[Oer-community] OER Geography in an Internet Age - Which "geographies" will provide the most utility to users?

[Ricardo]

Dear one,    

 

I agree with Virginia Cram-Martos on those crucial elements below  that
would direct everyone to what kind of OER one needs exactly without wasting
time in his research with regard to language barrier. This map shall be
useful all the time even if one encounter difficulties in using a given
resource, he would know to whom address a question for further
clarification.  

 

 

- Language 
 - Academic Subject Area (Geography, Economics, Physics, Sociology, Maths,
etc.) 
  - Age Grouping (Pre-School, Primary, Middle School, Secondary, University,
Post-Grad, etc.) 
 - Geographic Location of the Developer(s)

 

 

Richard

 

De : oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca
[mailto:oer-community-bounces at athabascau.ca] De la part de Virginia
Cram-Martos
Envoyé : Tuesday, November 13, 2012 08:30
À : oer-community
Cc : maria-teresa.pisani at unece.org
Objet : [Oer-community] OER Geography in an Internet Age - Which
"geographies" will provide the most utility to users?

 

Dear OER Colleagues, 

I would like to suggest that while mapping OER initiatives according to
their geographic centre of development is useful, it is not necessarily the
system of "classification" of most use to potential users in an Internet
age. 

As an example, if I was looking for work done on maths for early secondary
school students speaking Spanish - a geographic map is helpful only to the
extent that there is a correspondence between work done in Spanish and
countries where Spanish is an official language - but if someone were doing
work in this area in Chicago, I might miss it - and looking through every
organization doing work in Spanish to find "secondary math" would probably
be time-consuming as well. 

This is a problem that can be overcome without large investments because we
have at our disposal databases and tools that allow data to be viewed from
"more than one angle". Therefore, in order to provide the greatest possible
utility to users, the OER community may want to consider making the
information gathered on OER available to users according to multiple
"geographies" so that each user can select the "geography" that best
corresponds to their needs. 

The range of geographies would need to be well-defined (say with drop down
menus for selection so that, for example, "Spanish" and "Espagnol" go into
the same location) and simple enough so as not to impose an excessive burden
on those submitting information. My initial proposals for "geographies"
would be the following: 

        - Language 
        - Academic Subject Area (Geography, Economics, Physics, Sociology,
Maths, etc.) 
        - Age Grouping (Pre-School, Primary, Middle School, Secondary,
University, Post-Grad, etc.) 
        - Geographic Location of the Developer(s) 

I do not work in "education" per se, but in my organization/division, we
recently developed an interesting Guide to Trade Facilitation that uses
multiple "geographies" for looking at the same data.  The Internet address
for this Guide is:  <http://tfig.unece.org/> http://tfig.unece.org/     FYI
- we also have additional, associated training material. 

This Guide was developed with technical support from the United Nations
training centre in Turin, Italy - and if participants in this discussion
found the format to be of interest, perhaps UNESCO could contact the centre
in Turin about working with the OER Community (caveat emptor - they do not
work for free, even if you come from within the UN system). 

Best regards, 

Virginia Cram-Martos
Director
Trade and Sustainable Land Management Division
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

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