Ed Linfoot
A new, open-source anthropology journal is beginning to pick up serious attention – and with good reason. Open-source (free!) materials have always been a passion of many web 2.0 fanatics. As publishing becomes increasingly digital, it is colliding with the open source movement. The results are some great resources for us.
Most of my project ideas and inspiration come from the news. Last week provided me with two fantastic ideas for students. I have not really flushed them out yet, in terms of what will this look like in the classroom, but I know I need to use them.
The first one is Bubble Ball. This is an iPhone app, that topped the download list from list in the Apple store much of last week. It was downloaded more often than Angry birds, which I have to admit is one of my guilty pleasures. Amazingly it was created by a 14 year old boy, Robert Nay. He used an open source software known as Corona. Robert claims he tried several other development tools, but found this the easiest to learn on his own. What an excellent example for students. With resources in schools also being in short supply more often than not, this also provides an inexpensive programming option for your students. What`s more, is that it provides students with a real world, engaging platform to share and test their work. Just think how interesting students reflections in the evaluation stage of the design cycle will be if they have opportunity to share their work with the world. For those of you that like quantitative stats, think of how telling the number of downloads of a student made app would be in terms of measuring success. I would love to hear others ideas about how they use this in the classroom, so please post a reply about how you use this!
Anthropology is not the kind of subject you can teach by picking up old lesson plans or lecture notes from years ago. It is a dynamic field – one element that also makes it exciting! This means that it also requires constantly shifting materials and pedagogy.
However, despite the best intentions, teachers are busy people and at times struggle to update their courses in the way they would like to. One set of resources that teachers may find helpful in refreshing their materials is the growing number of open source resources out there. They are usually rich with information and can serve as a quick and effective means to have questions answered. Open source resources are free and share the spirit that information should be shared as widely as possible. Here are a few of my favourites…
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