Thursday, October 21, 2010

Why So Stingy, Hewlett?

ISKME:

OER Fellowship Program 2010-2011

Beginning in fall 2010, ISKME is offering a limited number of OER Fellowships to highly qualified educators. We will select up to six participants for the program, to run from November 2010 through August 2011. The purpose of these fellowships is to grow strong connections with educators who will serve as leaders around OER in their classrooms, school districts, and communities.

An OER Leader is someone who:

  • Collaborates with others to create and share an innovative OER Project
  • Mentors educators new to OER and advocates for the use of OER in their communities
  • Incorporates technology tools (wikis, nings, OER Commons) into their teaching practice


Educators can support each other in forging new pathways for collaboration in K-12 teaching by sharing teaching strategies, innovative ideas, and curricular resources. The sharing of Open Educational Resources (OER) and related practices involving digital and social learning is the cornerstone of ISKME’s facilitation of teacher professional development and peer-based learning. ISKME’s approach leverages existing practices of teachers and builds on ISKME’s OER Commons network for open teaching and learning resources.


ISKME’s OER Commons Fellowship project, supported by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation, has the following goals:

  1. to engage in-service and pre-service teachers in trainings around collaborative learning strategies and shared online resources and processes;
  2. to develop and share a training model for others to use and adapt; and
  3. to create a pilot network that supports OER awareness and use in education.

Timeline:

  • Fall/Winter 2010 – This phase is comprised of virtual training sessions, wiki resource content creation and progress reporting/feedback
  • Spring 2010 – This phase focuses on social network use, co-facilitating training webinar and in-person workshop presentation, and documenting teaching resources used and student projects
  • Summer 2011 – Co-facilitate Teacher Academy


Requirements:

An OER Fellow is required to complete the following:

  • Participate in at least four of ISKME’s OER training workshops online and in person (when possible) during the 2010-2011 school year
  • Develop and document an OER curriculum project for a classroom setting, consisting of five or more new or adapted, open digital resources, such as inquiries, lessons, hands-on activities, etc.
  • Align OER materials to state and common core curriculum standards
  • Incorporate student work and feedback into project via text, photo, and video.
  • Use project and resources in the classroom setting on at least three occasions, and reflect upon the experiences in discussion and written formats.
  • Communicate and collaborate with other OER training participants and peers online and in-person during the fellowship period.
  • Introduce local colleagues to OER and collaborative processes and form online cohort of at least five other teachers to use social networking processes to discuss issues and challenges related to OER and education
  • Present at virtual and in-person trainings about learning and experience with OER processes, Fellowship Project, and potential for widespread impact.
  • Participate with ISKME in documenting and giving feedback on the impacts of the Fellowship and the project activities.

I do a brief Snoopy dance, perhaps the logjam is breaking, our time is now! I continue...

Upon completion of the above, a Fellow receives:

  • A stipend of $1,000
  • A certificate of completion from ISKME
  • Continued access and support in OER online networks

A thousand bucks?!? Here's what I say to that: Go. Fuck. Yourself.

I have no idea why the Hewlett Foundation cannot help but embed an insult in every gesture toward open K-12 content, but it has in every case I've seen.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Language, language... You lose points for stuff like that.

Besides, I don't think that you took the certificate fully into account. How can you call them stingy when you get a certificate?

Tom Hoffman said...

I've got no problem with your group, Greg, but I'm sick of Hewlett being completely full of shit.

LisaPetrides said...

We’re excited about the opportunity that our Hewlett funding has given us to be able to offer an honorarium for teachers to share their work, receive some free professional development, and hopefully, to grow some new OER teacher champions in the process!

Lisa Petrides, President, ISKME