OER university: Feb 16-Mar 2, 2011

Thanks for checking in, Gene! This discussion will officially kick off February 16th. But everyone, please feel free to follow Gene's lead and post your background, etc. Also, there is a OER university Google Group that I encourage everyone to join as a way to keep up-to-date with project activities.

Checking in from the OER Foundation. Really looking forward to our discussions and inputs for the upcoming planning meeting on 22/23 Feb 2011.

Kudos to the SCOPE and BCcampus team for their foresight and support in facilitating open discussions for the OER university concept.

Eugene:

Thanks for starting this checking in and intros discussion area. Great to see this early interest.

I'm Paul Stacey from BCcampus. I'll be facilitating the OER University seminar in SCoPE.

I work at BCcampus where we've been implementing and operating a publicly funded OER initiative since 2003. The OER developed through our program is used by the colleges and universities in teacher delivered online, for-credit courses and programs. We're looking forward to diversifying this use case through the OER University model.

Paul

I retired from my position as an academic services librarian at the University of South Florida's Tampa Library in 2009. While at University of South Florida I was also an adjunct teaching online courses for the library school. I currently teach online courses for University of Maryland University College- including a course for the Master of Distance Education and E-Learning program on intellectual property and information literacy. (Hi, Gene!) I am also the Director of Library Services for the University of the People (http://www.uopeople.org). That position has made me acutely aware of the need for OER and open access to scholarly resources in general.

Hi Everyone,

Wayne encouraged me to sign up and engage.

I'm going to read what all of the rest of your smart folks have to say before jumping in...

Cable

Cable Green, PhD
Director of eLearning & Open Education
SBCTC
(e) cgreen@sbctc.edu / (p) 360-704-4334
(t) @cgreen / (b) OER / eLearning

Hello there,

Formally, I've been an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher at a secondary Franco-Brazilian lycee in Sao Paulo for many years. Outside this framework and online as an independent educator, I've become increasingly interested and involved in the open movement in education. I am a (slow) contributor to Wikimedia projects (Commons and Wikipedia), Wikieducator, Merlot and a member of the incipient Brazilian OER community.

Looking forward to the discussions around OERu.

Thanks to Sylvia and Paul for setting up this forum, and to Wayne for spearheading the initiative to get the concept moving.

The discussions will be lively, I'm sure.

d.


David Porter
Executive Director
BCcampus.ca

Kia ora and hello to you all from New Zealand

I am Professor of e-Learning and a teacher educator in the University of Canterbury and very happily a shared leader of professional development for school teachers adopting blended and online learning. This includes support from Wayne and many others on WikiEducator.

I will be assisting on site at the OERu meeting in Dunedin.

Great to be online with you,
Niki

Checking in from

One Laptop Per Child
Sugar Labs
FLOSS Manuals
Earth Treasury

Computers now cost less than printed textbooks at every level from elementary school to post-graduate work. There is an accelerating trend to electronic learning materials under Creative Commons and other Free/Liberated licenses.

What do we know about this, and what do we know we don't know?

How can we begin to find out what we don't know we don't know?

For example, what will happen when millions of children educated on OLPC XO laptops grow up and enter college with up to 12 years of full-time computer experience?

What can children learn with computers and Internet access that they cannot learn just with paper, pencil, and contact with people within walking distance?

Are colleges and universities everywhere sufficiently adaptable to deal with such issues? How about countries and cultures?

Never mind the Digital Divide. Can you say "generation gap"?

Hello Everyone,

I don't have extensive experience as many of you on the forum, but this is the right moment to learn and contribute to movement growth. I am from Rwanda. My professional background is mainly EFL teaching at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education . I am currently in Michigan and working on the completion of two MAs (Online and Distance Education with OU and TESOL with EMU). I am hopefully returning to Rwanda in May and hope to start a teacher online community for professional learning. I want to share OERs with colleague teachers in Rwanda and explore how these resources can be widely and effectively used in this setting with the goal to reach learners in remote corners of the country.

I look forward to learning from the forum.

Hi, I'm from Kerala, India. Being a supporter of OER and Volunteer Educator @ WikiEducator, I'm deeply interested in this topic.

Regards
Anil

Thanks Eugene for getting the checkin process started ,
it is great to see educators from so many different countries excited and keen to not only share resources and expertise but also contribute ideas how we can get institutions to formally recognize OER and open educational practice on a global scale.

Looking forward to the meeting in Dunedin and most of all the outcomes

Vasi
Flexible Learning Manager at Northtec

skype and twitter: playnice_nz

Checking in from Silver Spring, MD. My name is Joseph Thibault and I work for StraighterLine.com, we provide very low cost courses which students can take for college credit on their own time/schedule.

I also write/blog on the topics of Moodle, Open Source and other Learning Management Systems.

Just curious where this initiative will go and how educational costs might be driven down effectively.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi everyone,

Good wishes to all.

Just for the sake of introduction, I am Assistant Professor in Education/Educational Technology at University of Delhi, Delhi (INDIA).

Regards.

Vinod