Creating and sharing OER in primary and secondary education: challenges and strategies

Francesc Busquets
fbusquets@xtec.cat
Educational Network of Catalonia (XTEC)

Public Education in Catalonia

About 3.000 public schools, 105 teachers, 106 students

Two official languages: Spanish and Catalan

New Education Law (2006), focused on the work on key competences

Main challenges: multicultural integration, improvement of academic results

ICT in Education in Catalonia

Official program started in 1986

XTEC: Public Telematic Educational Network, offering Internet services since 1995 to all Catalan teachers and schools.

Creation and sharing of educational materials by teachers, stimulated by in-service teacher training

Promotion of free software and collaborative projects

1x1 plan for secondary education, started in 2009

OER repositories in the XTEC (I)

Open source authoring tools for teachers and associated repositories:JClic

Quaderns Virtuals (Virtual Notebooks)

La Prestatgeria (The bookshelf)

alexandria: Moodle and IWB resources

edu365.cat: student's portal

edu3.cat: video and audio productions

JClic

Open source (GPL) platform for activities in diverse modes (relating, ordering, identifying, classifying...)

Made with Java

Same application, several delivery formats: Applet, Stand-alone frame, Java WebStart application

JClic collaborative project

ClicZone: open space for collaboration and exchange of learning objects between educatorshttp://clic.xtec.cat

Library with more than 1.200 projects and 200.000 activities, in different languages

Virtual Notebooks (QV)

Implementation of the IMS QTI standard

Authoring tool for teachers

Control of play conditions and student's answers

Integrated in Moodle

Library with 200 notebooks created by teachers

http://clic.xtec.cat/qv

Alexandria

Space to share Moodle and Interactive Whiteboard resources created by teachers

Based on the OpenLearn Moodle repository http://openlearn.open.ac.uk

Open source development

http://alexandria.xtec.cat

La Prestatgeria (The bookshelf)

Creation, edition and sharing of digital books

http://phobos.xtec.cat/llibres

Exports to SCORM, PDF and other formats

Open source development, based on MyScrapbook

edu365.cat

Started in 2001

Digital learning resources for students

More than 15.000 interactive educational objects

> 12.000 hours of interaction

Student's desktops with specific tools

http://www.edu365.cat

edu3.cat

Media content portal with more than 10.000 video and audio clips

Joint project between the Catalan Public Broadcasting Corporation and the Department of Education

Free to use in classrooms

http://edu3.cat

OER repositories in the XTEC (II)

Metadata repositories and associated networks and search engines:Merl: Bank of LOM metadata, search engine and structured resource organizer

Agrega: Authoring tool and federated network of SCORM resources
(Spanish project - Catalan node in progress)

LRE: European network of OER metadata repositories

Merl

LOM metadata about 10.000 OER

Search engine and structured resource organizer

Teachers can enrich metadata with comments and ratings

open source development

http://merli.xtec.cat

Agrega

Project leaded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Regional Governments

Network of repositories of SCORM objects

Cataloged with LOM.es, a specific application profile of LOM

Open source development

http://www.proyectoagrega.es

Learning Resource Exchange

Project leaded by European Schoolnet

Network of repositories of OER metadata

Fruit of the european projects Celebrate, MELT and LRE

Teachers can enrich metadata

http://lreforschools.eun.org

Weaknesses and challenges (I)

Irregular quality of resources

Copyright issues in assets used in some OER created by teachers: lack of knowledge about legal issues

Resources with poor or null metadata

Some repositories have oversized metadata profiles

Weaknesses and challenges (II)

Dispersion of formats and publishing platforms

Interoperability issues (also using standards!)

Lack of feedback. Users can comment and rate resources, but usually don't do it

Our current strategies and actions (I)

Reinforcement of Merli as a common pool of metadata and central search engine

Linking of networks and repositories, allowing extended and specialized search of resources

Simplification of user interfaces and metadata mandatory schemes

Tagging must be easy for teachers

Our current strategies and actions (II)

Official recognition of the work made by authors of OER (awards, featuring...)

Inclusion into in-service teacher training programs of information about legal issues, copyright, licensing and rights and duties related to OER

Use of Moodle as a central point of delivery and interaction with OER

Thank you!

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