Revision of Syllabus for Collaborative Lesson Planning from Fri, 2011-02-04 17:10

Version 0.42, the Changelog is in the Addendum

Course Organizers:

• Charles Jeffrey Danoff
• Dr. Marjorie King

Course Description:

The course is designed to give educators the tools to collaboratively plan lessons. Practically that means we will cover how-to publish lesson plans online. Within that we will go over ways to make them more attractive for others to use/re-mix as well as tackle philosophical and copyright questions. We will also evolve and refine the document "Collaborative Development Methods" to teach others how they can collaboratively plan lessons. So doing, we will build off the work done by Cycle 3 Collaborative Lesson Planning members.

Expecations for Members:

1. Start and then update their journal in the forums weekly.
2. Weekly comment on and question other students in their journals.
3. Publish multiple lesson plans or related materials online and licensed for re-use.
4. Update and improve the "Collaborative Development Methods" document regularly.
5. Peruse weekly reading assignments.

Grading Scale:

The grading scale reflects all student participation in group discussions and  the course objectives.

• S= Satisfactory
• U= Unsatisfactory
• I= Incomplete

Plagiarism Statement:

Each member should write a one-sentece entry in their journal confirming that the work they are doing is their own, and if borrowed from others, properly attributed.

Schedule:

• Week 1 | January 26th - February 1st, 2011 #
  • Start your journal and write a self-introduction entry which also states what you hope to accomplish in this course. For examples, you can look at Joe and Brylie's journals from the last course cycle.
  • Respond to at least 1 other member's self-introduction entry.
  • Write an entry about the plagarism statement, saying your work is your own.
  • Weekly Reading Assignment:
    • The philosophical foundations of Collaborative Lesson Planning and sharing ideas and building things together through computers comes from the hacking community, thus I'd like you to read the 5 Sub-Sections of "The Hacker Attitude" from Eric Steven Raymond's How To Become A Hacker.
      • Keep in mind that a hacking here does not mean breaking into computers, that is "cracking" you can read Richard Stallman's short piece "On Hacking" to capture the spirit here: "It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have 'hack value'."

• Week 2 | February 2nd - 8th, 2011 #
  • Publish a lesson plan online.
  • Write an entry about the process:
    • Easy or difficult?
    • What could make it easier?
    • Do you think your lesson plan would be usable by another teacher in your field?
    • How long did it take you to publish your plan?
    • What questions do you have?
    • Include a hyperlink to the published plan.
  • Respond to at least 1 entry of another member.
  • Weekly Reading Assignment:
    • How to Upload a Lesson Plan

• Week 3 | February 9th - 15th, 2011
  • Publish another lesson plan online.
  • Write an entry about the process:
    • Different second time around?
    • Was it fun?
    • For another teacher looking to use your resources, is this one harder or easier for them compared to your first one?
    • What questions do you have?
    • Includ a hyprelink.
  • Respond to at least 1 entry of another member.
  • Weekly Reading Assignment: TBA

• Week 4 | February 16th - 22nd, 2011
  • Review the two lessons you have published, then make them better and write an entry about what you did.
  • Drawing on your experiences, add to the "Collaborative Development Methods" document and write an entry detailing what you wrote.
  • Respond to at least 1 entry of another member.
  • Weekly Reading Assignment: TBA

• Week 5 | February 23rd - March 1st, 2011
  • Flexible, depending on where everyone is at and what they want to accomplish.

• Week 6 | March 2nd - March 8th, 2011
  • Ibid.

Addendum

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. King for her suggestions and the instructors from Indiana's EPDE program around whose syllabi this syllabus was based upon.

Changelog:

• Version 0.1 | 27 August 2010
  • Wrote a skeleton outline of the course on p2pu.org.

1. Introduction to the idea of Collaborative Lesson Planning and Wiki Code Primer.
2. Upload your first lesson plans, start document about how-to collaborate on lesson plans.
3. Continue uploading and editing the document.
4. Continue uploading and editing the document.
5. Transform uploaded plans into a useful resource.
6. Put the finishing touches on the resource and collectively finish the how-to document.

• Version 0.2 | 9 September 2010
  • Started the rich text format version of the syllabus by creating the document.

• Version 0.21 | 11 September 2010
  • Expanded upon the original syllabus going into greater detail for each week.

• Version 0.22 (PDF) | 11 September 2010
  • Titled the "Schedule" and right formatted the weeks.
  • Added "Why Wikiversity?"
  • Changed the Week 1 homework.
  • Decided to remove "Why Wikiversity?" (Students can publish where they want)

Why Wikiversity?
The instructor has a previous relationship with the wiki, so he has a personal interest in its success and knows its publishing culture. The licensing on Wikiversity is clearly CCASA, which protects the teachers work and clearly states how others can re-use them in many other ways. Its familial relation to Wikipedia and the Wikimdeia foundation also lead the instructor to believe it has a better chance of long term success for certain uses (e.g. publishing lesson plans) as opposed to alternatives. Finally, Wikiversity has a high participating number of users.

Of course, the student also has a right to publish their work wherever they please, and does not have to use Wikiversity at all.

• Version 0.23 | 12 September 2010
  • Added Marjorie King to the list of instructors.
  • Changed "write" to "right" in the last sentence of "Why Wikiversity?" mistake was caught by Dr. King.

• Version 0.3 | 23 September 2010
  • Added grade scale (per Marjorie King's suggestion).
  • Added dates to the week's (per Irene Martinez's suggestion).
  • Added a plagiarism statement (per Marjorie King's suggestion).
  • Added a new goal to the course about publishing a booklet.
  • Modified the week 5 and 6 homework assignments.
  • Modified the week 1 and 2 homework assignemts relative to what's actually been sent out.

• Version 0.31 | 9 January 2011
  • Dr. King changed the grading scale to Pass/Fail from A/B/C/.. and added "Course Description" and "Course Objective" sections.

• Version 0.4 | 25 January 2011
  • Filled in the new sections added by Dr. King.
  • Re-wrote the schedule, save weeks 5 & 6 which I have left as flexible at this stage.
  • Re-did the document formatting.
  • Added links to most of the versions in the Changelog.
  • Added the week 1 reading assignment.

• Version 0.41 | 3 Feb 2011
  • Added week 2 reading assignment.

• Version 0.42 | 4 Feb 2011
  • Added an internal link for Week 2 schedule.
  • Added "Acknowledgements" section.