UNESCO OER Platform ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section Information Society Division Communication and Information (CI) Sector www.unesco.org/webworld/en/oer www.unesco.org/webworld/fr/oer
What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)? UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources (OERs) as: Learning especially eLearning resources and tools in open document format and released under an intellectual property licence, or in the public domain allowing free use and re-use
2002 UNESCO OpenCourseware Forum
What is the UNESCO OER Platform? The UNESCO OER Platform seeks to: radically “enhance” UNESCO’s Clearing House function by offering “certain” UNESCO publications as OER products and allowing “stakeholders” to freely copy, adapt, and share their resources.
Who are the UNESCO Stakeholders?
Decision-makers and Policy-makers at Ministry or institutional-level looking for model policies, guides, or best-practices; Teachers looking for courses, syllabi, and teaching materials and Learners also looking for additional courses to study
Functionalities of the OER Platform Find and compare: stakeholders can freely use the UNESCO base
product to find and compare content Build and share: stakeholders can freely copy, build and share their unique adaptations Translations: significantly higher than the 6 languages from UNESCO Localization: incorporating the more relevant and superior quality and quantity of the national or regional literature base on the subject area; Innovation: the creation of new, customized versions, e.g. Guide on Internet Access for Disabled Journalists based on the original UNESCO “The Net for Journalists” Offline editing: critically important for countries with poor internet Mobile phone access: taking advantage of 5 billion access points
An ideal CI OER Product “UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education” Generic, adaptable, fully-prescriptive Curricula: – Course descriptions – Pedagogical approaches – Mode, weekly class agenda, number of teaching hours – Recommended text – Grading and assessment protocols Available in 6 official languages Adapted by 50+ institutions in 45 countries with backlog
The OER Platform allows a new journalism school to: – easily find courses, – compare how other schools have adapted them, and – freely copy and adapt the most suitable courses
Who will pilot the project? Piloted by: Polytechnic of Namibia School of Communication University of Namibia Department of Media Studies (Coordinated by UNESCO Windhoek) Development will commence very shortly Launch by November, 2011 We would like at least 1 OER Product from each Sector: SC: Marovo Lagoon Encyclopedia IOC: Ocean Teacher Academy SHS: Bioethics Curriculum CLT: Cultural Diversity Programming Lens ED: Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE)
Preview
OER Community on the WSIS Platform
Open community – www.wsis-community.org 1,400+ members 4 langauges: Eng, Fr, Sp, Pt Call for language versions
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UNESCO-maintained Global List of OER Initiatives 250+ global list Is your initiative on the list??
Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL)
EC-funded 2010 – 2011 Project: www.oer-quality.org 7 partners: UNESCO, ICDE, EFQUEL, Aalto, OU UK, UCP, UDE Objective: create an advanced OER Practices Framework Building OPAL Register and OPAL Clearing House
2012 World OER Forum
10th Anniversary of the 2002 Forum June, 2012 Showcase world’s best OER policies, practices, tools, resources, and experts Present the 2012 Paris OER Declaration
Start planning that trip to Paris
Contact Abel Caine OER Programme Specialist ICT in Education, Science and Culture Section Information Society Division Communication and Information (CI) Sector UNESCO 1, rue Miollis Paris 75015 France E-mail: a.caine@unesco.org Phone: +33 (0)1 45 68 42 37