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I’ve had a Serendip account for six or seven years. A few years ago, when the “avatar” option emerged on the site, I selected this picture of myself, which suited me quite well for a long while: I liked my smiling, welcoming face, the face that went with my user name (which is my real name). I liked being out, claiming, as myself, what I said on-line.

Last fall, however, I was co-teaching a cluster of courses called Women in Walled Communities, and some of the time we met in a women’s prison in Philadelphia. As a get-acquainted activity, we asked the “inside” women to pick an image to represent themselves, then printed off the avatars of all the BMC (or “outside”) women—and we had to go around and try to figure out who we were (we’re going to repeat this exercise ourselves on Thursday). But nobody wanted to talk to me, because it was so obvious who I was…. They were much more interested in figuring out who had chosen to represent herself with a cactus flower, or a bike, or an owl, or a beach…and why…

The picture I have for my avatar is one I’ve used a lot for things like gmail accounts, etc. It was taken on a day several summers ago when my older sister and I spent the day tie dying clothes, and thereafter used the extra dye on our bodies, because who wouldn’t love to walk around for a week with their skin stained in rainbow colors? I’ve always liked the picture and I’ve always thought it portrays me in a truer way than any picture of me dressed up in a suit or laughing at a party, but I guess I never explored why that was until now. In trying to explain why I chose that particular picture and how it relates to my self-identity and gender and sexuality, I think one thing that became pretty clear to me was that my gender and sexuality are secondary identifiers for me. I do openly identify as a cisgendered queer woman, but I like the idea of some ambiguity for people who don’t already know me well (for example, internet viewers who may stumble upon that picture). In the picture I’ve chosen, my face is not shown and my clothes are rather androgynous, thus taking the focus off of my gender or perceived sexual orientation. Instead the focus of the photo is the fact that I have dye splattered all over myself and I’m showing it off. I’ve loved making and wearing tie dye since I was little (my parents used to dress me in tie dye onesies), and people know me by it. (I even had to write and perform a love song to tie dye as one of my tasks for Hell Week!) It’s something that defines my personality, quirky and colorful as it is, and is a little piece of my history.

I think it was not fit,

but friction, when his limbs brushed

my back, he was already rushing, running, resisting. 

I was writing and he was life, 

a teacher; a man whose shirt was always unbuttoned

one button too low.  He was showing me how,

in fact, I was wanting you.  Now he is not wanting

to know me, now I am growing away from him, now I am

going where I am wanted. 

He was younger than you, yet, there was such richness

in rest or rant or wanting.  There was my writing.

“What do you know?”

said the sister to the writer.

“A writer is a little island, a summer land, 

what is a writer in winter?”

“What was I, when I was your age?”

I was torn.”

“Yes”

“Who are you, when you are not writing?  

You are the listener, the reader, the other.”

“A writer is only one who writes.  

Who I am, when I am not writing?”

“What does it mean to be a mature writer?

You should learn there are no mistakes only poems.”

“When I am writing, I am talking to you,

who are you?”

“When you are not writing, you are talking to me.

Who am I?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I am still torn; bitterness is also basic to us.”

“Well yes, we are twin cultures, where a poem

can be a puzzle, like a chemistry problem.”

“Either is interplay between the part

To start creating collections on OER Commons, you first need to register an account. Commons has the quickest registration process I’ve encountered – it doesn’t require any institutional affiliation or specialty information. Just fill in name, email, and password and wait for your activation email. Once logged in, go straight to the “My OER” link, which is part of the sticky box at the top of the page.

The page which opens tells you, essentially, that you have no saved resources of any kind. The category names, currently all showing as zero are links which take you to the same categories as the sidebar: saved items, submitted items, evaluated items, authored items, and remixed items. You will also see the option to “Add Resource” on the same page.

For now, skip past these options to and scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand sidebar. The very last item on the list says “My Collections” and below it you will see the option to “create collection.” Select this option and the entry field will immediately change to ask you for a Collection title. For our trial purposes, we’ll create a collection called “U.S. History.”

Our previous Comparing OER Repositories post explored how to find basic economic video lectures. There was a clear best option: Khan Academy, whose focus on video lectures made it the easy winner. With this post, we are going to run a similar series of tests, looking for thorough and extensive libraries, finding resources at college level (not just K-12), making sure that resources are reviewed. To get a sense of what’s available and where to find it, we will write a series of posts combing through four different OER repositories – OER Commons, Khan Academy, Connexions, and FREE – looking for three very different sets of material and evaluate the results as well as ease of use.

1)      Interactive materials for chemistry students reviewing volume-related concepts
2)      Video lectures on introductory economic concepts
3)      English grammar and style exercises that faculty can use to evaluate and target students’ specific writing issues

strong feeling that this news needs to be entered into our course archive:
A Family Consents to a Medical Gift, 62 Years Later 

4.

Here is a tree that is her horse away

from home; it carries her a way from her

home pain,this roaning out gelding, bay.  

Sitting at sixteen two hands; she is higher,

safer from ants and students alike.  She

is resting with her horse before the course.

She must be quiet and still for the tree

like a horse can sleep standing up, an old horse

can turn into one of the trees dotting the field.

She doesn’t stand on the second branch, it is sway

-backed, so she won’t pain the animal that way.

She is tender towards the tree, and he still yields

in a rustling of leaves and legs, he comes

to love; he wants to be her treehouse, horse, home.  

Many of our recent posts have focused on how to find and curate resources available in OER repositories that have been created by other users and institutions. However, sometimes you already have the material you need -- either you’ve created born-digital or digital-ready content, or you have traditional content you want to turn into a blended resource. In either case, your content needs a host, particularly if you want that material to be shared with other potential users. This post will compare the options to create and host content from various repositories and suggest which sites are best suited to various types of material. While there are any number of ways to create and share your educational content online, we will tackle them a few at a time. This post will start by comparing three - Connexions, MERLOT, and Molecular Workbench.

The wealth of available educational resources can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Sites which currate these resources all have some built-in mechanism for sorting -- by subject matter, level of difficulty, source, etc. However, these pre-packaged collections are no replacement for currating your own prefered resources and materials into sets that correspond to your interests and courses. This series of posts will provide tutorials on how to create your own collections from sites which offer currated resource lists. Collections in HippoCampus are called "Playlists," which reflects the extremely multi-media focus of HippoCampus's materials. 

Creating a collection of resources on HippoCampus, as on most sites, requires you to create an account. Because HippoCampus is, in part, targeting individual learners, the sign-up process is quick and not very demanding. As soon as your account is saved, you’re ready to start creating a collection, which HippoCampus refers to as a “Playlist.” Once you create an account, you will find yourself as your own HippoCampus homepage. This page doesn’t look much different from the public homepage, though it does provide you with a link you can use to link directly to your account page from, for example, a course page. For our test playlist, we will make a playlist for an introductory level creative writing class.