Meanwhile, in Portugal, Toshiba is launching in the market their first eBook reader. I have a lot to write about this issue but I will address that later on. http://www.ionline.pt/conteudo/25792-toshiba-vai-lancar-leitor-e-books-em-portugal

Open Educational Resources Logo from Wikipedia

This is a really, really important issue nowadays in education, really important! Educational content and is availability are shifting and turning to a more flexible, open and reusable mode. Since 2002 when it was first announced on the UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries, the Open Educational Resources (OER) are having some impact on educational researchers and instructors.

2002?

Why does this concept still hasn’t gone mainstream??? In a digital era where good ideas area usually well accepted and disseminated rapidly, this idea, with the potentiality of breaking the remaining barriers of knowledge access isn’t yet well accepted in academia.

Two important Edutech researchers, Stephen Downes and David Wiley, were invited by Scott Leslie (between others) to present some thoughts on this mater in the first Open Ed conference that finishes today in Vancouver, Canada. The result of this discussion was recorded and you can listen here.

If this matter is finally going mainstream in North America (read on this matter what George Siemens has to say here), in Portugal is too far from being a reality. I should add from my minor experience that even in Europe it still is far from being massively implemented – We always find ourselves to be more “experimental” and less “rational”. Don’t forget I’m writing from the country where the computer Magalhães (aka Magellan) was born, very advanced in some areas (see the Via Verde) but very old fashion in other areas (see the literacy ranking).

Even though there are some good examples of openness from Wikiversity or from MIT this examples still don’t have any repercussion in Portugal academia. We still close our institutional LMS and educational resources and live inside tall brick walls that rarely allow academics and students to brake through.

SWOT Open Educational Resources

Let’s make some exercise on the advantage and disadvantage on OER.

Strengths: Opening text books will give more autonomous reading to learners but it will also guarantee that everyone has access to the same resources. It’s very important to disseminate knowledge thorough aiding countries giving the possibility of sharing and discussing knowledge for those who usually don’t have that chance. Promoting knowledge by exchanging, sharing and discussing between researchers from different universities will also enhances research quality.

Weaknesses: Giving more access to information will turn more difficult the role of those who filter this information – teachers. Private institutions wont feel very comfortable on knowledge exchange from people they hired paying big bucks to others who are recruited from other institutions.

Opportunities: If the right of creative commons is respected than it will be easy to promote and disseminate the researcher work giving more audience to the results on some investigations.

Threats: the biggest one is the shift of the role of universities and schools. What then? If a teacher or researcher has to exist to produce content and to filter what is in fact good information what will be the role of universities. Crediting Diplomas? (read more on this at George Siemens Blog on connectivism)

Some useful resources on this matter:

• http://opened.creativecommons.org/
• http://openeducationnews.org/
• http://www.oercommons.org/

The main objective of this web project is to disseminate my research work. We this in mind, and in the next three years, I will share my research findings and results.

At the same time I will try to use this Blog to promote discussions with my PHD supervisors and (if everything goes according to plan) with YOU.

So, welcome to my research e-portfolio and enjoy the ride lets make something different!