[Oer-community] What is beyond mapping the OER intiatives?

[Duda Nogueira]

I am very happy with all the discussions we are having here.

Getting all this cool people that work with OER together is a great
initiative. Kudos for that!!

I started my pet project some time ago, Duda Library[1], an open source
software which aims to map, index, download, pack and redistribute OER
objects to schools and community with low no None Internet.

What you can see there (both on the installed version[1] and on the code
repository[2]) is a real "beta" software, or "under research" if you may
prefer.

It's being developed to solve a huge problem here in Brazil (and certainly
on other countries), that some of you might not consider that much of a
problem while talking about Distance Learning or OER: Internet
Connectivity, or better saying, the lack of a good and reliable Internet
Connectivity.

However, I stumbled on 3 huge difficulties to accomplish what my project
and myself wants. And the first of it it's being discussed right here right
now.

*1) Getting to know all the OER Repositories* and their curators, or have
at least a point of contact with them.

I even tried to map some of them [3], but then, because of the second
problem, I didn't go further as this wasn't the big problem for me at the
moment: the project has a limited OER Repositories scope for now.

*2) an OER standart* - While I was writing the piece of software to pack
the OER for redistribution, I then discovered that there's no pattern or
file format standart whatsoever. This is a huge problem, as you cannot have
a reliable way to know if the OER object is going to work on a big variety
of platforms, or if the OER object is really Open (it might contain a Flash
Piece of Software without the source).

*Possible Solution*: Hire some great software developers to improve the
Libre Office in order to accept Video, Audio (with subtitles), HTML5
animations, test and quizz with result return,etc, and make it the PERFECT
OER authoring tool, and compliant with the ODF Alliance [5]

*3) an OER exchange protocol* - While I was writing the piece of software
to map and index, I realized  there's no protocol to interchange OER, or
have easy, programatic, access to the OER. Each OER Repository delivers the
OER on their own way, and it might or might not provide a API (Application
Program Interface), allowing the programatic access to the OER and their
metadata.

Por instance, the contents from our main OER and PER (Public Educational
Resource) repository, Portal do Professor [4] don't provide a API, so I
needed to grap the content on the hardway (with a "webscrapping" process
and believe me, it's not pretty).

On the other hand, Khan Academy Portuguese is delivered by Youtube, which
offers a API to work with, but doesn't offer a way to download the
subtitles (root cause: problem #2), and for the portuguese version, doesn't
have the tags field filled, which doesn't allow to create a reliable list
of similar OER contents.

*Possible Solution*: Write a protocol and ask the OER providers to follow
it. This protocol would be used to easy access for the OER, and can be used
from a mobile device or other OER redistributors.

Anyway, I expect to give here my 2 cents for the discussion.

I certainly got ahead of the mapping discussion, But I really needed to
expose the whole idea. Sorry for that and for the long email :)

Some references:

1 - http://dudalibrary.org
2 - http://dudalibrary.googlecode.com
3 - https://code.google.com/p/dudalibrary/wiki/Resources
4 - http://portaldoprofessor.mec.gov.br
5 - http://www.odfalliance.org/

Thank you!

Duda Nogueira
Gerente de Projetos em Tecnologia
www.dudanogueira.com.br

Celular: +55 31 9985-1271
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