Open Educational Resources for development
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EDUCAUSE recently published an article on seven things you need to know about Open Educational Resources. A nice reminder to highlight the importance of learning materials that are freely available for use, mixing and redistribution. This can include any educational material (textbooks, e-learning modules, course readers or other learning content).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjajtXb1PYQ]
For capacity building training institutes it might be useful to have access to these digital repositories. This blogpost sums up a series of important OER initiatives that can be consulted and where open educational resources can be downloaded for free.
Wikiedukator : turning the digital divide into digital dividens by given access to open content and networks
The wiki of the UNESCO OER community
OER Africa : building Africa education openess through OER
Zunia Knowledge exchange : Open Educational Resources for development professionals
MIT Open Courseware : more than 1900 courses available in different disciplines
Free Learning Resources from the Open University UK.
MERLOT : Multimedia educational resources for on-line learning and training.
Hewlett Foundation : open educational resources
Any other interesting initiatives that promote access to interesting digital open content, relevant in a development context ?
There is the UNU OpenCourseWare portal that gives free access to some courses (http://ocw.unu.edu/). A great place where you can find discussions and reflections about OER is the Open Thinking Blog (http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros) by Alec Couros.
You also might want to check on “80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives” http://oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools
And I wanted to share a story about OER by Anthony F. Camilleri (SCIENTER)(http://vimeo.com/9298390) that has been recorded during the first meeting of the OPAL initiative (http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2086)
I am a student at Walden University and also a corporate trainer. Do you see this technology being used in the business sector. Also, do you have any contacts or suggestions to explore this further?
Thank you
Bob