Open content licensing for educators/Course dashboard/Announcements/14.02 Session 1

'''You should follow the OCL4Ed course according to your own time zone. These instructions are for your Wednesday 5 & Thu 6 February 2014'''

Welcome to OCL4Ed 2014.02 our first open content licensing course for the new year.

This is a free online course helping to build global capacity on open educational resources. The course provides a few optional certification options. If you are planning to work towards certification for participation you MUST register your Twitter nickname, blog url and Google+ ID using the registration form on the OCL4Ed homepage BEFORE posting any course activities. This information is used to track your participation.

These open workshops are amazing international community learning events. We're privileged to be able to learn together. Currently, over 220 participants from 51 different countries have registered so far. (Feel free to invite friends and colleagues to join us. Just point them to our course homepage to register: http://wikieducator.org/OCL4Ed).

Two places you can access the course materials (You can choose)


 * 1) The course dashboard on WikiEducator
 * 2) An alternate version which removes non-essential wiki links (ideal for learners not familiar with wiki navigation).

(Both versions provide access to the same materials. Bookmark your preferred choice in your browser for easy access)

Orientation for new participants

If you just joined us and missed the pre-course announcement, please visit the course dashboard and read the pre-course announcements. If for any reason you miss any of the email announcements during the course, remember that copies are posted on the course dashboard

Our first session is pretty relaxed and will allow you the time to establish your personal learning environment and familiarise yourself with the course navigation.

Course schedule

The OCL4Ed course is divided into 5 sessions and we will allocate two working days per session. We recommend that you spend about 1 to 1.5 hours per session over the two days for each session at times which suite your own schedule.

Participation and certification options

You can choose to participate in our OCL4Ed micro Open Online Course (mOOC) in one of three ways: personal interest; certification for participation or assessed course credit.

We recommend that all participants contribute to the course using microblog posts. (You can post directly using WikiEducator's WENotes feature on the course dashboard, or using your own Twitter account. The hashtag for this course is "#OCL4Ed". See how to create a free Twitter account if you don't have one.)

If you're interested in working towards certification for participation, you must:


 * 1) Create a personal blog (if you don't have one) before you begin participating in the course.
 * 2) Login to Wikieducator on the course homepage and register the url of your blog. (Note: Register the url for the public/published view of your blog - not the url for your blog dashboard used for editing posts.)
 * 3) Declare yourself on your course blog. (Remember to tag your post (called a label in blogger) using the code: OCL4Ed.

Overview of Session 1

From the course dashboard you will find a summary of the links for Session 1. (We also provide quicklinks below.)


 * We begin with a welcome from Stephen Downes followed by a short reflective reading on teaching as a vocation and profession. We look forward to reading your thoughts on the discussion activity task.
 * We commence our journey into open content licensing for educators by asking participants what they consider fair and reasonable practice with regards to sharing teaching materials. We will wrap up Session 1 with a reflection on the meaning of freedom in education and you will share your thoughts with the group using microblog posts.
 * Learners interested in certification for participation should post their learning reflection for this session.

Don't forget to share your thoughts on what permissions you deem fair and reasonable by completing the fair and reasonable practice survey. (We will share the outputs of the survey with all participants in the next few days.)

Have a great day and we look forward to seeing you online!

With kind regards

Your facilitators.

A few tips


 * 1) Remember all posts on Twitter and Google+ must include the tag #OCL4Ed which is needed to harvest your posts for the course feed.
 * 2) All course blogs must be registered on the course homepage plus you must label or tag your blog posts using the course code: OCL4Ed. (See how to add a tag in Wordpress or .) Without this information we are unable to harvest your posts for the feed. Note that it can take up to an hour before a correctly tagged blog post appears in the feed. Twitter and WikiEducator WENotes posts will appear almost in real time.

Quicklinks