Session 3: Bringing Open Education into the Foreign Language Profession

Carl Blyth | Director, COERLLRachael Gilg | Projects Manager, COERLL

August 10, 2012

Becoming an Open Foreign Language Educator: Challenges & Badges for Professional Development

1. Professional Development Landscape (Carl)

2. An Introduction to Open Badges for Learning (Rachael)

3. COERLL Challenges & Badges for Professional Development (Carl)

Stories of Open Foreign Language Educators

http://sites.la.utexas.edu/voices/

Professional development knowledge ecology

Teacher Education—Colleges grant degreesContinuing Education—TEA grants credits

BUT…

Three BIG problems with professional development

The rise of informal learning

Informal Learning, Life-long learning—grants knowledge but no degree, no credit

Informal online classes, learning networks, mentorship, peer learning, volunteer, learning-by-doing, etc.

The underspecified college degree

Degrees perform an important function but they represent knowledge as an abstraction, far removed from actual learning.

People with the same degree will likely have very different skill sets. Need for more granularity.

Inaccurate or unverifiable résumés

Employers cannot easily validate information

Employers rarely verify skills because they lack the competence to assess the skills

COERLL Badges are…

An alternative, informal system of professional development and credentialingVisual representation of a skill or achievementVerifiable granting agency Verifiable evidence of achievement Flexible level of granularity

An Introduction to Open Badges for Learning

Digital Badges

Originated online, associated with gamingSome are just for fun or social status

Badges for Learning

OPEN Badges for Learning

Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure provides a way to share badges you have earned across different websites and online communitiesOpen Badges can follow you wherever you go online.

Social mediaYour blogYour professional portfolio

http://beta.openbadges.org/

School of Ed / School of Open

Challenge: Certified Networked Teacher https://p2pu.org/en/groups/certified-networked-teacher/

Course: OER in the K12 Classroom https://p2pu.org/en/groups/pd-on-p2pu-oer-in-k-12/

Study Group: Connected Educator Month August 2012https://p2pu.org/en/groups/connected/?activities_filter=learning

P2PU Professional Development

Badge systems are poised to hit the mainstream soon

http://dmlcompetition.net/

Article in EdWeek on badges in K12http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03badges.h05.html

Article in Chronicle of Higher Ed on badges at UC Davis:http://chronicle.com/article/A-Future-Full-of-Badges/131455/

Professional Development Challenges

http://sites.la.utexas.edu/power-of-openness/challenges/

Future Professional Development Opportunities

COERLL is working on developing badges around 2 existing open professional development resources:

Foreign Language Teaching Methods http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods

Spanish Proficiency Traininghttp://laits.utexas.edu/spt

FL Teaching Methods BadgesAssessment Challenge

1. Work through each the four lessons in the online video-based module at your own pace.

2. Complete the Review and Reflect section at the end of each lesson. Post your reflection to share with other learners.

3. Complete the Portfolio assignment at the end of the module. Share your Portfolio item as an Open Educational Resource.

4. Receive a badge!

Thank you

Symposium website: http://sites.la.utexas.edu/power-of-openness

Email us: info@coerll.utexas.edu