|
Join the community: subscribe to the mailing list |
OER useful resources/Software and tools
From OER_Wiki
| OER useful resources | Home | Editing help |
|
Portals and gateways | Repositories | Development and publishing initiatives | Software and tools | Teaching using OER | Communities | Writing on OER |
Contents |
[edit] Tools for OER creation
- eduCommons
- An open source OER management system, developed by Utah State University's Center for Open and Sustainable Learning and available from SourceForge. eduCommons is designed to support MIT-type open courseware projects. It provides the functionality to develop and manage an open access collection, including a workflow process that leads users through uploading materials into a repository, the copyright clearance process, reassembly of materials into courses, a quality assurance process, and final publication of the materials. The front end of eduCommons is designed to visually align with other OCWs, while the back end architecture allows all resources to be stored as individual learning objects in order to facilitate easy reuse later on. eduCommons now also includes the social software previously distributed under the name Open Learning Support (OLS). OLS seeks to facilitate free and open educational support opportunities that scale to extremely large numbers of learners.
- Copyright/licensing: GNU General Public Licence from SourceForge
- Open Courseware Laboratory
- Founded at North Carolina State University in 1998 by Professor Michael Rappa, the mission of the Open Courseware Lab is to invent novel ways of using the Internet to promote the open exchange of knowledge within the academic community. This includes the provision of research and course materials that are made freely available for non-commercial use. The Lab also provides assistance to NC State University faculty and staff for the development and operation of open educational Web sites and with conducting research online.
- Scope: provides support to 21 open projects at North Carolina State University
- OpenCourse.org
- A free collaboration platform for educators. OpenCourse.org hosts virtual communities that develop, evaluate and use open, non-proprietary learning objects in their discipline. Anyone is free to join an existing community, start a collobaration of their own or use OpenCourse.org services for their own developer community. OpenCourse.org claims to provide the necessary tools and resources for a group of faculty developers to go from concept to collaboration in half an hour or less.
- Scope: hosts 5 collaborative projects
- Copyright/licensing: no information about copyright, although all projects must be "open"
- Qedoc
- Qedoc provides interactive learning resources which centre on quiz-making and quiz-taking. Qedoc learning modules are self-contained modifiable pieces of learning software which you can download to play with, learn from, modify and upload again. According to their homepage, anyone can use or contribute learning resources for free. Qedoc also has a commercial services arm at www.qedoc.com. In short, Qedoc provides: (1) Interactive learning software (quizzes), and (2) software to inspect, modify, and contribute to respository of learning resources.
- To find out more about this initiative read the Qedoc OER story
- WikiEducator
- A collaborative authoring environment using wiki technology in conjuction with eXe (eLearning XHTML editor) for recontextualising and customising open e-content with the ability to export resources using interoperability specifications (IMS & SCORM). The initiative also aims to provide a practical solution for content authors working on the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) initiative to facilitate recontextualisation of materials, and to create an environment to facilitate future development of the import/export functionality between eXe and Mediawiki software. WikiEducator is open for anyone to participate.
- Copyright/licensing: WikiEducator content available under a Creative Commons Attribution license; eXe available under the GNU General Public Licence
- To find out more about this initiative read the WikiEducator OER story
[edit] Intellectual property and copyright tools
- Academic Free License
- The Open Source Initiative's open license for original creative works. Works licensed under the Academic Free License (current Version 3.0) may be reproduced, modified to create a derivative work, distributed, and performed and displayed publically.
- Creative Commons
- Founded by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, educators and artists. It builds upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach". Users can choose a between 6 different licenses, with a range of restrictions to use, and written in clear, non-legalistic language.
- See ccLearn Productions for a variety of documents and other media on using Creative Commons licenses for educational resources.
- Fair Use Network
- Part of the Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the Fair Use Network provides information about copyright and Intellectual Property law by offering a range of basic legal guides. These include introductions to copyright and fair use, and a glossary and index of legal terms.
- Restrictions: oriented towards US copyright law
- GNU Free Documentation Licence
- The Free Software Foundation's open licence alternative to "all rights reserved" copyright, intended for use on manuals, textbooks and other documents. The licence assures everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute a document, with or without modifications, either commercially or noncommercially.
[edit] Tools for location and retrieval of OER
- DiscoverEd
- An experimental project from ccLearn that attempts to provide scalable search and discovery for educational resources on the web. Metadata, including the license and subject information available, are exposed in the result set. For more information, see the July 2009 DiscoverEd white paper.
- DLorn (Distributed Learning Object Repository Network)
- Aims to be a "one-stop source for learning object syndication". DLorn harvests and stores learning object metadata from across the web.
- Folksemantic
- An OER recommender, with a website widget and Firefox extension. Folksemantic provides access principally to NSDL resources, MERLOT, and Johns Hopkins and MIT OpenCourseWares.
- Scope: browse 110,000 resources
- OAIster
- An information retrieval resource from the University of Michigan's Digital Library Production Service. OAIster harvests digital resource metadata from registered institutions, to create a collection of freely available, previously difficult-to-access resources, easily searchable by anyone.
- Scope: 6,341,619 records from 604 institutions
- Stingy Scholar's Wayfaring map of university podcasts, webcasts and OCWs
- Created by Wynn Williamson, this map of the world allows users to link to OCW, podcasts and webcasts by locating the institutions offering them in physical space. The map provides an unusual view on the world of OER and alternative to regular listings. Users can add their own "waypoints" (links on the map) to other institutional OCW, podcast and webcast initiatives.
- Scope: links to 65 institutions offering OCW, podcasts and webcasts
[edit] Learning Object Repository software
- Commonwealth of Learning LOR software
- Institutions or governments in Commonwealth countries can establish a shared repository of learning content by accessing free open source software from COL's LOR. COL is hosting the software and is collaborating with the African Virtual University, who will upload and make available open source courseware that Commonwealth countries can access free of charge. COL anticipates partnering with other groups as awareness of the LOR grows.
- Copyright/licensing: GNU General Public License
[edit] Metadata standards
- CanCore
- The CanCore Metadata Initiative assists project implementers and indexers in the development of high-quality systems and records to support the use and reuse of digital learning objects, by developing a set of best practice recommendations for using the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard. The site gathers documents, presentations and other resources related to the Initiative in both English and French. CanCore is funded by the Multimedia Learning Group of Industry Canada, and supported by TéléUniversité and Athabasca Univeristy.
- Copyright/licensing: best practice recommendations available under a Creative Commons Attribution license
- CETIS (Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards)
- Represents UK higher and further education institutions on international learning technology standards initiatives. The site has some useful background articles, including an introduction to learning technology standards, and why they are important. CETIS is home to the UK Learning Object Metadata (UK LOM Core).
- Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
- The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is the body responsible for the ongoing maintenance of Dublin Core - an interoperable metadata standard. DCMI is currently hosted by the OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., a not-for-profit international library consortium. The work of DCMI is carried out by contributors from all over the world. DCMI is organized into working groups to address particular problems and tasks. These working groups are open to all interested parties. The site also has a useful glossary of metadata terms.
- IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC)
- The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee develops accredited technical standards, recommended practices, and guides for learning technology, including the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard.
- SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) 2004
- A collection of standards and specifications adapted from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive suite of e-learning capabilities that enable interoperability, accessibility and reusability of Web-based learning content. SCORM 2004 was developed by the US Government's Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative.
[edit] Translation and localisation initiatives
- CORE (China Open Resources for Education) and Chinese version
- A consortium of Chinese universities with the mission to enhance quality education in China. CORE has introduced and promoted OER (most notably MIT OCW) in Chinese universities. A major activity is the translation of institutional OCW initiatives into Mandarin, adapting them where necessary, and making them available through Chinese mirror sites. CORE also shares Chinese Quality OCW (CQOCW) with universities internationally through its website.
- Copyright/licensing: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 China Mainland
- OOPS (Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System)
- A volunteer-based grassroots project, created by Lucifer Chu, a Chinese translator, and launched in February 2004. OOPS aims to localize MIT's OCW - and other institutional course publication initiatives - into both simplified and traditional Chinese, so that all Chinese people can access OER:
- 1. Simplified Chinese mirror sites for MIT OCW, John Hopkins OCW and Utah State University OCW
- 2. Traditional Chinese mirror sites for MIT OCW, John Hopkins OCW and Utah State University OCW
- Universia.net
- A consortium of universities that aims to provide leadership in the development of the Information Society in Hispanic university education. Universia has entered into a formal agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to translate OCW courses in Spanish and Portuguese. In addition to translated courses, the Universia OCW portal offers information about OCW in Spanish and Portuguese, translations of MIT's monthly OCW newsletter, information about Creative Commons licenses, and an online discussion forum for Spanish-speaking OCW users.
- Scope: 105 courses on the Spanish site; courses from 29 departments on the Portuguese site
[edit] Technology for OER delivery
- eGranary Digital Library
- Part of the WiderNet Project at the University of Iowa, the eGranary Digital Library provides digital educational resources to institutions in developing countries with little or no Internet connectivity. Through a process of garnering permissions, copying Web sites, and delivering them to intranet Web servers inside partner institutions, the project delivers millions of media rich digital teaching and learning tools can be instantly accessed by patrons over local area networks at no cost.
- Scope: over 2.7 million items republished
| OER useful resources | Home | Editing help |
|
Portals and gateways | Repositories | Development and publishing initiatives | Software and tools | Teaching using OER | Communities | Writing on OER |
