OSL community necessities

From the SurveyMonkey thing:

Given what you know about the challenges and opportunities that Open Source Learning presents, what qualities/ ingredients do you think a learning community must possess in order to make the most of it?

JSYK THIS IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH FOR ME TO SAY SO IN CAPS: what the community needs that we didn't have is adequate virtual infrastructure, most importantly a central place (message board or similar) to post time-sensitive notices, help requests, shouts-out, etc., where EVERYONE (yes, 100% participation is important; that means someone needs to accomplish the digital wrangling of email addresses with more success than I had) will be notified (by email, Facebook, text, phone app, or...?) and see it IMMEDIATELY (that means NOT the course blog [sorry Preston, kids don't check it as much as {I think} you think they do]).

I believe the key determining factor of success is teacher endorsement: in APWH, Mr. Greeley facilitated the creation and use of the Google Group and made joining a requirement; however, in AP Lit Comp, Dr. Preston's "hands-off" policy had one of its few backfires by making it impossible to get full membership or even much participation among members. This is one of those situations in which everyone will do a certain thing if "everyone" else is, but no one will do that thing if "no one" else is. Thus, by common use, the inferior environment provided by Facebook eclipsed the environment I attempted to create with the RAM Google Group, so the latter did not succeed.

Also helpful would be more informal/instant virtual meeting places such as chatrooms, [ahem] *active* shoutboxes, or video chatting.

OSL improvements for next year

From the SurveyMonkey thing:

How do you think this course & approach can be improved for next year's students?

I think if there was a fully functional Random Absence Mentoring next year, it would help the students (chronically ill, foreign exchange, and otherwise) immensely.

Here's why Random Absence Mentoring did not fully succeed: this year there was only one person (me) personally invested in the project (there were others [specifically Min Kim] who would occasionally write posts for it, but only at my prompting), so that as soon as I became out of commission, the whole system collapsed. The reason no one else was invested in the project like I was is because writing daily posts has no *apparent* personal benefit (i.e. I know from experience that reporting on class events certainly helps the writer understand the material more fully, but not even AP teenagers are gonna buy into that one); the only situation with obvious benefit is when a student reads a post written by someone else (i.e. on a day when they were absent). In economics terms, the Marginal Social Benefit of writing a post for RAM greatly exceeds the Marginal (individual) Benefit, and therefore the service is underproduced. In economics, this is where the government needs to step in. The only practical way to create the incentive to contribute is to reward students (extra credit, homework passes, 5P41NX points, whatever) for participating in RAM.

If this is something that next year's students want to continue, I'll be very happy to provide tech support, advice, and mentorship in any way I can, so please feel free to ask.

Lisa's OSL bucket list

From the SurveyMonkey thing:

What would you learn/accomplish in Open Source Learning if you had more time?

• continue refining theory of consciousnes
• continue refining theses of empathy
• read more (or all???) of Shakespeare's plays
• write about theory of consciousness in reference to characters in Shakespare and other literature
• write a crapton more about the Alignment System because I'm STILL obsessed (guess where I'm starting?? SHAKESPEARE)
• learn about classic and modern theories of psychology (and history thereof [Freud, Jung, etc]) and compare to my own discoveries/"made-up" theories, to put it derogatorily
• learn more code
• learn more Japanese and/or Spanish and/or ???
• learn to play piano
• ooh, and maybe guitar
• annihilate everyone on the Internet who has bad spelling/grammar *cough* I mean nicely point them towards quality OSL English resources
• create/curate resources for students with illnesses, disabilities, etc., who have difficulty in "regular" school like I've had
• use the Internet, etc. to connect people with obscure/enigmatic illnesses (like myself) with experts and specialists that can help them
• ...and just generally use whatever resources available to me to increase personal and universal happiness, wellness, and wisdom in whatever way I can :)