OER10 Final Panel: The future of OER?

Final panel at the OER10 Conference in Cambridge, 22nd-24th March 2010

Members of panel from left: Alison Littlejohn, Peter Burnhill, David Kernohan and Patrick McAndrew.

OER10 Conference, Clare College, Cambridge University

Clare College, Cambridge University

Upload feito originalmente por Andreia Inamorato dos Santos – OER/REA

Photos taken at the OER10 Conference (Open Educational Resources) at Clare College, Cambridge UK – 22nd -24th March 2010

Making Education Meet the Challenge: Going Global 4

British Council – Going Global 4 – International Education Conference

Where? Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London
From Thu 25th Mar 2010 to Fri 26th Mar 2010

Going Global 4, an international education conference sponsored by the British Council, highlights some key issues:

• How does the recession and consequent growing isolation of countries affect the global mobility of staff and students, and what should they do?
• Is the vision of a truly international educational system under threat?

To see a replay of the key notes visit Policy Review TV .

SCORE : Support Centre for Open Resources in Education

OER 10, Cambridge, UK

Live blogging, 24th March, 12:00

Talk by Chris Pegler

SCORE is an OER project led by the Open University (OU) UK. The OU has a national role in disseminating OER.

SCORE builds on the OpenLearn initiative. SCORE aims to increase sector capacity for effective OER creation and use, moving away from a supply-led approach. SCORE builds on the OU existing relationships, which are various, at an international level, such as : TESSA, OLnet, iSpot etc.

Key SCORE deliverables are:

• 36 fellowship projects
• 3600 hrs of OER reflecting sector needs
• 18 engagement/dissemination events
• enquiry-based support and advice service
• ‘vibrant’ web 2.0-based virtual community

For more info on SCORE:  http://www.open.ac.uk/score/

Email: score@open.ac.uk

Opencast UK – Broadcasting via Matterhorn

Live blogging, 24th March, 10:30 AM

Presentation by Bjorn HaBler

Matterhorn basecamp

Bjorn starts by saying that Opencast as a community converts on a number of different projects, of which Matterhorn is one of them. It is an opensource data capture tool. It captures lectures, processes and distributes them in various media such as YouTube EDU. MH (Matterhorn) is also a management system that interfaces for searching videos, subscribing to RSS feeds, provides basic media annotation and allows for viewing close captions.

More info @:

http://blecanthra.lboro.ac.uk

Towards a Network of Content and Curriculum: Interoperability of OER Projects

Workshop facilitated by Brandon Muramatsu and Jeff Merriman

OER10 Conference, Cambridge

Image credit: slowmuse.files

Live blogging: 1:30PM

OER Reuse

Jeff started by defining interoperability as ” … the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged”. However, their preferred definition is ” a measure of the ease of integration between two systems or software components to achieve a functional goal”.

Brandon and Jeff argue that interoperability is not just about passing information. A highly interoperable integration is one that can allows the user to do the things that are aimed to be achieved.

There are many applications and many OERs. Multiple repositories and VLEs. The aim is to define an integration goal, one-to-many and many-to-many , particularly for non-technical people.

The India Institute for Human Settlement is a new MIT initiative in India and is thinking of ways to be able to change easily and cheaper to better and most up-to-date technological alternatives in the future, as the project progresses.

Current tools that focus on interoperability of systems and/or  resources:

• http://www.lafabrick.com/blog/
• http://unlock.edina.ac.uk/
• http://cohere.open.ac.uk/
• http://www.oerrecommender.org/

The conversation moved into discussing what interoperability means – interoperability of systems or pedagogies? Both seemed to be important and needed. However, it is a difficult matter because each OER is produced for a specific context and audience and any reusability of such materials would have to contemplate a process of adaptation and localisation that can hardly be done by a technological tool without the time-consuming ‘human thinking’ component.

It was also brought to the discussion that OER is not only for teachers but also for learners, and interoperability should take the learners into consideration too. The discussion needs to be continued as at the moment many issues regarding interoperability of OER projects seem to remain a challenge to educationalists and technologists.

OER10: The Openness Agenda

OER10 Conference, Cambridge, UK.

Opening Talk by Dr Malcom Read, JISC Executive Secretary

Live blogging, 10:30 AM

Dr Read starts by discussing the various contexts in which ‘openness’ is used:

• Open source: software
• Open standards: interoperability
• Open Access: research  outputs, research data
• Open Educational Resources: course material
• Open Science: open innovation (the research process becoming more open via web 2.0)

OER New Challenges:  need to focus on the discovery and use of OER and also on learning form current experiences (reuse).

HEFCE funding for next year (2011) is  £4million and will incorporate the release of projects in identified priority areas only. Another goal is to improve the findability of OER resources.

The UNESCO OER Agenda

GUIDE ASSOCIATION

Live blogging, 18th March, 9AM

GUIDE workshop Rome – Dr Indrajit Banerjee opening talk – UNESCO

Dr Indrajit Banerjee of the UNESCO ICT in Education, Science and Culture starts by considering some of the challenges and benefits of distance education.

Next, he recommends practitioners the use of  the ICT Competence benchmarks for teachers, launched by UNESCO.

UNESCO is focusing on 3 key areas, having launched its Open Suite Strategy.  It has 3 components: 1) Open  educational resources (Unesco is developing its own educational resources platform); 2) Open Access to Scientific Information and 3) Free and open source software.

He also mentioned UNESCO’s Open Training Platform (OTP) with more than 3500 courses in 21 subject areas. The OTP has over 630 training providers and has attracted more than 1 million visitors (www.opentrainingplatform.org)

OpenLearn Research Report 2006-2008

This is the OpenLearn Research Report of the OpenLearn initiative of the Open University UK. Here we discuss both the user and the provider experience with open educational resources (OER), and we bring to the fore the importance of collaborative activities to foster the use of such resources. A number of case studies are presented.