Group items tagged

A series of online forums sponsored by UNESCO to look at issues surrounding OER, particularly re-use of OER materials. Scheduled themes of discussions are: 23 - 29 September 2010: Taking OER beyond the OER Community: Policy and Capacity; 20 - 26 October 2010: What works, what does not and under what conditions?; 10 - 16 November 2010: Copyright and the development and re-use of OER. This page contains other background information, including links to the online forums.

By Jarret Cummings in Jarret's blog, Educause, Nov 9 2011. Review of education policy briefing led by Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter, in which she discussed her department's on-going commitment to open educational resources (OER). Her statement included a wide-ranging definition of OER and information about how OER will tie-in with recently announced government grants.

By Audrey Watters in Hack Education (blog), Oct 25 2012. Watters has conducted informal surveys on why teachers do NOT use OER (open educational resources). Reasons are: difficulty of discoverability, lack of supplementary materials, and confusion over licensing. In her Discoverability section, she has a link called "What's available" that directs readers to more specifics about OERs, including which are most popular.

OER university, a wiki,"is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit." As of 11/2011, there are 15 international universities listed as "founding anchor partners," including Empire State College (SUNY) and Southern New Hampshire University in the U.S.

By Paul G. West and Lorraine Victor, prepared for The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, May 2011. This paper appears to be an excellent resource for collections of OER, both in the US and around the world.

With the tagline "search, recommend, collaborate, remix," Folksemantic claims over 110,000 OERs. The product was developed for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning. At the current time (Sept 2010), they are asking for help evaluating their recommender tool.

JISC is a UK-based group that "inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies...." The e-learning program offers 5 tracks to will help teachers learn how to teach in the e-learning environment. Support includes OER.

By Justin Reich on Educational Technology Debate on December 8 2011. Reich argues, from his research on the use of wikis in the schools, that educational technology tends to benefit affluent students, rather than under-served students, primarily because there are more resources for students and teachers in the affluent environment, so teachers can use technology to its best advantage. He recommends technology initiatives that specifically target low-income and under-served students as a solution, and cites some interesting programs.

By sleslie on edtechpost (blog), Feb 14, 2012. In this post on authoring "open textbooks," the author looks at the process of book sprints, which were borrowed from coders in the open source and hacker communities. In a book sprint, a group of interested participants come together with the goal of creating a book (or book-like) project. In addition to a very general outline of the process, the post recommends some tools that a group might use, as well as a link to some sample books.

Both the tools and the process seem interesting. How might this process be applied to a KPI project...in lieu of a Jam? In conjunction with a Jam? As the Jam take-away?

By Daniel R. Rehak, PhD., Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) technical advisor. Presented as keynote at Fourth International Workshop on Search and Exchange of e-le@rning Materials (SE@M '10), September 27-28 2010 in Barcelona Spain. Rehak's basic point is that all of the learning materials already exist -- we just need a better, more viable, more searchable repository for them. Very nicely produced presentation.