[Oer-community] Oer-community Digest, Vol 9, Issue 49

Fri Nov 16 12:26:38 MST 2012

Hi Susan, I am Brinda Surnam from Mauritius following an on line course at VCILT,  University of Mauritius. I have been reading the posts and imbibing a lot of what has been written. From what I understand:1. The OER is like a giant campus with many clubs, science, language, etc.,  which are further subdivided into sections , levels and languages. Members entering the club should choose the club they want to belong to and work with.2. The OER, due to the massive influx of information is in chaos so it needs to be neatened, now how to neaten, is the question?  A partiality to categorising the resources according to the country it comes from, is favoured, which is fair, as each country contextualises the resources to suit the students.3. Resources are created but are all of them valid? Who will vet the validity of the resources? Copyright laws look after that side of the matter, but are the resources worth it.4. I see, the OER, like a giant library in
 Hogwarts, where the books are flying and the information in the books are constantly changing , then how do we mobilise all, stun them to stay still or gallop at the same speed as the rapidly evolving resources to keep track of them?The two major questions which have been put forward need not only be answered but put into practice. Yes we need a map to visualise  the global OER landscape but along with it a solid ever evolving database is also required,.Such a map has to be maintained , if Yahoo, Google can do it, so can we. We need the appropriate human and technological resources to achieve it.This is my humble opinion. Sincerely

Brinda Surnam

--- On Fri, 11/16/12, oer-community-request at athabascau.ca <oer-community-request at athabascau.ca> wrote:

From: oer-community-request at athabascau.ca <oer-community-request at athabascau.ca>
Subject: Oer-community Digest, Vol 9, Issue 49
To: oer-community at athabascau.ca
Date: Friday, November 16, 2012, 11:00 PM

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: What is beyond mapping the OER intiatives? (Fred M Beshears)
   2. Re: A simple sample map to look at (Augusto Antonio Cornejo Huezo)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 08:53:35 -0800
From: Fred M Beshears <fredbeshears at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] What is beyond mapping the OER
    intiatives?
To: oer-community <oer-community at athabascau.ca>
Message-ID:
    <CAP3y+xP5D6fffL3OaAL94eZMdrFUesaqW66yHphwoqi5nqmvEg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Duda,

You write:
 >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.

There is a content packaging interoperability standard from IMS Global
http://www.imsglobal.org/content/packaging/

For a complete list of their specifications (which are all freely
downloadable) see:
http://www.imsglobal.org/specifications.html

Fred

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 5:23 AM, Duda Nogueira <dudanogueira at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Oer-community mailing list
> Oer-community at athabascau.ca
> https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community
>

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:18:18 -0600
From: Augusto Antonio Cornejo Huezo <augusto.cornejo at mined.gob.sv>
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] A simple sample map to look at
To: oer-community <oer-community at athabascau.ca>
Message-ID: <50A6787C.2090400 at mined.gob.sv>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

Dear Colleagues,

I think this type of map is very functional depending on the needs of the different users. In our country, up to the moment there is not much participation or use of the OERs, but we hope to begin using and improving them in the near future.

Sincerely,

Augusto Cornejo
Depto. Proyectos SI-EITP
Tel. 25104317

El 15/11/12 11:52, Susan D'Antoni escribi?:
Dear Colleagues,

It might he useful at this point to look at the sample map we prepared and that was in my first message as a screen shot ? while it caused a little technical grief in loading.

But first let me give a bit of background.  For an exploration of mapping OER, it seemed like a good idea to have a sample map.  As Patrick McAndrew mentioned in his message, I had the privilege of spending some time at the Open University and had a chance to learn about the work done there, and some of the options and issues relating to mapping.  Patrick and his group, Simon Buckingham Shum and his colleagues and Teresa Connolly raised many of the issues that are being raised in this discussion.

The map that was developed is ONLY an example and I want to stress that.  It is not a proposal.

The sample map was developed with Google map and with data and generous help from the Open CourseWare Consortium (OCWC).  OCWC has an international membership and it made a good data set for the purpose of creating an example.

Let?s go back to the message of Kathy Nicholson of the Hewlett Foundation (that has funded the support of this community while at UNESCO and now in the UNESCO/COL Chair), Mary Lou Forward, Patrick McAndrew and the many thoughts sprinkled through the the course of the week on what a map could be useful for, and especially Helen and Mark?s comments .

Then explore the ?simple sample? map at http://oerworldmap.oerknowledgecloud.org/ ..

For any of you who have trouble accessing the link, a screen shot is below.

The map represents the three categories of membership of OCWC and you can see these by colour coding.  If you only want to see one category, such as institutions, click on the arrow in the window under Filter.  Then click on Institution of Higher Education ? and you will only see members who are institutions.  This gives an idea of how a classification of OER initiatives might be presented ? although there are more visual ways of doing that.

Take a look?.

Best,
Susan

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