OER14 Building communities of open practice

So I have just returned from Newcastle in the UK after having attended OER14 conference. After being involved in the planning of both OER12 and OER13 I would like to congratulate the team on an excellent conference, not only was the organisation incredibly smooth and helpful as a delegate but the quality of the papers were particularly high this year. A full list of abstracts can be found here.

The theme this year was "Building communities of open practice" which saw presentations from Europe, Africa and the US. Catherine Ngugi Project Director for OERAfrica delivered the opening keynote and related themes of OER as a collaborative catalyst for open practice in the context of copyright in Africa where the cost of textbooks considerably limits access for teachers and students alike, potentially leading to more rote and didactic approaches. Something which is of course a particular interest in the work of TESS-India.

Catherine Ngugi Project Director for OER Africa - Photo CC BY OER14 

There were a lot of discussions this year around open practices and support for staff and academics in the development of these practices with presentations from Lindsay Jordan on Open Practices for teachers, Erin Nephin and Nick Sheppard from Leeds Met on linking communities of practice for digital literacy and an off the wall Blues Brothers inspired presentation from Rochelle Lockridge, Alan Levine and Dr Mariana Funes on how the corporate world is looking to open practices to create more collaborative and creative skills sets to support business.

(L-R) Dr Mariana Funes, Rochelle Lockridge and Alan Levine - Photo CC BY OER14 

The conference was finished as always with the announcement of next years conference which will be in Wales and hosted by co chairs Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology, The Open University  and Clive Mulholland, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of South Wales.

You can read more about others views of the conference on the OER14 blog but would just like to leave this post with a mention of Sara Frank Bristow's Craigs List for OER http://oerexchange.org/ go and add your resources, projects and anything OER a new look at aggregating content, services and discussions.