Week 4: Finalizing our categories

Good day all! I think I encountered difficulty communicating the goals well last week and I apologize for any confusion that may have come up. The hope was to discover ways in which categories that already exist in the field may work for individuals and ways they may not work so well for individuals. This would have helped to flesh out a draft copy of categories we may use when we start to find stuff out there. 

I have dug through LINCS discussions, reviewed personal emails, and reviewed other online discussion groups to try to compile a draft list of categories I hope will meet our needs. This list of categories is intended to allow users to search by need or function as the primary means of finding appropriate resources or tools. I have developed a list of 7 main categories that may encompass the many diverse things we can find out there. Within each of the main categories, I may have sub categories that offer specific variations within that major category. 

The link to the draft list is here, and it will be updated throughout the week, so you can simply click on the link to get the most recent version. It may be helpful to reference the categories by number and letter in our LINCS discussions this week. EX: " When thinking about 2.b, I wonder if ..." would be referencing to Wiki sub category in the Communication main category from the list linked above. 

Please take time this week to review this list and respond to the following:

  1. Does this list of major categories cover enough of the "stuff" we may encounter in searching the Internet? Would you suggest other main categories keeping in mind that we wish all of the main categories to reference a function or need an educator or learner might have?
  2. Within each major category, are there additions or changes to the sub categories you would suggest?
  3. Possibly share this list with other educators and ask something like, "If you saw a webpage with these categories organized in some visually appealing way, do you feel you could quickly find a tool or resource you were looking for?". It would be great to hear any feedback the "educator on the street" might have to such a way of categorizing things. Of course soliciting their responses to #1 and #2 above would be a bonus.

I hope the goal this week is clearer. I thank those that emailed me with questions and thoughts and encourage any of you to fire off any questions you may have here or by email. A reminder that our micro group has a bulletin which has an outline of the stages we hope to follow to a successful end. Reviewing that outline may help us see connections to each stage's work. 

Comments

Hi all, Ed: For me, you weren't unclear. Last week was krazy busy. Sorry for being late again. USA Learns has a simple set of search categories, namely course and skill area. http://extrapractice.usalearns.org/ I like that because it's easy to pinpoint relevant resources. As it relates to our work is that I think using tags for level if relevant (GLE, NRS) and skill area(s) would be useful. Just brainstorming other possible tags to add to the above and those already mentioned: Tech required to implement the resource with students, i.e., Internet, spreadsheet, projector, speakers/headsets, &tc., so practitioners can find ones for which they have the tech to use. Resource format: Video, text, &tc. What is the program that will be used as a home for the resources? What possibilities does it offer?

Thank you Diana for sharing your thoughts! I think the idea of tagging offers us much in the way of flexibility because there are so many lenses people focus on when they are looking for things. As for if there are limits, my inner puppy wants to jump up and say, "Limits? No Way!" but we will need to see in the next couple of weeks what we come up with. 

Which brings me to your question about program. The beauty of our work together is that we are not married into any one program or system. One of the goals of this project is to design a system and pilot it while we make tweaks and modifications on the way. I am a huge fan of the Google Tools available for too many reasons to list here, but we may find limitations or better options out there. I will be introducing an online tagging tool next week that may blow a few minds and may offer us options to think about. If we were a commercial entity with gobs of money and server hosting, a database with an HTML5 interactive interface would be the way to go. Of course when the money dried out, and it always seems to do so, what we create would then fall into disrepair and may even become unavailable. If we can find the right match of tool(s) to do this right, and in free, established spaces, then I think that will be a major factor in choosing how we might approach this. I have a system already started up that I will be sharing, but as I read more and more posts here, I am constantly modifying it to take in all the great ideas, perspectives and suggestions people share. Such exciting work with so many great people that really care about the work they do!

My hope is that around Friday or Saturday, after I have been able to read people's thoughts and comments on the categories I proposed, I will be setting those up in two tool options we may use for our next phase which is in brainstorming as many resources that fit into each category as possible. Not assessing anything yet, just collecting. We have some very powerful options available to us for collection. 

I think it is important that any system we come up with has some way to offer at least a star rating system and comments. Think Amazon Marketplace, but for educational resources and tools. That is the goal, how we get there will be a fun and creative journey! 

Nicholas, I love the idea of a vote up/down system, but most of those systems that have used such a feature have encountered a few issues that I am not sure we are prepared to deal with. Primarily, some individuals will wish to promote their resource (especially if profits are involved) to the extreme that they employ people (I can imagine even students might be manipulated into spam entering data for "extra credit") in order to ensure their content stays on top. You see this practice all the time in the free game markets. There are popularity boards which rank games of particular genera. In a game you choose to play, there will constantly be links that pop up asking you to "vote for us on this link to get some in game gold..." or some other benefit. This was so abused that the popularity boards had to hire programmers to redesign all the systems to now track ip addresses and even then there were workarounds. They then added in the captcha systems in which users had to type in text from a given image to verify a human was doing the voting. You get the idea. When you rate things on a leader board, the focus becomes "being the top" rather than celebrating what is each item good for. 

I suspect a simple star system which is accompanies by comments would suffice to give most educators and learners a good indication of how useful something is. A five star rating with only 5 people having reviewed is much less reliable than that 4.5 star rating that has 2,387 people rating it 

Hi Ed,

Your categories were a very good first stab so well down there. Some editions that we could consider:

  • Under communication, add a category for cross school communication? Some schools even have international collaboration with other schools, this includes student to student and teacher to teacher collaboration.  
  • Where would lesson planning tools go on this list? There are some online lesson planning tools like planbook.com or peeristics.com for example.
  • What about Learning Management Systems? These are capable of tracking a wide variety of student data if set up right. Ideally, they could even be used to differentiate instruction if student learning data is included - so they are a tool for implementing data-driven practices. I'm thinking this could go under Administration. 

 

Ed, First off, I was not confused by your request (just too busy last week) but I do appreciate you running it by us again. For me Nichols nailed it. Great suggestions. I think the only tool I did not see was for screencasting, but that is probably covered under other tools. For some, I am not sure if they would be going in more than one. You probably have explained that or have it figured out. And what are we doing with tools whose original purpose might be for one purpose such as communication but some teachers can use them for another purpose? For example: Blogging is for communication but can be used as Expression of Learning. Thanks, Steve

Steve, thank you for bringing up the idea that almost any tool we offer can be used for multiple purposes. When one thinks of a hammer, one initially thinks of pounding things. Then one might also think about how it can be used to pry things. Hitting a can with the claw end and the tool now is used to puncture metal nicely. Still, in spite of all of the uses one might use a hammer for, the general usage is to drive in a fastener. Using this example may help us determine where any given tool might fall into our categories. 

I am hopeful that the alternative uses of any given thing can be highlighted in our evaluation form and process. We will be including narrative responses in which evaluators can offer perspective on what a given tool/resource may be best used for. It is in our evaluation process that we might best highlight variation in usage. Our categories may want to concentrate on the primary intended purpose of a given tool/resource to help people quickly find items that might fit their need without a whole lot of manipulation or alteration.

With your example of blogging, it is true that a blog can be used as an expression of learning, but one could also point to many other tools that could also allow learners to express learning. Initially, I did have a category that was loosely titled, "Shows Off What Was Learned", but I quickly scratched it because almost any tool out there could be creatively used for this. It is not a functional category one would search for, it is more a methodology or pedagogy issue. 

As far as the idea of something falling into multiple categories, I am thinking that evaluators, and the rest of our crew, might have discussions and persuasive arguments before we want to throw something in multiple places. If we agree something needs to go in more than one place, we could do that I think. I would not want to do it willy-nilly as that dilutes the effectiveness of our categories. Just jump into some of the collections out there and do a search for one criteria and then another and another and you might be discouraged that some resources just seem to pop up for any given filter you put in. That is not very functional for me personally. 

Nicholas, I love the points you brought up. I will share my thoughts to each and encourage everyone else to jump in with their thoughts and ideas:

1. Communication: Cross School Communication - There are so many tools available today and each one has many configurations that are possible. I feel that given any communication tool, I could set up accounts or options to facilitate different levels or types of communications, intraschool and interschool. I would suggest that in any evaluation on any communication tool, a reviewer might highlight particular strengths of the tool for intra or inter school communications. This not only helps people identify that a tool can do this function, it will share a perspective of how the tool may accomplish this well if the reviewer was thorough. 

2. Lesson Planning - I was quite intrigued by what types of sites might qualify as "lesson planning" I checked out the two resources you shared and my first thought was, "Why would I pay for this if I could just do this in a calendar (free) or a Learning Management System or even in some of the other tools available?" I was not able to get a good flavor from these sites to knowledgeably differentiate what they offer from what we could do with most any tool available. I worry that lesson planning is so individual and varried in the field that we might not be able to offer tools or resources that would help in the making or storing of lesson plans, but we could provide lots of links to good plans for reference. Not sure if examples of stuff would fit into our focus of Tools and Resources. Is Lesson planning to vague an idea for use to review and be able to describe how this category is not just various applications of tools/resources from other categories? If it stands alone as a category, can others provide descriptions of what these tools offer that differs from just an application of other things found in other categories?

3. Learning Management Systems - There are many in the field that have a high interest in learning more about what LMS exist and how people are using them. I agree that these systems might best fit under Administration. Most include so many functions within the environment, but their primary focus is to offer some level of administrative control within an educational organization. I am editing the list right now to include this item unless people have arguments or rational for why we might not want this category added. 

 

Reviewing the resources you shared got me thinking about what things we might include or exclude. We have not had these discussions yet (they are slated to start up in the next week or so), but I think we might all benefit from starting to think about limitations we may wish to put in place. For example, the item that jumped out at me as I was trying to look over the sources you cited was, should we be reviewing fee services which would require at least two of our reviewers to have accounts in order to do a full evaluation? I guess many would call me a cheapskate in that I always look at free options and if there is a $ involved I often just skip over it. This is probably related to my feelings that there are way too many people getting rich out of educational efforts that continue to struggle, but that is a different topic 

How do people feel about the three items Nicholas and I have started discussing about? Please offer your thoughts and perspectives. 

 

 

Hi Ed,

What you are saying about lesson planning makes sense. And compared to your other categories lesson planning is a bit too specific to have on its own. So it may not fit at all. The advantages of using a digital lesson planning tool is that it can help educators save their lesson plans in a systematic manner so they can more easily access them the following year. They also allow teachers to "share" their lesson plans, making it a collaborative experience too (i've also seen some PD focus on lesson planning, creating a lesson plan portfolio to demonstrate the use of some pedagogical method). This is why an online lesson planning tool seemed like a resource to me - it creates cost efficiencies and opens the door for collaborative learning and exchanges. I'm interested to see whether others think this should or shouldnt be reflected in our category list somehow.

Thank you for the clarification Nicholas. If I understand you correctly, you are thinking that the field may wish to know of tools or services that help them organize, store, share and retrieve lesson plans. Would you see this being a major category like Resource Sharing Sites or do you feel it would fit better in any of the existing categories? If we do it as it's own category, is there a sexier name we might use that is descriptive? The name I offered above just does not "sing" to me :) 

What is everyone else thinking? Should we include resource/lesson plan depots? Would those be evaluated using a different tool than other things in the other categories? Perhaps we offer depots as a category but that does not get formally evaluated and only gets some star / comment system to let the field informally evaluate worth? Great discussion Nicholas, thank you for starting this up!

Hi Ed,

So how about "Collaborative Exchanges"? There are some companies out there that actually specialize in this one service in education, connecting educators with other educators so they can share resources. While this could go under its own category, it may be best to stick it under communication or exploratory learning, my preference being the second since collaboration like this is intended to be a type of PD tool depending on what you are collaborating about. I hope that helps!

 

Hello Ed and others,

Under the Expressions of Learning category, we might add a sub-category of software that students can use for digital storytelling, for example to create comic strips, such as: Makebeliefs Comix  or Storyboard That

The Expressions of Learning category name suggests that these are tools for students (or possibly teachers who are students in professional development) to express their learning, but some of these tools might also appear in a new category,  Tools to Create Instruction that might include sub-categories such as:

1)  Slide presentation creation tools, (e.g. Powerpoint, Prezi, Keynote)

2)  Video creation tools,

3)  Screencast creation tools,

4)  Audiofile creation tools ( aka podcasts),

5)  Learning game and simulation creation tools,

6)  Comic strip creation tools,

7)  Lesson Plan creation tools, such as the OTAN Lesson Plan Builder

and perhaps other sub-categories.

Note: Originally I thought this new category should be called "Tools for Teachers to Create Instruction", but then I considered that tutors, curriculum developers, professional developers and sometimes students also create instruction, so I re-named it "Tools to Create Instruction".

David J. Rosen

djrosen123@gmail.com

 

 

I really like the categories that have been proposed but I am also wondering a bit about how a system such of this will fare over time.  Since technology and tools are constantly evolving both in what is possible and how people use things, any category system will quickly be out of date.  It seems like we might consider instead (or in addition) a system that evolves, if that is possible.  I'm not sure that it would work, but what about tags?   I'm thinking about how the social bookmarking site diigo does things. Since users add lots of tags, one searches by looking for a variety of tags or combinations of tags.  I wonder if a tag system would naturally shift.

I also really like Diana and Ed's ideas of Yelp-like ratings.

Great conversation!

Kathy, what a wonderful segue! As I promised earlier in the week, I have been working to set up an option for us to consider. We need a tool that allows us to quickly link and categorize the many resources out there. Filling out a form may be nice because it puts all our data in one nice area, but it takes more time than we might want to transfer all sorts of information in and then on the other end there is the work of processing that information to share with the field. For our next phase of our project, I think we may have great use of Diigo to quickly capture what is out there and what category it may best fit into. For those of you not familiar with Diigo, please review the following links and ask questions as you wish. I can offer a google hangout walk through this week if that would help, the challenge would be in finding a communal time that works well for everyone.  

Diigo links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u65eQlk12Q Nice overview of the process of tagging a resource, highlighting and sticky notes
https://www.diigo.com Diigo site for signing up. Everyone would need to get an account for us all to be able to join  a common group of links. 

"LINCS Educational Resources" is the name of the Diigo group I created. It is a closed group and you will need to request an invite to get in. Please be aware that I might not recognize your email you use when requesting entry, so if you don't get in after a bit, please email me or drop a message here to let me know what address you used so I can get you in. 

Features of this tool that align with our needs for COLLECTING resources. (we will use a different tool for evaluation later)

  1. Quickly tag any resource with an option to tag multiple options. Tags can always change and individual users with a Diigo account can always retag our resources into their collection and add any tags in their own collection they individually feel apply. 
  2. We can create a group that is closed to only us during our collection phase. Later we can then open that group up to the public and promote it.
  3. We can use the description field to highlight ways the tools/resources might best be used.. 
  4. In terms of rating, Diigo tracks all people that tag a resource. In that way, a resource that is highly used will have thousands more tagging a resource into their diigo collections. Although this is not a star system and it may not focus on teacher only feedback, it is a powerful "ranking" system that is already part of the service.
  5. Free - got to love powerful free stuff!
  6. EVERY resource we tag has the ability for us to create running conversations within that page. These are notes that act like stickies and float on top of the site we have bookmarked. In side these conversations, teachers can be sharing different notes, thoughts, experiences with a given tool or resource. These notes, are only available from the links in our group, so people will want to come to our diigo collection to not only get in on the goods, they will get in on the running conversations going on.
  7. When searching Diigo collections, you can choose what tags you wish. This will allow teachers and learners quick and easy access to everything. We may have to provide them with a list of key tags we used to help facilitate them filtering efficiently. 

Challenges: 

  1. Consistent tagging - if someone spells a tag incorrectly, tagging gets very messy very quick. There is an option to restrict tags to only a set list, but that is limited to a very small set of tags and we have more category tag than they would allow if I use the subcategories as tags. Since we can use this restricted tag feature, I propose we use our existing document of categories and use ONLY the bold words for our tags during collection. It would be fine to include both the major category (Communication) and the sub category(Blogging) in a tag. This would allow us to quickly look at either the major category or the sub category as we wish because Diigo allows for filtering by tag.  Other tags can later be added in and probably will need to be after each tool is evaluated formally (specifically a tag of "Evaluated" would be nice to have). 
  2. Moderation - As with any tool that involves the public, there is always the challenge of moderation and how to handle the flow of suggestions and changes. It is always nice to have tons of moderators to allow for someone to always be available to "fix" or "update" things. Many cooks can also be hard to coordinate in the kitchen as well. I am hopeful that our experience in tagging tons of resources together would allow us all to be moderators for this tagging group beyond the initial work in this project. Nothing stinks more than something great done up with grant money that quickly dies out once funding, support or "the moment" passes. Building up a moderation system that is self sustaining might be tricky, but I suspect this challenge exists with anything we choose. 
  3. Filter List - As tags may change over time, it will be very important to maintain a running list of tags we have used to help increase efficiency for visitors. It can be very frustrating to not know what someone else used as a tag to get to that resource you know you saw somewhere, but you can't find it right now with the tags you try. Perhaps our shared category document with a convention of using only Bolded words as tags may help

Some of us may want to dive right in and get started tagging! I think we may want to wait a few days, let's say Tuesday evening as the deadline, to allow for conversations, alterations, suggestions, and clarification that might be needed. This allows us all to check out the tool, get registered, join the group LINCS Educational Resources and we can discuss any options or suggestions not included above. Please review our categories document to see any modifications I made from discussions last week and to review the bold words. If we might change what tags we use, please advise. 

It would be helpful for you to just post a quick "I have looked over Diigo and these thoughts and I think ..." to let us all know you are either good to go or might have some other thoughts to discuss on this approach. 

Hi Ed,

I am not familiar with Diigo but I watched that video and it seemed really simple. This is a good collaborative tool (heck it could even go on our list somewhere!) so I am glad to learn about it. I will try to get signed up in the group by tomorrow as I got some stuff waiting on me right now.

Hi Ed,'

Diigo video is good. I might have missed it, but one thing that might be helpful info is how to join your group. There might be easier ways like sending you a message, but I searched for the group and then beside where it says members,  I clicked on the number and then clicked, Apply to join it. 

Thanks for setting this up!

Steve

 

David, I think the original intent for the "Expression of Learning" category was to focus on tools that allowed anyone to present something. I do think that I may have had the focus on just the students presenting at first and then when thinking about teachers presenting lessons, I looked through the listed items and felt they all would apply to anyone doing any presentation at all. Perhaps if we just re title the category "Presentation tools" that could cover both umbrellas well?

Your last suggestion of a lesson planning category seems to be a bit different in function from the others. The topic of having a lesson planning tool category has come up before so I think we may have a need to put that category in somewhere. I registered and tried the tool out and must admit that I was quite ignorant a tool like this was out there. I personally would never think of using a tool like this, but I can see how many might find the tool helpful. Thank you for exposing me to an example of what a Lesson Planning tool might look like.

My initial thought is to have it under Administration as that category is intended to be an area that learners would have little to no interest in the tools/resources in that area and those tools there are used to set the stage or manage the flow in a classroom. Lesson planning fits that role of setting the stage or preparing for a educational experience and I don't see other major categories that might fit. Perhaps someone else has a persuasive suggestion for where else it may go? I am going to tentatively put in "Lesson Planning Tools" under administration. If others have suggestions of where we might put it, please offer your thoughts and persuade us. 

Hi Ed, and others,

"Presentation Tools" is a good solution.

I wonder about the "Administration" category name. Will teachers assume this is just for program administrators/managers? Perhaps there could be sub-categories of Administration: "Instructor (or instructional) administration" and "Program Administration"? Of course, later we may want to change the names of categories, and change what categories the tools and resources are located in once we see what all the tools and resources might be. As Kathy points out, however, given how many new tools and resources are being created, it will be a challenge to keep that current.

I like the idea of tagging tools and resources as well as putting them in categories.

That said, I think the main goal of this micro-group is to review tools and resources, and we now have a pretty good list and a reasonable set of categories.  Of course, this micro-group may evolve to become a permanent group with an interest in focusing on a robust, complete and regularly updated list of tools and resources, organized in a way that is best for teachers and program administrators to find the tools and resources they need, but for now I think we have a good list of tools and resources, reasonably categorized for our review work. Do you agree?

[For another project, I would love to have that robust, complete, regularly updated list of tools and resources for adult educators, one that has a complete set of tools for instructors and for program managers. If anyone here knows of such a mega-tool, or perhaps a set of tools, please let me know. For example, I need tools that list and compare features of: 1) online learning platforms (both shell platforms and those filled with learning content); 2) tablets, chromebooks, laptops and other portable digital devices ideally suited for learning; and 3) Open Education Resource sites such as OER Commons. Thanks for any leads.]

David

 

 

 

I agree  that it would be a good idea to not get too wedded to the categories currently selected since resources we end up loving may defy them. This is the power of tagging - more flexible. In fact, maybe it'd fit the moving target nature of our work to just use tags??

Diana, I agree that tagging allows for so much flexibility. In past experiences, I find that many start tagging whilly nilly and then half a year later they look back scratching their head because they can't find that cool resource they know they tagged with something. For our work, it is going to be important to have consistent tags. Our discussions of categories was to help establish titles or tags that we could use as we begin to start collecting sites. Later in our process, during the evaluation stages, we might add in a few tags that might be useful like "evaluated" to indicate resources that have been evaluated by at least two people and reviewed. Later still, individuals might start adding in tags that helped them classify a given resource/tool. Effectively, out tags will act as a backbone structure people can always fall back to while we allow for the field to append other tags once our work is finished this summer.