

Open: A tool for teachers to create and share lessons with their students - boazsender
http://opentheclassroom.com

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benwerd
This could be awesome.

I'm not sure I like the idea of lessons being electronic in a systemic way.
(When I worked on Elgg, originally an elearning app, I declared that I'd stop
immediately if I thought people would use it to replace face-to-face lessons.)
Nonetheless, this is going to have a lot of very positive real-world
applications. Kudos also for a very simple, friendly design.

Here's what I don't like: the use of the word Open for a centralized service
that presumably has a commercial business model. Open education is a generic
term for a kind of learning where barriers to entry are reduced as much as
possible. Think OpenCourseWare, the Open University, etc. The name for this
service feels like it's trying to co-opt and take advantage of that movement,
even if that isn't actually a motive here. Education is a very emotive area,
and a public good, so a lot of people feel it's best suited for free and open
source software. Your work is cut out for you to justify yourselves being a
commercial enterprise that stores lesson content from teachers, and I'd
suggest that calling yourselves Open is not a good first step.

Finally, this became a running joke with Elgg, so I gotta ask you: are you
SCORM compliant?

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singlow
I don't see any reference to downloading the content to use inside of a third
party learning management system, so I don't see how SCORM compliance would be
relevant. Although, the ability to take the content with you would be great.

One thing I have built in situations similar to this is build a SCORM wrapper
that can load the content in an iframe and translate scoring and tracking data
back to the LMS. They could do this while still maintaining a fully hosted
content model. Many of my clients will not consider an authoring tool for
content that cannot be hosted in their LMS.

~~~
benwerd
The ability to take the content with you, I think, is crucial. A lot of the
existing learning management systems have very poor functionality, so it might
be neat to use Open as a central control panel for these lessons, and push
them to your relevant LMS when appropriate.

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Joakal
Using a single very common word is horrible and will confuse people [0]. If
they insist on using the word 'Open', I suggest capitalising it to 'OPEN'
maybe?

I welcome cheaper education tools. However there doesn't seem to be anything
'open' about this. No open source code commitment, use is 'free' and students
appear to need permission from the teacher to enroll. It seems that they
should rename themselves to Online instead.

[0] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Open>

~~~
dmerfield
Our tool is Open in the sense that access to it for teachers and students is
free. The reason teachers and students can't sign up right now is we're in
closed beta.

\- David, Co-Founder

~~~
Joakal
How free is free? Do they submit resources that only you can own the copyright
to like IMDb does? Can anyone not an official student participate allowing
public education?

How are you going to fund maintenance with no clear business model?

I hope it doesn't discourage you!

~~~
dmerfield
Open is free for individual teachers to use. We will not own resources
submitted to Open.

And yes, anyone can watch any lesson on the site (another reason we're named
Open).

Our revenue model is based upon service we intend provide to schools.

~~~
jpwagner
I think this path looks great. One obscure thing to be aware of in this space
is the giant lurking patent troll (Blackboard.) Good luck!!

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edtechdev
I wish them the best, but there is no information on the website.

There's not even a video of what the tool is like. If it requires digital
tablets to use, does it only run on windows, or the ipad, or android...

And as rameshnid points out, most teachers don't have the free time, the
inclination, or possibly the skill to create their own multimedia-based
lessons and homework activities from scratch.

Ultimately I think, many educational innovators are forgetting the fundamental
problems with education - only 30% of students who go through the process end
up proficient in reading, math, and science. And even many of those who are
proficient end up not learning much at all in college and have serious
misconceptions. They don't really learn until thrown into the world later on.
See for example the opening of the video Minds of Our Own, where Harvard & MIT
graduates given a battery, bulb, and wire can't even make the bulb light:
<http://www.learner.org/resources/series26.html> Or Jerome Epstein's work,
which found a significant percentage of college students only had an 8th grade
or even 4th grade level of understanding of math.

Overcoming these and other misconceptions involves more constructivist and
interactive techniques that lectures and flashcards and drill & kill software
don't address.

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rameshnid
I spent some time last year working on a similar product here in Mumbai. We
had an amazing product, but the challenges here in India were -

1) Teachers don't like to record videos/ make digital teaching aids, unless
initiative is from the top.

2) Its difficult to make videos of the quality of Khan Academy, not every one
can teach like Khan

3) Its additional work load on already underpaid teachers

So these things got me thinking-

\- Can you incentivize creation of high quality lectures? Maybe raise
donations and pay teachers who create the best content.

Anyway good luck with it. Also let me know incase you want a demo of our
effort in case we can collaborate on this. (I don't know if this is
appropriate here, please correct me in case its not welcome)

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Reclix
Really like the idea - have been waiting for an application that will allow
teachers to become masters of their own digital pedagogical content. However,
I'm not a huge fan of the attack on classrooms - perhaps it's a personal
opinion, but 'needing improvement' doesn't necessarily mean 'broken', and the
statement makes me question the efficacy of a service purporting to be a
panacea for all the flaws in a traditional classroom.

~~~
Joakal
You might be waiting a long time simply due to one corporation wanting a
monopoly over online educational resources, Blackboard Inc [0].

[0]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackboard_In...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Blackboard_legal_issues)

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mkramlich
horrible name. assuming you do get enough traction with it otherwise, it's
going to cause nothing but confusion when talking about. "opens" you to other
naming problems in the future if you try to expand the brand to other products
Example: the Open Gradebook -- is it open, or is it owned by the Open company
-- do you prosecute everyone other website or software with Open in the name?
can of worms is "opened". :)

my two cents

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rockncode
I agree Open is too generic. Open should serve as a qualifier for a name that
is more describing of what the software does.

~~~
dmerfield
'Open Learning' is one idea we've been playing around with

~~~
pnathan
I agree that 'Open' is really generic.

Maybe 'Transfuser', as in 'Knowledge Transfuser' :-) ?

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kamens
I met with these guys a few days before they went to their final Thiel
presentation to talk a bit about where we're heading w/ Khan Academy and their
brainstorms. @david and @nick, congrats on making the cut!

Super nice, motivated guys. Hope they deliver something cool and push the
education envelope.

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lukifer
Watching lectures at home, doing "homework" at school. This makes so much more
sense to me than the default way we do it now.

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andrewce
This seems like it could be really useful when paired with "The Gutenberg
Method" (<http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html>), which basically asks
students to do the assigned reading at home, along with some type of
annotation of "Here's what to look for".

Then, in class the next day, the teacher answers any questions, briefly covers
any difficult concepts, and they can spend the rest of the class-time engaging
with each other instead of lecturing.

My suspicion (disclaimer: I was, at one point, a teacher) is that if you want
people to use this service, you'll have to show how it improves instruction,
and you'll have to do so in much more concrete terms than you have here.

That said, if I ever have a classroom of my own again, I can see myself using
this tool when appropriate.

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exch
Have you guys in any way been inspired by Salman Khan's (khanacademy.org)
work? Perhaps a cooperation could benefit both of your organizations, and
consequently the rest of the world.

Improving education is always a very laudable goal. And even though I see the
value of having many parties to chose from, I think in this case a lot more
can be achieved by reducing fragmentation of the available tools and sources
and having potentially major players join forces.

~~~
peteforde
I don't get the sense from the Khan literature that they intend for "normal"
teachers to record their own lessons. I could be mistaken?

~~~
exch
It's not portrayed in that way, no. Khan Academy seeks dedicated movie makers.

Letting the teacher do it instead can have its benefits. Certainly when it
comes to teaching a customized or niche curriculum that simply isn't available
on a place like khanacademy.org.

However, I do think that having videos recorded by people who excel at that
kind of stuff (like Salman himself) also makes a lot of sense. A good voice
and a clear way of explaining potentially difficult subjects can not easily be
done by everyone.

One would say that a teacher should be able to do it, but talking to a
computer screen is a lot different than talking to a classroom. And from my
own experiences I know for a fact that not nearly all of them have the charm
and capacity to convey a subject in an understandable and inspiring manner.

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pnathan
This is a cool idea, in _principle_.

I am generally unconvinced - and have been for a long time - of the efficiency
of video lectures. When I was homeschooled, the video-curriculum students
(Abeka Video) never seemed to do quite as well as the ones with live
instructors.

I am, however, quite enthused about the idea of educational startups, and I
certainly hope to be proved utterly wrong!

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peteforde
I'm not sure why all of the other commenters are so negative. This looks
amazing! Khan Academy for the local high school... I love it.

I wish that I could have gone to a school where I watch the lectures at home
and spend the 74 minutes with the teacher working on problems.

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JabavuAdams
If you want to sell this to teachers, you need to talk about how you will
decrease their prep. time. Any hint of increasing prep. time is a show-
stopper.

E.g. I do about 2-4 hours of unpaid work for every paid hour in the classroom.

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boazsender
By the way the two founders are 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellows.

~~~
boazsender
(
[http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=19)
)

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aymeric
Using digital tabets -> "Using digital tablets"

