[Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog food?

Tue Oct 12 01:18:30 MDT 2010

Hi Sudhakar

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Sudhakar Agarkar <s_agarkar at hotmail.com>wrote:

> In India I am engaged in developing open educational resources for schools.
> I am focusing on all three stakeholders namely students, teachers and
> parents. I am finding it difficult to get suitable material for my project.
> There are only a few persons who are ready to share their manuscripts. A
> large majority are concerned with the copyright and the honorarium that they
> would get.
>

The OER Foundation <http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home> is more than happy to
help where we can, and we can connect you with educators in India who share
your objectives.

There is an impressive and active WikiEducator community in India (see:
http://wikieducator.org/India) fostering the development of OER. The Indian
chapter was formerly launched by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan (see
http://wikieducator.org/India/wikieducator_launch) father of the green
revolution and honoured by Time Magazine as one of the top 20 most
influential figures in Asia (
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/cover1.html). I
encourage you to connect with the WikiEducator OER team in India (
http://wikieducator.org/Wikieducator_Indian_Ambassadors).

The OER Foundation provides free online training to educators around the
world who want to develop wiki skills for OER development through the
Learning4Content initiative. The next workshop starts on 20 October -- see
http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C46/Register and feel
free to spread the word.

In New Zealand, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education the OER
Foundation is working on a project to build a national OER commons for the
school sector (see http://wikieducator.org/OERNZ). All our planning
documents and resources are freely available under open content licenses and
you are most welcome (and free) to reuse, adapt and modify these for
supporting OER in the school sector in India.  The OERNZ Newsletters may
help generate a few ideas (see:
http://wikieducator.org/New_Zealand_Schools_OER_Portal/Resources/OERNZ_News).
All these Newsletters are available in open file formats which you can adapt
modify and reuse for your own purposes.

Cheers
Wayne

>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:25:44 +1300
> From: wayne at oerfoundation.org
> Subject: [Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog
> food?
> To: oer-community at athabascau.ca
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Congratulations to Susan and team at Athabasca University for continued
> support of this OER forum and community.
>
> In the corporate world "eating your own dog food" is when a company uses
> the products that it makes - the idea being that "if you expect customers to
> buy your products, you should also be willing to use them". (See Wikipedia -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food.)
>
> Notwithstanding the phenomenal progress of the open content and free
> culture movements over the last decade, OER still has a long way to go
> before it is mainstream practice in the formal education sector. Paul
> Stacey's suggestion of encouraging institutions to use and remix OER created
> externally is a good one because it will teach organisations the value of
> sharing.
>
> In the OER world we are still in the early learning phases of our own
> capability maturity. We now need to shift from the notion of "sharing to
> learn" to "learning to share". "Sharing to learn" focuses on the core value
> and purpose of education -- that is, to share knowledge freely.  However,
> "learning to share" is the real challenge but also the "competitive
> advantage" of OER ;-).
>
> As movement, if we a serious about nurturing the development of sustainable
> OER ecosystems on a global scale -- I think we should start "eating our own
> dog food". That is, as individual OER projects fostering and promoting
> openness, transparency and collaboration through self--organising and open
> systems.
>
> The OER landscape is characterised by project silos with very little
> collaboration among OER initiatives. There is a high level of redundancy and
> duplication of core resources used to support OER projects. For example,
> funding proposals and grant applications are typically developed under
> all-rights reserved copyright. Core policy documents and strategic meetings
> associated with OER projects happen behind closed doors and not very
> transparent.
>
> IMHO, our strategic point of difference (when compared to closed models)
> must be our openness.
>
> Shouldn't we as the OER movement be more open and start eating our own dog
> food? What can and should we collectively be doing to leverage our openness
> for the benefit of society?
>
> If we are serious about real social change let's make a shift towards open
> philanthropy (Here I'd recommend reading Mark Surman's ideas on the concept
> of open philanthropy -
> http://commonspace.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/open-philanthropy-and-a-theory-of-change/
> )
>
> Cheers
> Wayne
> --
> Wayne Mackintosh <http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg>, Ph.D.
> Director OER Foundation <http://www.oerfoundation.org/>
> Director, International Centre for Open Education,
> Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
> Founder and elected Community Council Member, Wikieducator<http://www.wikieducator.org/>
> Mobile +64 21 2436 380
> Skype: WGMNZ1
> Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg
>
> _______________________________________________ Oer-community mailing list
> Oer-community at athabascau.ca
> https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community
>

-- 
Wayne Mackintosh <http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg>, Ph.D.
Director OER Foundation <http://www.oerfoundation.org/>
Director, International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Founder and elected Community Council Member,
Wikieducator<http://www.wikieducator.org/>
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg
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