UNESCO OER World Congress

So I have just returned from the UNESCO OER (Open Educational Resources) World Congress. It was 10 years since the term OER was conceived at the UNESCO Global Forum 2002. The purpose of the Congress was twofold; to adopt the 2012 Paris OER Declaration and to showcase some of the best OER projects and initiatives from across the globe.

CC BY Willem Van Valkenburg

It was great to meet so many people doing positive things in OER and there was general feeling that we had moved from a state of "Why should we do this?" to "Why aren't we doing this?"

Another theme that arose was around the contextualisation of OER. A lot of institutions were moving from consumer to producer and in that process started to think about context, how to re-contextualise OER.  A lot of this projects talked solely about translation but some went further into re-representing the content from a cultural point of view. Just to re-enforce this the declaration itself was translated into Spanish by the delegates before the end of the congress.

Make a Commitment to Open Education

It is Open Education week this week and there are an incredible amount of things going on.  You can find more out here  http://www.openeducationweek.org/webinars/ 

At the Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE) we are running an event this Thursday looking at Sustaining OER activity http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/events/sustaining-oer-activity you can attend in person or online.

As part of the week we are also asking people to make a commitment to Open Education, you can sign the pledge here http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/make-commitment-open-education 

This is also the beginning of a new group; The Open Education Group (follow @OpenEG on twitter). Based in the UK the Oeg is initially set up as a special interest group of the Association of Learning Technologies and aims to support, develop, sustain and influence policy in Open Education.

If you would like more information about the Oeg as it continues to shape its agenda please either sign the commitment to OER or email the SCORE project SCORE@open.ac.uk who are currently hosting and supporting the group. 

Identity Change

So I have started yet another blog ... Will this one last beyond a month when my concerns over the quality of the posts and the time it takes to edit them, force me into rolling the blog up and throwing onto the ever increasing pile of digital waste?

 Some rights reserved by David Basanta

I have been thinking about Siân Bayne's (Bayne 2005) ideas on identity change. Where my previous blogs or social media profiles (online persona) all differ because of my thoughts around the impact on different communities (social, work, interests etc;).

So why will this blog be different?

My online presence is starting to become more consolidated (bland?). Perhaps through general life experience (finding myself :-) ). My concerns over what I publish become less as this consolidation occurs.

I have decided I will try not to edit my posts too much (better to get the thoughts out). 

But even as I create a blogger account I am being forced to question my identity again. Do I want to link my blogger account with my Google+ profile?   I have chosen yes as I think it will be easier to manage what I am doing. Ok so it's all done? ... No, I now have up to 30 days to change my mind on this decision.    One of the rationales is that more people will see your blog. I am not doing this for more people to see me blog and if I wanted to would I want to promote it through Google+?

Currently I am back to unlinking my Google+ profile. ... I wander where i will be in 28 days time?

Bayne, S. (2005) ‘Deceit, desire and control: the identities of learners and teachers in cyberspace’ in Land, R. and Bayne, S. (eds) Education in Cyberspace, Abingdon, RoutledgeFalmer.