Thanks, Karen, for the video and for doing follow up here. I think I will propose a bit of a follow up myself later this week. A few initial items as I work my way through Tiffany's presentation:
1. I like bottom up invitation, teachers meeting up themselves flattening the hierarchy. Would like to see teacher leadership on this initiate at the bottom and then get facilitation help from the top--experts on tap dontchaknow. Although I am glad of the leadership in Utah realizing that they might want to prime the pump with the science and math teachers.
2. It was very interesting that among science teachers cost was not a major factor, but accessibility to resources. It makes me think that open texts and education are finally embracing 'mash-up' culture. I would love to think that some of us might be able to automate the text authoring process in a way that is like creating a collaborative playlist that keeps evolving. Everyone once in awhile we stop and say, "OK, this is version x.x with an emphasis on these items for learning a particular topic or subject." Then we might start all over from a different stance. I am thinking here about how, for example, different critical points of view can change in almost absolute ways our take on an author and his or her works. Specifically, I am reminded how all of Shakespeare scholarship was revived by feminist critiques of his plays. Could groups of us come up with ways to create ad hoc textbooks? BEtter yet could we get our students to do the same thing?
3. I am fascinated by how much annotation has taken off as a tool for literacy engagement. Tiffany recounts how important it is for students to not only have 24/7, printable access to textbooks but also to be able to digitally annotate them. I agree. I am working on a resource at Digital.Is on this to share later, but I see this extending into students annotating the world. Perhaps it might lead to digital tagging of open spaces with augmentive reality apps, potentially disruptive for admin folks (in other words, students might learn to 'tag' open walls with digital graffiti that cannot be scrubbed off) to textbooks that revise themselves by including QR codes or gps coding of some sort.
4. I am also interested in Tiffany's description about Utah's attempts to 'formalize' informal sharing among teachers. Good luck with that. For one, codifying complexity is a fool's errand. Once captured, thence lost. Yes, you can grab the things of sharing, but the process that generates that? I don't think so. Many of us view top down formalization as a cue to move on. It is like our parents liking our music. Time to move on to something fresher, more immediate, and more reflective of the zeitgeist, our zeitgeist not theirs. It's about ownership/authorship of our own ideas.
5. I haven't made any mention of curation till now, but I think the comments above about ad hoc textbooking fits the curtorial model. I have already used curation platforms like Themeefy and Scoop.it to do this. I know Karen has done this with some excellent Storify stories. I can see great possibilities in what are known as 'booksprints'. Fact is that I would like to do a booksprint with a group of teachers here at P2PU or at NWP's Digital.Is that might take advantage of these new tools. Or to help create a curatorial roadmap for how others might get together for a day or week to write a book. This reminds of software coders getting together to create new apps or tools. Or of the creation of the Wordpress plugin, Anthologize, put together in a week in a 'digital barn raising'. In fact I think NWP needs to fund 'one text, one week' competitons and we could do it during August's connected educator time frame. Sort of like NaNoWriMo only for open textbooks. Most could be short topics within a larger frame that would be put together into larger ones using tools like hackpad.
I will comment further as I watch more of Tiffany's video.