[Oer-community] OER mapping - Welcome and introduction to Week 1

Mon Nov 12 11:57:00 MST 2012

Dear Susan and Everyone,

Constructing an OER World Map is an excellent initiative to accompany the many other services of the OER Community. The “bridge building” concept is a useful and appropriate one for supporting continuous planning and improvements.

With new, community-driven efforts emerging in so many places, truly “open” OER is more important now than ever. Its potential for rural and distributed learning communities is especially significant.

Thank for you for the information and your continuing efforts. 

Jane

Jane Ross, PhD. President
Association for Life-wide Living (ALL) of Alberta
Battle River Health Network – Battle River Writing Centre
T: 780/672-9315
E: source21 at telus.net

Inspiring creativity for health through our landscape, our communities and the arts.

From: Susan D'Antoni 
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 6:42 AM
To: oer-community at athabascau.ca 
Subject: [Oer-community] OER mapping - Welcome and introduction to Week 1

Dear colleagues,

It is a pleasure to be back together with old colleagues and to welcome new colleagues to this international group.  The focus of this discussion is tol think about and discuss whether the growing OER community could build an “OER World Map” to present a picture of the global landscape of OER initiatives.

This exploration of mapping OER initiatives is one of the main activities of the UNESCO/COL Chair in OER at Athabasca University in Canada.  We work in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair at the Open Universiteit of the Netherlands and our collective network of partner institutions and organizations.

_______________________________

Looking back ...

Over the past decade a global OER movement has emerged – with more and more initiatives in more and more countries. The OER movement began with a vision of sharing knowledge freely and openly. In a world where growing numbers of children and adults want and need to learn, whether in formal or informal settings, the accomplishments of the OER movement over the decade are a contribution.

A decade of development:

*   10 years ago, the term Open Educational Resources was coined at a UNESCO meeting …

*   7 years ago, an international OER Community was launched byUNESCO IIEP to raise awareness of OER and to consider some of the related issues …

*   5 years ago, the UNESCO IIEP OER Community ranked the priorities for advancing the OER movement – and identified awareness raising, and community building and networking as the most important actions …

*   5 years ago, OECD reported on a study of the scale and scope of OER at that time …

*   5 years ago, the Cape Town Open Education Declaration was released …

*   2 years ago, a UNESCO/COL Chair in OER (Athabasca University) and a UNESCO Chair in OER (Open Universiteit) were awarded to act as think tanks and bridge builders, working through partnerships and networking …

*   this year in 2012, UNESCO passed the Paris OER Declaration and OECD released a Working Paper on Open Educational Resources.

In ten years, much has been accomplished.  There are many individual and institutional OER initiatives, discussion lists, meetings, conferences, groups, communities and networks.

__________________________________

A challenge ...

The very success of the OER movement in its growth over the decade has made it difficult to have a comprehensive overview of the various initiatives in institutions, countries and regions.  Sometimes it is even hard to know who is doing what in one’s own environment.  

__________________________________

Our discussion ...

Let us consider two main questions, although there will be others:

1.   Would a world map to visualize the global OER landscape be useful? (example below created from OCWC data)

2.   Could the OER community work in collaboration to design, build and maintain such a map?

____________________________________

To start Week 1, let’s consider the first question -- 

     How would a visual OER world map be useful in your own setting and from your own perspective?

The floor is yours …

My best, Susan 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Oer-community mailing list
Oer-community at athabascau.ca
https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/private/oer-community/attachments/20121112/ada0bbc7/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1466 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/private/oer-community/attachments/20121112/ada0bbc7/attachment-0001.jpe 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 181048 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/private/oer-community/attachments/20121112/ada0bbc7/attachment-0001.png 