Open Wide: A Filling Bite on OER’s

When big names like Harvard University and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation get together, you know things are going down. Edtech things that is.

Last week the 2012 Hewlett OER Grantees Meeting took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing together key stakeholders to address powerful questions regarding Open Educational Resources and open education.  With 6 main goals in mind, the conference sought to understand and address the following:

1)    Deepening the understanding of OER systems and the factors that influence accessibility

2)    Identify ways to increase OER’s impact across cultures

3)    Communicate field-wide goals

4)    Increase visibility of OER projects among grantees

5)    Enrich a community of practice through conversion

6)    Develop an action-oriented roadmap to leverage OER’s impact on education

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society brought together some of the most high-powered, thought-driven and creative minded professionals, experts and learners eager to oversee the flow of information from formal to informal learning.

The good stuff came from:

• Cable Green, Director of Global Learning, talked about the Creative Commons and setting a strategic direction to expand the global OER movement.
• SJ Kleim, Director of Outreach for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation tapped into organizing multilingual communities.
• Jutta Treviranus who leads the FLOE Project (Flexible Learning for Open Education), shared her experiences constructing open source communities that support emerging information and communication systems.
• And many, many others.

With a full emphasis on technology, participants were encouraged to use the hash tag #oer12hf to give outsiders a snapshot of the discussions unraveling.

Furthermore, their wiki page served as a place for attendees to add links to papers, articles, blogposts and other OER related items.

My favs?

• Google Plus Promoting Open Educational Resources in an effort to help students and teachers gain access.
• Educational Week’s piece on International Initiatives that Fuel Open Ed. Content.
• The Polish government’s efforts to roll out a digital school program!

All in all, the site, the conference and the people offer a plethora of thought-provoking material that engages viewers and users on the vast potential of OER.

Keep Calm and Learn On,

Nora

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Image Available Under CC Licensure by opensourceway