! My first ever electronic badge, and I've created a Mozilla virtual backpack to stick it on (https://login.persona.org/) password is the usual one with 123 on the end. I was hoping to see a picture of a backpack with my badge on it. Oh, I think this is the website http://beta.openbadges.org/ That's quite good.
- Nothing - irrelevant wait, wait, .... nothingSuitability (G/M/B):
B - Did find something possibly of use from Jorum
for another class but the "package" downloaded was not standard file types and there was no link or information about needing a package reader or something. So did not waste time trying to locate the utility.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 5:
Topic: Laptop Care (logical - security)
Resources:
Searching on "Laptop Care security"
Nothing 1473 results,
Security and mobile devices - http://dspace.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/10949/16147
An overview from Jisc Legal which could be very useful for middle
managers and heads of subjects to assist in curriculum planning with
mobile devicesOkay, not suitable for what I need but useful nevertheless for another area.
Nothing - irrelevant Moving From The Superintendency To The Professorship: Ten Easy Steps To Move Your Cheese For Better Aging
(m14268) - The first choice!Suitability (G/M/B):
B - I got something semi-relevant although not useful for my needs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evaluation Reflect upon whether the use of OER caused you to change what you wanted to teach, and what time saving (if any) would be gained by using OER.
Ariadne tended to come up with nothing. The one time it did fine something, on the second search page, following the link resulted in "The system cannot find the path specified." Jorum gives thousands of hits, sometimes over 3,000. However for my week 4 and 5 searches I found a relevant PDF, which although was too advanced for my needs could be useful for a higher level class and/or school management. Merlot was useless, giving me nothing or irrelevant hits. MIT's results were all far too complex or not relevant. OpenLearn came up with something that looked useful for my week 3 search but the content was from 2007 and a link to an online scanner website did not work. A link to another document took me to something from 2004, too old to be of use (I read it and the content was dated, with reference to "AOL Online"). Rice Connexions was very slow to return a search list for every search done over 2 days and with 5 different search criteria. Searching on "Laptop Care Security" resulted in the first listed most relevant result of "Ten Easy Steps To Move Your Cheese For Better Aging", how could it possible come up with that given the search terms?
Overall, very disappointed given I selected a skills based topic related to laptop use and care, taking into account data backup and security. Admittedly the topics searched on related to school level age, but given the keywords used I expected more. What I tended to get was high-level academic theoretical papers and not down-to-earth practical advice, lesson plans or resources of any kinds (i.e. posters, slides, web tutorials, multimedia). In other words, these OER sites seem pretty useless to me as a source for school level ICT/Computing. I will stick with the current search resources I already have. No time was saved and the results have not made me change what I wanted to teach.
No comments:
Post a Comment