[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

Paul Silva professorpaulsilva at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Oct 6 06:06:44 MDT 2010


Dear All,
 
In furtherance to the issue of funding and sustainability for the OER/OCW, may I remind in the most humble and non-parasitic way that this OER community was founded to be a movement kind of community, which by implication would mean many communities with shared core principles and practices such that have always underpin progressive movements –core principles such as equity and fairness - practices that value the contribution of “everyone” whilst giving tangible importance to the producers and users of the OER in the recognition that the role played by producers and users are generally interchangeable. Users do become makers and producers also do use the available open contents. The collaborative nature of the OER viewed from this point has been one of the key elements necessitating inter-operationalibility of the OER model. It is therefore gladdening to see that this new phase of discussion starts with razor-sharp teething problems, which have
 beset most if not all of the older progressive movements; the contentious issue of funding and sustainability:
 
Without going over the grounds already covered by Paul Lefrere, Jacques du Plessis, Rory McGreal, Paul Bacsich, Chris Yapp, Bassem Khafagy, and Zaid Alsagoff, I would just state that I share in the view that the global public good of the OER outweighs any narrowly defined funding application criteria such as cost, etc. Since the OER is global so is the OER Movement and it is now for our UNESCO OER Community to join with the users and producers of OER in advocating for Open Educational Resources forming part of the R&D budgets of Education and Training, globally. This in my view is the first step towards the advocacy of the OER as both educational and cultural platform, a platform to bridge inequality of access to qualitative and quantitative educational materials, knowledge skills and expertise within education and training and a most useful trans-national cultural tool that can help reduce poverty and illnesses in the world. After all, we now truly live
 in a global village and in the Information Age where access to meaningful data does empower even those in the remotest part of the world.
 
So, funding can come from working to the global nature of the OER/OCW both in its education and training as well as its cultural capacity and potential. We can also increase and change the nature of membership in the OER Community by working with User/Producer to formally join the community, but we must be able to make interactive global membership work for the world and the movement by providing meaningful purposes for membership such as basic training for all members to be better at accessing and contributing to the OER repositories. The more voice we have and the more interaction between members at all levels the greater impact and positive changes we can effect in the world in support of the global public good.
 
Funding can be a headache in real terms, not for the lack of it, but for the incestuous relationship surrounding the funding entities and their interests in which it has become a common practice that the overhead cost usually match the amount spent on the ground especially in cases of expatriate remunerations and development projects in developing economies. I think the OER communities would need to transform this regressive, colonial and imperialistic practice if we are to impact the notion of equity and fairness in any constructive manner.
 
The MIT OCW statistics as of today reveals one percent record for Africa, so one is reminded of the need to still build capacity for ICT in different regions in the world and OER becoming an R&D budget may help with capacity building if we mount strong and unrelentless advocacy for it.
 
Lifelong Learning, Advocacy of Global Equity, Fairness and Standards in Education and Training and the Reduction of Poverty and elimination of terminal Diseases are central to the global nature of the OER as are the needs to foster and promote indigenous knowledge through translation into English and other languages and from other languages and English into indigenous languages. Such a bridge will be the best advocate for world peace and prosperity in the long run. Though, the problem will always remain as to how the politics of the OER Movement will play out in the end… but for what it is worth, what the OER Movement has achieved to date has been significant and cannot die.
 
Paul A. SILVA PhD
Professor, Literary Arts & Education
www.uie.edu.es
 
 
 


--- On Wed, 6/10/10, Paul Lefrere <p.lefrere at open.ac.uk> wrote:


From: Paul Lefrere <p.lefrere at open.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion
To: jacques at uwm.edu
Cc: oer-community at athabascau.ca
Date: Wednesday, 6 October, 2010, 0:30







Jacques du Plessis <jacques at uwm.edu> writes:
Hi Paul, I liked your email to Susan regarding the zero-sum issue for sustainability of OER projects. This concept of sustainability is something many are intrigued by, yet it is not achieved with ease.

My example is the openlanguages.net initiative. It has been growing since 2004 to offer less commonly taught languages online. 

- Jacques, I like this a lot, it's a great example of OER for the greater good

...It is a modest approach, but I find it more grounded  than the grant-seeing approach, ... I want to avoid financial support that brings 'magic' to a project, and then the money goes away, and there is not the means to maintain the 'magic' or bigness of the venture. That is the dance I do not want to dance :-)

- I admire this approach, and feel that to really make a difference, a project has to have its own internal "magic"; winning a large grant makes some things possible, such as hiring people, but when the grant expires, often the "winner" of the grant is under pressure to move on to the next area where a grant is available, and to stop work on any non-funded prpject no matter how worthwhile it is

It is vital to think bold and beautiful and even quick, but to do nothing if there is not the long-term logic factored in.

- very sensible; when the target is clear, and people work on projects they are passionate about, great things can result without massive funding, as with openlanguages.net and also the example that Zaid gives: Salman Khan (http://zaidlearn.blogspot.com/2008/12/salman-khan-uses-microsoft-paint-to.html )


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