OER Grantees Meeting 2012: Breakfast Bazaar, Breakout Sessions & Moderated Discussion
Thursday, April 12th
- Breakfast Bazaar: 8:30-9:30am
- Breakout Sessions: 9:30-10:30am (Formal, Informal, Domestic and International Contexts)
#oer12hf we need oec Online Education Connections to connect learners, teachers, experts, resources to create projects #flatclass- Moderated Discussion with all Attendees: Assessing the Current State of OER from a Practice Perspective
Carolina Rossini, GPOPAI (Mod)
This discussion will serve three interrelated goals. First, it will focus on lessons learned from the project presentations, aiming to highlight narratives that have the potential to promote OER generally and increase the impact of open resources on different educational contexts specifically. Second, it will seek to connect our theoretical and conceptual discussions from the first segment to our contextual and project-based discussions from the second segment. Finally, it will identify the key variables that shape impact in practice and assess their interplay. 
#oer12hf session, assessing the current state from a practice perspective, moderated by Carolina Rossini http://pic.twitter.com/uYfkmMjJ
@lpetrides both, OER provides opportunities for formal/informal without the economic restraints that disenfranchise so many #oer12hf- International Context:
* Funding may be available, but not for OER or not attached to good policies
* Open data initiatives may not be considered as part of the umbrella of OER
* Discussed institutional resistance, e.g. publishers, as well as ways govt (e.g. brazil) may grapple to understand OER
* Open Question: what about the cases of countries where resources aren’t widely accessible enough to enjoy OER? - Domestic Context:
* Link teacher professional development to OER (open policy initiatives), digital media, SNS
* Hire major auditing institutions and have them audit public schools to see how public funds are being utilized on educational resources and force schools to take actions
* Public funding issues: we need to propose alternatives to traditional textbooks (e.g. tablets) so that public funds earmarked for textbooks would not disappear once there is a shift toward OER
* If there were to be an administration change in November 2012, what kind of political ramification would it have on OER momentum? 
- Informal Context:
* Learner's needs (e.g. how can badges be fun? what meaning do they convey?)
* Credentialing the informal
* Assessment (different from credentialing)
* Communities/networks that drive the reputation of credentials - Formal Context:
* Why no move away from traditional textbooks?
* What kind of incentives can we use to increase OER usage in schools?
* How can teachers be incentivized to develop their own OER?
* What are the disincentives (e.g. cost of time and lack of reward for adapting/creating OER)
