OpenEd week 11 – What if we emphasize the “Learning” part of the Object?

I’d like to start from the definition of OERs as it appears in the report which first introduced the term (UNESCO, 2002):

Open Educational Resources are defined as “technology- enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation,  use  and  adaptation  by  a  community  of  users for non-commercial purposes.” They are typically made freely  available  over  the  Web  or  the  Internet.  ¼  Open Educational  Resources  include  learning  objects  such  as lecture  material,  references  and  readings,  simulations, experiments and demonstrations, as well as syllabi, curricula and teacher’s guide.

So, Open Educational Resources include learning objects.

…and the Elephant in thumbnail?

I feel like being the seventh wo-man of Hindostan in the story of ”The Blind Men and the Elephant”.

And here is a quadrant of LO definitions:

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Shall we ever have LOs which activate our students learning process to reach volcanic explosions? A sort of Lava of imagination which prevents an earthquake? I don’t think this will happen until the term ‘reuse’ is interpreted as ‘technical interoperability only’ without any implication with pedagogy or contextual dimensions.

On December 10th and 11th there will be an important (here is the WIKI)

 OER Interoperability Meeting whose outcomes are:

1.  A checklist of recommended practices for resources
2.  A checklist of recommended practices for sites
3.  Commitments from meeting participants to review and implement the recommended practices

Looking forward for the meeting, these are some of the problems I’m facing in ScribaLAB re-design:

PROBLEMS in  ScribaLAB re-design	Is it an OER SOLUTION??
Decontextualization	The answer has been provided bythe editing tools: personal advance organizers collaborative tools  in the LAB section, which may increase the value of localization for learners and educators.
Engagement	I think that a highly advanced OER may increase learner engagement.ScribaLAB is still a BETA version.
Social aspect of learning	Just trying to acknowledgethebenefits of Web 2.0 and  intertwine the functionalities  offered by online tools and technologies while maintaining  writing skills development as a foundation module.
Reusing	The intrinsic opennesswill enable reuse. HTML/JPG/etc. sufficient for rendering in  webpages VS SCORM
Producing LO for writing skills in ScribaLAB	Teacher can easily add a new LOchoosing between two modalities: 1. Publicly shared: every teacher can modify the LO 2. Shared with consent:  every teacher can modify the LO with the password given by the first owner of the LO
Educational Objects Models	Other Educational Modelscan be thought of, more suitable for the web.

ScribaLAB is focused on developing Writing Skills the easiest way: http://www.funteaching.it/ScribaLab/add_repository.aspWill you test from the link above?