David Wiley notes on his blog that development on the “folksemantic” tools is still ongoing. Wiley discusses an invitation he received to participate in a March 26 online meeting regarding the integration of OCW Finder, OER Recommender and Luvfoo. More about the meeting can be found on the OER Recommender site. From Wiley’s blog post:

If I may say so, the OER Recommender is probably one of the single most valuable pieces of OER technology in existence today. I hope to see you at the online meeting where we can learn where these tools are going next. If I know the COSL folks, they’ll be headed to incredible places…

The Instructional Technology Department at Utah State University (my academic home and the home of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning) has a faculty opening. We’re not looking for expertise in a specific area of instructional technology – just a super smart, hard working, great-to-get-along-with colleague to help move the field forward.

The job description is online, and the first steps of the application process are all electronic. Personally, I’m excited by the follow excerpt from the description:

Applicants must be able to teach courses in one or more of the following general areas:

1. learning sciences,
2. instructional design,
3. research methods,
4. e-learning/distance education,
5. open education,
6. multimedia design and development,
7. performance improvement and training,
8. learning theory,
9. school library media,
10. assessment/evaluation.

See number 5? Open education isn’t an afterthought here – we actually put it right in the job description.

The job is posted as “open rank,” meaning that we’re open to junior and senior faculty, and everyone in between. Come join the family and work in one of the most enjoyable, rewarding academic climates you’ll ever experience!

(If you have a blog, I’d really appreciate it if you would run a small mention of this announcement on your site!)

So it only took me 4 years, but I finally have a focus for my dissertation.  I’m going to look at 3 systems that support online resource-sharing around open educational materials.  Open Learning Support (OLS), a discussion environment that wraps around MIT’s OpenCourseWare materials, Ozmozr, an aggregator/share tool, and 51 Weeks, a tool being built to aggregate conference goers’ blogs, and photos that also incorporates a synchronous/asynchronous chat.  No link yet to 51 weeks… it’s under development.  It will deploy at the OpenEd 2007 Conference in Logan, Utah in a couple of weeks.

So why is it that dissertation writing requires so much junk food?  My dog is dying to go run in the park and I can only sit on the couch eating candy corns, typing.  This process better not take too long or I’m going to gain fifty pounds.   How many calories does typing burn?  Maybe I’ll start a new exercise fad… micro exercise.  Measure your exercise output in nano-calories.

So Justin, Marion and Tom bombed me. I’m not even sure how they did it. I would not have chosen the name they selected. In fact, the phrase “Insane devil woman” is pretty unflattering if you ask me. I wish I understood the mysteries of Google like they do. Googling for “insane devil woman” brings up my blog. Thanks guys. (i.e. bite me, but softly please).

Call for Papers

Open Education 2007: Localizing and Learning
Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University
Conference dates are September 26-28, 2007

Submission deadline is May 18, 2007

Conference Themes
For the first several years our field focused on content production and content licensing. Today, there are thousands of full university courses and tens of thousands of learning modules available as open educational resources under open licenses like those offered by Creative Commons. However, our work isn’t finished; we’re simply nearing a checkpoint.

If our open education efforts aren’t supporting learning, we’re failing as a field. Period. And as we are beginning to understand how to produce and license content, we have to turn some of our attention to how this content is used by learners and teachers. How do they change, adapt, and localize it for their specific needs or the needs of their specific students? Do open educational resources support learning in ways different from non-open resources? In what concrete ways do open educational resources support learning?

OpenEd 2007 will focus on:
* Localizing open educational resources
* Learning from open educational resources

Acceptance announcements will be made by July 31, 2007. If your session was accepted for presentation, we strongly encourage you to submit a full paper for publication in the conference proceedings. Accepted full papers (5-10 pages) are due no later than August 17, 2007.

All submissions (short description, abstract and full papers) and presentations must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

For more info please see the conference website http://cosl.usu.edu/conferences/opened2007/ or
email conference at cosl dot usu dot edu.

So the Open Education Conference ended today. Glimpses of the impressions swirling about in my head…

volunteer = angel

I want to be in Africa

Openness is a personality trait that can be acquired

I am glad Corrine branded me. I think I need more COSL shirts.

Prayer really can help the weather stay nice enough (or was it 1970’s Soviet weather modification technology?)

9 hours of sleep a night will keep me young

So I’ve learned over the last couple of months just how much work goes into setting up a conference. Plans are finally wrapping up for the Open Education Conference-

The conference is going to be great- lots of fantastic presenters. The keynotes will be Joris Komen from SchoolNet Namibia, John Seeley Brown, and Yochai Benkler from Yale.

And when I’m done, I’m going to Ireland for a week and a half and not even bringing my laptop. I will painfully ignore email, I/M, and even my celphone