Why Open Data is key to teach democracy and citizenship

It has been taking me few days to put into words  what has happened in the country I called home for the last few years, it has been sad, confusing and overwhelming.

Not long ago, with my colleague Leo Havemann (@leohavemann) started doing some research about the value of Open Data as Open Educational Resources, and with a little help from our friends, we published a book and a paper, but until this point this was just an idea in our heads, Open Data is key to teach citizenship skills and to understand democracy, and we did lots of research about it, and we still do (with Chiara Ciociola, Fabrizio Scrollini, Tim Coughlan, Francesca de Chiara and Annalisa Manca et al.) and we saw its value at theoretical level, but when I woke up on Friday, in despair, I noticed that as Open Data and Open Education community we haven’t done enough to educate others, because the voters in the UK have been misleading with false claims and manipulated by the right to believe that the root of evil were the migrants (EU, non EU & Refugees) and the axis of evil was European Union.

How could this happen? well, there are certain indicators that can explain this, those who voted for Brexit were mostly over 40 years old, and, Brexiters grew accordingly with age, the eldest were more prone to vote for leave, but, within this group, only 34.8% of the population completed tertiary education (Source: OECD Data), which means (for me) that the most vulnerable and illiterate group of the population were maliciously (mis)led to vote against the migrants and the EU, and were used as an instrument to promote a rather xenophobic agenda and to lead the country into a political and economical crisis, so the politicians can now have another scapegoat to blame, the illiterate and elderly people of Britain.

But as they say here, we need to keep calm and carry on, however, this carry on, put us, and by us I mean people working in the fields of Openness (Education, Data, Science & Access) into promoting global citizenship, working closer with the civil society  (as the friends from Abrelatam, ILDA, Open Knowledge International, School of Data and SocialTIC are doing)to create spaces for capacity building for students, teachers and academics towards developing data literacies so people can understand numbers, graphs, statistics and can critically assess the information.

I firmly believe that Open Data is a key resource to teach critical thinking, and used as Open Educational Resources allows us to showcase phenomena and to build understanding of it by critically evaluating and assessing a problem. Since the referendum campaign started we have seen far too many graphs, but graphs are misleading, people cannot read them, and stats are manipulated by the media as big red numbers and letters and shocking images are to construct newspapers headlines, and the illiterate people are terrorised by fake facts and they cannot assess truth from lies.

I know this is a sad time for many of us, scary for lots of us and probably uncertain for most of us, but I also see an opportunity for the Open Education community to collectively build a more democratic society because today promoting openness is key.  The more Open Access research is published the more people can read evidence-based information. If Open Data is used  in teaching and learning, students will be able to critically assess the media, to question their governments and their policies, and by embracing Open Science principles, students will be able replicate studies to critically construct their opinions.

We need to support the development of a more critical society  to prevent politicians creating a new scapegoat to manipulate the society, but mostly to make sure that the darkest hours of Europe  won’t repeat, because as Niemöller once wrote

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

 

Bibliography of OER, ROER et al. (PART 2) – other languages

As the Bibliography of OER, ROER and related subjects (PART 1) was becoming too long and difficult to manage, here is the second part. Thanks to Tel Amiel @edaberta for sharing this literature in Portuguese.

I will use this second page to add literature about OER in other languages apart from English, so if you know papers written in any language let me know (please add the references in the comments area  in APA only) and to avoid confusions please read the following notes

• I’m sure I’m forgetting to add some super important references and key resources, or that there are some mistakes in this post, so, if you are twisting your head around and crawling on the ceiling like Linda Blair because I forgot to add THAT piece of research or because the reference is not correct, please forgive me.

• Please send over only published – peer reviewed articles, as I cannot refer blog posts or other online materials, and make sure you add the link to retrieve the resource. I will give preference to the papers published in Open Access Journals as they are accessible to all…

• If some of the links are broken, sorry for that, you can retrieve it by using to Google Scholar – or  your local library system as managing references is like having a leaking ceiling, you fix one hole and starts dripping somewhere else.

• Finally, if you find a paper listed here chained to a paywall journal, first inhale and exhale a few times and contact the author(s) of the paper asking them why? (why, why, why?…) and maybe, ping the paper’s URL to the friends from the Open Access Button – @oa_button to raise awareness about the value of open access and also to highlight the open content / paywalled published contradiction…

Portuguese literature in OER

Abegg, I., Bastos, F. da P. de , Alberti, T. F., & Mallmann, E. M. (2013). MOOC mediado por REA : prática da liberdade nos programas de capacitação continuada no ensino superior. Retrieved from https://repositorioaberto.uab.pt/handle/10400.2/3076

Almeida, Fernando José de , Silva, M. da G. M. da , & Franco, M. M. G. (2012). Materiais mediadores e abertos para construção de conhecimento. Retrieved from http://www.curriculosemfronteiras.org/vol12iss3articles/almeida-silva-franco.pdf

Coelho, D., Balula, A., & Ramos, F. (2014). O uso de recursos educacionais abertos no ensino superior: potencialidade, desafio e oportunidade. Retrieved from http://revistas.ua.pt/index.php/ID/article/view/2688/2544

Alencar, A., & Neto, J. M. (2012). Democratizando o Acesso à Vida e Obra de Paulo Freire: a experiência do Projeto Paulo Freire Memória e Presença. Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 1(1). Retrieved from http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1886

Almeida, L. B. de, Merkle, L. E., & Silva, E. A. (2012). Proposta de Fluxo de Trabalho para Organização de Repositórios Abertos de Maneira Colaborativa. Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 1(1). Retrieved from http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1885

Amiel, T. (2012). Educação aberta: configurando ambientes, práticas e recursos educacionais. In Recursos Educacionais Abertos: práticas colaborativas e políticas públicas (Vol. 1, pp. 17–34). São Paulo – SP; Salvador- BA. Retrieved from http://livrorea.net.br/livroREA-1edicao-mai2012.pdf

Amiel, T., Orey, M., & West, R. (2010). Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA): Modelos para localização e adaptação. ETD – Educação Temática Digital, 12(mar.), 112–125. Retrieved from http://www.fae.unicamp.br/revista/index.php/etd/article/view/2284

Amiel, T., & Santos, K. (2013). Uma análise dos termos de uso de repositórios de recursos educacionais digitais no Brasil. Trilha Digital, 1(1), 118–133. Retrieved from http://editorarevistas.mackenzie.br/index.php/TDig/article/view/5892

Arimoto, M. M., & Barbosa, E. F. (2012). Um conjunto preliminar de práticas para o desenvolvimento ágil de recursos educacionais abertos. Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 1(1). Retrieved from http://www.br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1888

Barin, C. S., Müller, L., & Ellensohn, R. M. (2012). Construção de significados e interação com, no e pelo computador: Estudos problematizados no AVEA Moodle sobre uso das tecnologias da informação e comunicação. RENOTE, 10(1). Retrieved from http://seer.ufrgs.br/renote/article/view/30881

Bassani, P. B. S., & Barbosa, D. N. F. (2012). Uma experiência envolvendo o desenvolvimento de recursos educacionais digitais sob a perspectiva da atividade. RENOTE, 10(3). Retrieved from http://seer.ufrgs.br/renote/article/view/36399

Brito, B. M. S. de. (2010). Propriedade intelectual nas escolas. In Anais do XXXIII Encontro da ANPED (p. 14). Caxambu, MG: 33. Retrieved from http://www.anped.org.br/33encontro/app/webroot/files/file/Trabalhos%20em%20PDF/GT16-6169–Int.pdf

Castro, J. B. de, Souza, M. de F. C. de, Luiz, A. G., & Filho, J. A. de C. (2012). Localização de Recursos Educacionais Digitais Americanos para o Ensino de Matemática no Contexto Brasileiro. Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 1(1). Retrieved from http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1891

Declaração da Cidade do Cabo. (2007). Declaração de cidade do cabo para educação aberta: Abrindo a promessa de recursos educativos abertos. Retrieved from http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/translations/portuguese-translation

Dutra, R. L. de S., & Tarouco, L. M. R. (2011). Recursos Educacionais Abertos (Open Educational Resources). RENOTE, 5(1). Retrieved from http://seer.ufrgs.br/renote/article/view/14171

Educação Aberta. (2011). Recursos Educacionais Abertos (REA): Um caderno para professores. Campinas, SP: Educação Aberta. Retrieved from http://www.educacaoaberta.org/wiki

Ferreira, G. M. dos S. (2012). De conteúdo a recurso, prática e pedagogia: sobre o movimento REA e suas ramificações. Revista Educação e Cultura Contemporânea, 9(18), 20–37. Retrieved from http://periodicos.estacio.br/index.php/reeduc/article/view/432

Galvão, M. C. A., & Leite, L. S. (2011). Educopédia: uma experiência em construção. Retrieved from http://www.abed.org.br/congresso2011/cd/165.pdf

Gohn, D. M. (2012, September 3). Educação musical à distância: Propostas para ensino e aprendizagem de percussão (Tese de Doutorado). Retrieved from http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/27/27154/tde-13042010-225230/pt-br.php

Gonsales, P. (2012). Aberturas e rupturas na formação de professores. In Recursos Educacionais Abertos: práticas colaborativas e políticas públicas (Vol. 1, pp. 143–152). São Paulo – SP; Salvador- BA. Retrieved from http://livrorea.net.br/livroREA-1edicao-mai2012.pdf

Gonzalez, C., & Rossini, C. (2012). REA: o debate em política pública e as oportunidades para o mercado. In Recursos Educacionais Abertos: práticas colaborativas e políticas públicas (Vol. 1, pp. 35–70). São Paulo – SP; Salvador- BA. Retrieved from http://livrorea.net.br/livroREA-1edicao-mai2012.pdf

Gosciola, V., & Versuti, A. (2012). Narrativa transmídia e sua potencialidade na educação aberta. In A. Okada (Ed.), Recursos educacionais abertos e redes sociais: Co-aprendizagem e desenvolvimento profissional. Londred: CoLearn/Open University. Retrieved from http://oer.kmi.open.ac.uk/?page_id=428ID  – 8

Hinckel, N. C. (2011). Os recursos educacionais abertos e materialização do sujeito leitor aprendente no projeto openlearn da Open University. Retrieved from http://aplicacoes.unisul.br/pergamum/pdf/103821_Nagila.pdf

Jordão, T. C. (2009). Recursos digitais de aprendizagem . Retrieved from http://tecnologiasnaeducacao.pro.br/revista/a1n1/art11.pdf

Laaser, W., Rodrigues, R. S., & Fachin, G. R. B. (2012). Educação a distância e Recursos Abertos. Retrieved from Almeida, Leandro Batista de, Luis Ernesto Merkle, and EdsonArmando Silva. 2012. “Proposta de Fluxo de Trabalho para Organização de Repositórios Abertos de Maneira Colaborativa.” Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação 1(1). Retrieved April 1, 2013 (http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1885).

Mallmann, Elena Maria et al. 2013. “Potencial dos Recursos Educacionais Abertos para integração das tecnologias e convergência entre as modalidades na UFSM.” Retrieved (http://www.reveduc.ufscar.br/index.php/reveduc/article/viewFile/742/274).

Mesquita, Ofélia Alencar de, and José Aires de Castro Filho. 2012. “A construção de conteúdos Educacionais Digitais 2.0 sob enfoque da múltipla autoria.” Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação 1(1). Retrieved April 1, 2013 (http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1890).

Moon, Bob. 2008. “O papel das novas tecnologias da comunicação e da educação a distância para responder à crise global na oferta e formação de professores: uma análise da experiência de pesquisa e desenvolvimento.” Educação & Sociedade 29(104):791–814. Retrieved May 16, 2013 (http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-73302008000300008&lng=pt&nrm=iso).

Starobinas, Lilian. 2012. “REA na educação básica: a colaborção como estratégia de enriquecimento dos processos de ensino-aprendizagem.” Pp. 121–32 in Recursos Educacionais Abertos: práticas colaborativas e políticas públicas, vol. 1. São Paulo – SP; Salvador- BA. Retrieved (http://livrorea.net.br/livroREA-1edicao-mai2012.pdf).http://www.rieoei.org/deloslectores/2879.pdf

Silva, M. A. G. (2012, December 6). LOD: Uma abordagem para desenvolvimento de objetos de aprendizagem multimídia e interativos (Tese de Doutorado). Retrieved from http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/55/55134/tde-06122012-162839/pt-br.php

Simon, I., & Vieira, M. S. (2008). O rossio não-rival. In Além das redes de colaboração: internet, diversidade cultural e tecnologias do poder (pp. 15–30). Salvador, Bahia: UFBA. Retrieved from http://books.scielo.org/id/22qtc

Souza, M. de F. C. de. (2012). Customização Guiada: uma estratégia orientada a modelos para produção de objetos de aprendizagem. Retrieved from http://capesdw.capes.gov.br/capesdw/resumo.html?idtese=20121222001018048P5

Souza, M. de F., Filho, J. A. de C., & Andrade, R. (2012). Ampliando a Autonomia Docente com o Uso de Objetos de Aprendizagem Customizáveis. Anais dos Workshops do Congresso Brasileiro de Informática na Educação, 1(1). Retrieved from http://br-ie.org/pub/index.php/wcbie/article/view/1897

Tarouco, L. M. R., Schmitt, M. A. R., Rodrigues, A. P., & Viccari, R. M. (2010). Gestão colaborativa de conteúdo educacional. RENOTE, 7(1). Retrieved from http://seer.ufrgs.br/renote/article/view/13975

Map of OER Repositories

Recently Leo @leohavemann and I were discussing on how was the best way to encourage academics to use OER and share their materials, how can we make them see at the impact that sharing content can have and after reviewing some very interesting models of data visualisation, we decided that the best way was to generate a map with a which contains the list taken from the directory of repositories of OER and some new more.

To access the Map of OER Repositories please go to  http://bit.ly/18NaDuu 

The University of Loja in Ecuador has developed an OER map we use as inspiration to showcase a large list of OCW and other initiatives http://serendipity.utpl.edu.ec/map/ so we thank Nelson @nopiedra for sharing his ideas with us. Also, we thank @gconole @fbocquet @Open_Education @alacre @polx @fatenas and @Andreas__Link for sharing repositories with us and for sharing the map around.

If you want us to tag another repository you can contact us by leaving a comment on the blog or in twitter to me @jatenas or Leo @leohavemann, just remember that we will only include repositories of OER, for institutional repositories of books, thesis and other documents you can contact the DOAR team as they are the experts.

List of OER Apps

One of the advantages of OER is that they can be used in mobile devices and some institutions are developing apps for Smartphones and tablets that can facilitate the access to the resources for educators and students.

This post is a compilation of OER Apps for mobile devices (Apple, Android, Blackberry), and I only found a few so  if  know some more and the link, please send me a tweet to @jatenas and I will add them to this list.

Thanks to: @patlockley

APPLE

OER SEARCH – OER Commons
https://itunes.apple.com/es/app/oer-search/id358703397?mt=8

Merlot Search
https://itunes.apple.com/app/merlot-oer-search/id541266116?mt=8

temoa: Recent OER
https://itunes.apple.com/mx/app/temoa-recent-oer/id453015756?mt=8

KOWC (Korean OCW)
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/daehaggong-gaegang-ui-kocw/id376298429?mt=8

MIT OpenCourseWare LectureHall
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mit-opencourseware-lecturehall/id379390362?mt=8

ANDROID

OER SEARCH – OER Commons
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/org.oersearch.OERSearch/OER-Search

Merlot
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.merlot.search.html&hl=es

Temoa
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/com.appmakr.app291694/temoa-Recent-OER

Other Platforms

Merlot
http://mobile.merlot.org/blackberry/

Directory of OER repositories

Tweet #OER

Last update: 6th August 2014 –

Thanks to @OERhub team – @nopiedra – @EbbaOssian for sharing the data collected in their projects 

After weeks and weeks digging on the internet, reviewing hundreds of OER initiatives, projects, blogs and hashtags, and also harassing other OER enthusiasts and experts in twitter, I managed to develop a first version of a directory of OER repositories.

This version only includes the name of the repository, the URL and the country of the initiative and there are 73 OER repositories associated. If you know any other, if you see that I’m missing one (or many), if you are developing one, or you have any feedback, ideas or comments, please contact me on twitter @jatenas, as your input is really important for me.

I deliberatively did not include OWC, Institutional Repositories (articles, reports, thesis), ITunesU, MOOC initiatives, Open TextBooks, OpenAccess Repositories, sets of content that are not under CC licences such as BBC, or hybrid content repositories because this research is based on repositories of Open Educational Resources only.

Thanks to Andreas Link @elearning4, Abel Caine @abelcaine, Leo Havemann @leohavemann and Francisco Rojas @frojas_sateler for sharing resources and ideas.

Also thanks to (list growing):  @fagottissimo; @JanPawlowski;  @gildevic; @actwww; @fredgarnett; @curtrice; @ernestopriego;  @sarahthesheepu; @dkernohan; @alacre

See the directory here:

Name: Academic Earth
URL: http://academicearth.org/
Country: United States

Name: African Health OER Network
URL: http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer
Country: Kenya

Name: Aljazeera creative commons repository
URL: http://cc.aljazeera.net/
Country: Qatar

Name: Almae Matris Studiorum Campus
URL: http://campus.unibo.it/
Country: Italy

Name: Ariadne
URL: http://www.ariadne-eu.org/
Country: European Union

Name: Banco de iten
URL: http://bi.gave.min-edu.pt/
Country: Portugal

Name: Banco de Objetos de Aprendizaje
URL: http://aplicaciones.virtual.unal.edu.co/drupal/?q=node/34
Country: Colombia

Name: Banco Internacional de Objetos Educacionais
URL: http://objetoseducacionais2.mec.gov.br
Country: Brazil

Name: Centro de Recursos para la Enseñanza y el Aprendizaje (CREA)
URL: http://www.crea.udg.mx/
Country: Mexico

Name: CChemCollective
URL: http://www.chemcollective.org/
Country: United Stated

Name: Commonwealth of Learning
URL: http://www.col.org/
Country: Canada

Name: Connexions
URL: http://cnx.org/
Country: United States

Name: Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education
URL: http://www.causeweb.org
Country: United States

Name: CSTC (Computing Science Teaching Center)
URL: http://www.cstc.org/
Country: United States

Name: Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon
URL: http://capl.washjeff.edu
Country: United States

Name: Curriki
URL: http://welcome.curriki.org/
Country: United States

Name: Desarrolla, Aprende y Reutiliza (DAR)
URL: http://catedra.ruv.itesm.mx/
Country: Mexico

Name: Digiref
URL: http://www.digiref.se/index.php
Country: Sweden

Name: Digital Library for Earth System Education
URL: http://www.dlese.org/library/
Country: United States

Name: DUDA dk
URL: http://www.duda.dk
Country: Denmark

Name: Economics Network Online Learning and Teaching Materials
URL: http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/links/othertl.htm
Country: United Kingdom

Name: Edu Fi
URL: http://www.edu.fi
Country: Finland

Name: Educar Chile
URL: http://www.educarchile.cl
Country: Chile

Name: Eduteka
URL: http://www.eduteka.org/
Country: Colombia

Name: eGyankosh
URL: http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/
Country: India

Name: EMU Danmarks lærninrsportal
URL: http://www.emu.dk/tema/kultur-og-læring
Country: Denmark

Name: Escuela virtual de Padres
URL: http://www.web-familias.com/
Country: Spain

Name: Everything Maths
URL: http://everythingmaths.co.za/
Country: South Africa

Name: Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
URL: http://www.free.ed.gov/index.cfm
Country: United States

Name: First World War Poetry Digital Archive
URL: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: FREIburger Multimedia Object Repository
URL: http://freimore.uni-freiburg.de/
Country: Germany

Name: Geoscience Data Repository
URL: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/home
Country: United States

Name: Hum Box
URL: http://humbox.ac.uk/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: I Cleen
URL:http://www.icleen.muse.it/
Country: Italy

Name: I-Berry
URL: http://iberry.com/
Country: United States

Name: IG2 – Intergeo
URL: http://i2geo.net/
Country: Germany

Name: Ilumina
URL: http://www.ilumina-dlib.org
Country: United States

Name: Interoperable Interactive Geometry for Europe (I2Geo)
URL: http://igeo.net
Country: Germany

Name: ITSON repositorio de objetos de aprendizaje
URL: http://biblioteca.itson.mx/oa/principal.htm
Country: Mexico

Name: Jorum
URL: http://www.jorum.ac.uk/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: Kursnavet
URL: http://www.kursnavet.se/
Country: Sweden

Name: La Flor (Laclo)
URL: http://laflor.laclo.org/
Country: Undefined (Latin America)

Name: Lab Space
URL: http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: LeMill
URL: http://lemill.net/
Country: Finland

Name: Maknaz
URL: http://maknaz.elc.edu.sa/
Country: Saudi Arabia

Name: Maricopa Learning Exchange
URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/
Country: United States

Name: Matematica Mutimidia
URL: http://www.m3.mat.br/
Country: Brazil

Name: MathWorld
URL: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: Materialeplatformen
URL:http://materialeplatform.emu.dk/materialer/index.jsp
Country: Denmark

Name: Matematikk
URL: http://www.matematikk.org
Country: Norway

Name: Merlot
URL: http://www.merlot.org
Country: United States

Name: National Learning Network
URL: http://www.nln.ac.uk/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
URL: http://nsdl.org/
Country: United States

Name: NEEDS
URL: http://www.needs.org/
Country: United States

Name: NLDA
URL: http://ndla.no
Country: Norway

Name: NOER
URL: http://nroer.in/home/
Country: India

Name: OER Commons
URL: http://oercommons.org/
Country: United States

Name: OER Equella
URL: http://oer.equella.com/access/home.do
Country: United States

Name: OER Online Archive
URL: http://www.archive.org/
Country: Undefined

Name: Open Educational Resources (OER) Africa
URL: http://www.oerafrica.org/
Country: Kenia

Name: Open Educational Resources for Typography
URL: http://www.oert.org/
Country: Argentina

Name: OpenLearn
URL: http://www.open.edu/openlearn
Country: United Kingdom

Name: OpenLearnWare
URL: https://openlearnware.hrz.tu-darmstadt.de/
Country: Germany

Name: OpenMichigan
URL: http://open.umich.edu/
Country: United States

Name: Open Science Resources
URL: http://www.osrportal.eu/
Country: European Union

Name: Open UCT
URL: http://open.uct.ac.za
Country: South Africa

Name: Organic.Edunet Federation
URL: http://www.organic-edunet.eu/
Country: European Union

Name: OSTRICH
URL: http://ostrich.bath.ac.uk/taxonomy/term/49
Country: United Kingdom

Name: OTAN
URL: http://www.otan.us/
Country: United States

Name: Pearson Copyleft
URL: http://www.copyleftpearson.com.br
Country: Brazil

Name: Phet (Physics Education Technology)
URL: http://phet.colorado.edu/en/
Country: United States

Name: Portal das Escolas
URL: https://www.portaldasescolas.pt/
Country: Portugal

Name: Procomún
URL: http://procomun.educalab.es/comunidad/procomun
Country: Spain

Name: Recursos Educacionais Abertos Brasil
URL: http://rea.net.br/site/
Country: Brazil

Name: Repositorio de objetos de aprendizaje
URL: http://roa.mppeu.gob.ve/
Country: Venzuela

Name: Repositorio E-Learning
URL: http://e-repository.tecminho.uminho.pt/
Country: Portugal

Name: Restore
URL: http://www.restore.ac.uk
Country: United Kingdom

Name: RODA
URL: http://roda.culturaextremadura.com/
Country: Spain

Name: RRU Open Educational Resources
URL: http://oer.royalroads.ca/moodle/
Country: Canada

Name: RVP Metodicky Portal
URL: http://dum.rvp.cz/index.html
Country: Czech Republic

Name: Science Attic
URL: http://science-attic.org/
Country: Korea

Name: Skolresurser
URL: http://snar.fo
Country: Faroe Islands

Name: SNAR
URL: http://skolresurser.se
Country: Sweden

Name: Temoa
URL: http://www.temoa.info
Country: Mexico

Name: The Gateway
URL: http://www.thegateway.org/
Country: United States

Name: The Le@rning Federation
URL: http://www.ndlrn.edu.au/default.asp
Country: Australia

Name: The world lecture project
URL: http://www.world-lecture-project.org/
Country: Germany

Name: UNITRACC
URL: http://www.unitracc.com/
Country: Germany

Name: University of Leicester OER Repository
URL: http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/oer
Country: United Kingdom

Name: VCILT
URL: http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu/lor/index.php?menu=1
Country: Mauritius

Name: Wikiwijs
URL: http://www.wikiwijs.nl/
Country: Netherlands

Name: Wisconsin Online Resource Center
URL: http://www.wisc-online.com/
Country: United States

Name: World History Sources
URL: http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/index.html
Country: United States

Name: Xpert
URL: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/
Country: United Kingdom

Name: Zunia
URL: http://openeducation.zunia.org/
Country: United States

Javiera Atenas

2012

Some thoughts about publishing research on Open Educational Resources and Open Access.

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I should start saying Mea Culpa; I did published about OER in a non Open Access Journal and I totally regret it, I never thought about it, I was naïve and I thought it would be a great opportunity, until someone made me realise about the price of the article and I felt (and still feel) mortified.

Why the journals have to make profit with our research about OA, OERs or OK? Writers are not paid for the research they produce by the journals, we are paid by the taxpayers therefore we should think to make our results open to everybody.

I decided to do a bit of research about it, so I did a search in some databases about the following terms: Open Access – Open Educational Resources – Open Knowledge and surprisingly (or not), all the papers are quite expensive. You can try it yourself, go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/ and search for Open Access: the average cost of a paper is $35.00 and all of them were published by Elsevier, so I was wondering, if we are talking about Open Access, OERs or Open Knowledge, shouldn’t we embrace the concept and make our research public? Is the need to increase our publication rate more important than being honest and keep OA research open?

Accordingly to the Research Councils UK “publicly funded research must be made available to the public and remain accessible for future generations“. So the research produced with public funds must become Open Knowledge which is defined by the Open Knowledge foundation as “any material — whether it is content, data or information-based — which anyone is free to use, re-use and redistribute without restriction“. So, from my point of view, this is spirit we should all embrace, and by all means everyone doing research about OA, OERs and OK should think about putting their research open for everyone and not let the journals to profit about these concepts.

There are universities which subscribe to the aim of openness by asking to their academics and researches to publish in Open Access Journals. The OA movement is growing but there still not a general commitment in academia to publish freely and openly.  It seems to me that there is an ethical issue which go deeper into the roots of this movement, why the scholars send their research to be published in commercial journals?

There is of course, the issue of impact rate, how many OA journals have the impact of the commercial – for profit journals? Not many… unfortunately, because producing a paper can cost lots of money, and the academic libraries are paying fortunes to subscribe to the journals in which we published our research, so if more research can be made open, more money our institutions will save, and therefore, more universities will be able to create journals and repositories where our research can be available to everyone without paying to access. So, under this model the funds can be re-distribute and it will be the universities those who benefit of our research rather than the journals.

As I said, mea culpa, I learned my lesson…. from now on I will do my best to publish for OA journals or in conferences (and digital newspapers) where the proceedings are made publicly available or at least free.

Any thoughts? Want to share your experiences about publishing in OA journals?

OER quality standards project update

Thank you for your interest in our project,

Our aim is to define quality standards  for open educational resources in higher education; this is part of the OER Quality Project, a joint research between the universities of Barcelona, Santiago de Chile and the University of London.

The researchers of this project are lecturers and academic librarians and we want to define a set of quality standards and develop a good practices guide both for content design and for  indexing open educational resources in institutional repositories.

We are looking for university lecturers, readers or professors (distance learning lecturers welcome too) willing to answer 2 surveys  (20 minutes each) and to evaluate a set of OERs, according to certain guidelines and criteria, which will take 30 minutes to answer. If you want to participate, please register on the following link http://bit.ly/yO3qMf.

Please be aware that the results of this research will be published inopen access journals as we want to contribute to the democratic education movement.

Javiera Atenas. MPhil.: University of London

Dr. Francisco Rojas: Universidad de Santiago de Chile

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Gracias por tu interés en nuestro proyecto,

Nuestro objetivo es definir estándares de calidad para los recursos educativos abiertos para la educación universitaria, en el marco del OER quality project , una investigación conjunta entre las universidades de Barcelona, Santiago de Chile y la Universidad de Londres.

Los investigadores de este proyecto somos profesores y los bibliotecarios académicos; queremos definir un conjunto de normas de calidad y desarrollar una guía de buenas prácticas tanto para el diseño de contenidos y para la indexación de los recursos educativos abiertos en los repositorios institucionales.

Estamos buscando profesores y profesoras universitarios, que hagan clases de forma presencial o a distancia, y que estén dispuestos a responder 2 encuestas  (20 minutos cada uno) y para evaluar un conjunto de REA de acuerdo a ciertas pautas y criterios (30 minutos). Si quieres participar, por favor regístrate en el siguiente enlace http://bit.ly/yO3qMf.

Ten en cuenta que todos los resultados de esta investigación serán publicados en las revistas con formato de acceso abierto ya que queremos ser un aporte al movimiento de educación democrática.

Javiera Atenas. MPhil.: University of London

Dr. Francisco Rojas: Universidad de Santiago de Chile

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Our participants on the map / Los participantes en el mapa

Hello world! ¡Bienvenid@s!

Welcome! Bienvenidos! Καλώς ήρθατε! Welkom! Mirë se vini!  Benvinguts! Bienvenue! مرحبا!  欢迎! Dobrodošli! Willkommen! Velkomin! Tervetuloa!خوش آمدید! Välkommen! Benvenuti! !ברוך הבא

Thank you for your interest in our project! This blog is the information portal for our international consultation about Open Educational Resources (OER) with the aim to define quality standards in higher education.

This project is based on  6 -7 stages with to understand which are the quality criteria that is used to select and use OERs in HE. Our intention is to obtain information troughout online surveys and also, by asking you to evaluate a set of OER resources with a set of specific criteria. (20 – 30 minutes each).

We are on stage 1, recruiting participants for our consultation, if you have not registered yet, please do it using this link  http://bit.ly/yO3qMf and please feel free to invite more colleagues to participate (you can forward them this blog’s address), the only condition is to teach in higher education: you can be a reader, a lecturer or a professor, you can teach on distances courses as well, the important think, is that you teach in a university and you are interested in Open Educational Resources and democratic learning.

Thanks

Javiera Atenas (@jatenas)

**

Primero que todo: ¡Gracias por tu interés en este estudio! Este blog es un portal para informarles acerca de nuestro proyecto sobre calidad en los recursos abiertos de aprendizaje (REA) en el marco de la formación universitaria.

Nuestro proyecto consiste en 6 a 7 etapas para entender como se usan y seleccionan los REA en la docencia universitaria. Nuestra intecion es analizar la opinion de los y las docentes mediante encuestas electrónicas sobre distintos aspectos de la calidad en los REA y también les pediremos que evalúen un set de REA usando un grupo de criterios específicos (20 a 30 minutos cada una)

Actualmente estamos en la primera etapa del proyecto: Reclutar participantes; si no te has registrado, puedes hacerlo en este link http://bit.ly/yO3qMf y también, si crees que algún o alguna colega pueda estar interesado en colaborar, puedes enviarle el link a este blog. La única condición para participar es ser docente universitario, no importa si eres lector, asociado/a, profesor/a, académico/a o catedrático/a, o que enseñes en cursos a distancia, lo importante es que enseñes en una universidad y que te interesen los recursos educativos abiertos y la educación democrática.

Gracias

Javiera Atenas (@jatenas)

***

Data protection

The researchers of this study are committed to protecting your privacy.  We will only use the information we collected about you lawfully in accordance with the Data Protection Act (UK) and we will not share any of your personal details with any third part during of after the study. Also, your personal details will not be published as part of this study, only the geographyc information  will be used to map the participans of this study. If you have any further questions, please do not hesistate to contact us.

Sobre la protección de datos de este estudio

Los investigadores nos comprometemos a proteger tus datos personales, bajo las condiciones legales del Acta de protección de datos del Reino Unido (Data protection act ), por lo que tus datos personales serán utilizados única y exclusivamnente por y para este estudio y no se compartirán con ninguna otra parte interesada durante y después de finalizado este estudio. Tus datos no se publicarán como parte de esta investigación y solamente los datos geográficos serán utilizados para hacer un mapa de los participantes de este estudio. Si tienes alguna duda, por favor contáctanos.