By dullhunk on Flickr

That accolade, at the moment, belongs to the status quo or NOER. Shrouded in  a grey cloud of semi-legal licencing and ask no questions, share-if-you-like NOER has usurped the old rigid print-era  structures and heralded a new age of digital sharing. But like all revolutions, the torch must one day be passed on to a more stable arrangement- and OER is the way.

It is with the spirit of passing the torch that my project to surface OERs will surface best of breed non-OERs too. No-one wants a search tool with one eye closed,  searchers need stuff and plenty of it; a few resources and a lot of evangelistic zeal isnt going to get a presentation ready for tomorrow. If the non-OER resource gets used it was because it was better but if the OER is comparable then the association of the two may lead the searcher to a better solution and the originators of both resources to create a yet better resource.

It’s my first search system with a ‘philosophy’ rather than a muscular search algorithm. It’s taken me 12 years to finally accept a little rectangular search box is too thin a passageway to transfer our complex aspirations to even the most sentient super-computer search engine.

What I’m saying is Serendipity (making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated) is a fruitful relationship that has always existed betwixt humans and the world they inhabit, and the Internet is just the same. The first library of written work was, in fact, assembled just to make dusting easier, but it became the first in a long line of information Serendipity Engines. But even the mighty Google – the fabulous super-athletic Gatekeeper of humankind’s greatest ever collection of stuff, cannot (yet) read our minds. If you know what you want and how to express it then you’ll get it, but if you don’t Serendipity is there to help.

Somebody, most recently Coldplay, once warned: “…when you get what you want but not what you need…” …then you’ll learn nothing new. So many smarter people than me are trying to achieve the ultimate, to give everybody just what they want every time they ask, even if nobody in that chain even knows what that is. The best of luck but I’m getting off the merry-go-round. So here’s to Serendipity; it gave us Penicillin, it makes us buy crap in supermarkets and it gave us most of the smartest thoughts we ever had.

This one year project will form a static and a linked dynamic collection of Open Educational Resources relating to Lo-Carbon Engineering practices. Sources will be selected by experts to ensure a  fresh, dynamic source of current and new materials as they become available.

This project will run from August 2010 for 1 year and will investigate and surface open educational resources currently in use over a range of engineering and related subjects supporting the crucial issue of sustaining a low carbon economy. Resources selected will include technical and non-technical teaching materials as well as guidance on incorporating low carbon practice into existing teaching courses in academia and industry.  Subjects will include, but are not limited to, energy efficiency, sustainable development, renewable energy technology, waste minimisation, human issues and social responsibility, product lifecycle, total cost of ownership and recycling. Guidance materials will include re-skilling the existing workforce, low carbon transition for business and education, ethics and embedding sustainability into the curriculum.

The project will involve the creation of an Internet based collection on the Engineering Subject Centre’s web site incorporating a foundation of existing linked resources enhanced by a dynamic search system that by employing real-time data interchange techniques will allow the aggregation of related resources from online services, ensuring the collection remains up-to-date and connected to the broader community of practice. Other dynamic references to data will be aggregated relating to relevant news and events. The project will seek to make the best use of “web 2.0” services such as YouTube, Delicious, Flickr etc. and support open standards.

The work will be undertaken at Loughborough University, which has a world class reputation for excellence in Engineering, Materials Science and Environmental Engineering. Also based at Loughborough is the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre (EngSC), where the development work for the project will be done and the dissemination of outputs via the Centre to the whole of the UK through established channels and practices.

As well as drawing together material the collection will provide re-syndication services such as remote embedding of search facilities using established technologies such as RSS to raise awareness. Partnerships with resource hosts will be developed to enable, protect or enhance dynamic linkages.

Expertise gained during Open Engineering Resources Pilot (OERP) Project under Phase 1 of the OER programme relating to proof of concept technical real-time resource surfacing, copyright and Intellectual Property Right (IPR) work will underpin this project. The Engineering Subject Centre will use its well established networks and strong links with the professional bodies to ensure that the project will have the maximum impact and benefit for students, teachers and other potential users of OER. The project will also capture and openly release guidance regarding any new technical, logistical and legal processes encountered in the course of the project. Findings will be disseminated via the JorumOPEN Repository and addition, where appropriate,

guidance documentation will be disseminated via other services such as the JISC InnovationBase

he focus is on making a collection of low-carbon related engineering resources available but the project is a technical one as this collection will consist of dynamic links to existing OERs. Materials research and the surfacing of existing OER collections being the other important ingredient.

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© rcp:240610:a0000

It would be most useful to potential users of an Open Educational Resources (OER)  to know about any similar or related works, or to see the ‘family tree’ of the resource, just by clicking a link. Re-users or creators of derivative works would benefit themselves, new users and  ancestral authors by continuing this linkage as they evolve the material.

There are a lot of very rigorous methods for storing information about  a resource developed my technologists and librarians, but I’ve developed a simpler idea that lends itself more, I hope, to the OER ethos.

It’s there to be shot at so please go ahead.

http://icesculpture.wordpress.com/make-evolved-oer-discoverable/

OER requires…those involved to take a non-traditional view of what ownership means, but teaching materials are only one part of the educating process. The extra knowledge, wisdom, insights, anecdotes and teaching skill remain with the creator.

The web…the emphasis has swung away from “how do I do it?” to “What can I do with it?” This will require that things are done properly under the gaze of an ever greater audience. The web services and sites employed in this project are proven and well established and therefore appealing to students and academics familiar with utilising the Internet as part of their learning and teaching.

IPR (Ownership, Copyright etc.)…is so often dangerously misunderstood by most people. Challenging the orthodoxy of “light-touch” must be done carefully and tactfully.

Embracing web technology…it is critical that UK higher education is ahead of the expectations of those it serves to remain viable and world-leading. The project handled these issues and delivered against these benchmarks.

The best two things must be:

Learning more about IPR – so often misunderstood by most people. We have also gained an understanding as to why things are done the way they are; the world would grind to a halt without some bending of the rules. So OER must step carefully; it is better but it has to evolve tactfully into the new way of doing things or risk becoming a disabler not an enabler.

Applying web technology – The team developed an API powered dynamically aggregating supersearch as a proof of concept. I literally met the proverbial “boffins from MIT”  when i demoed it at a conference and they thought it needed some work but had potential. Too true.

At a deeper level, the project challenged the application of the law, applied cutting edge technology and posed the question: how should HE teaching and learning look in the future?

Many academics believe current practice is fine; this is nearly always not the case from a legal point of view. Technology makes certain things effortless; but big businesses are battling to control services and this will change the shape of the web again. Are we making sharing harder by doing it “properly”? We do not believe so. Good engineering is all about getting the foundations right; time and money spent doing that right now will return many times over.

More detail here and the API powered dynamically aggregating supersearch (APDAS ?!)

http://www.engsc.ac.uk/an/oer-project/oer-project.asp.

Virtual Book Launch Event in progress. Copyright 2010, Linden Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

“Higher Education in Virtual Worlds Teaching and Learning in Second Life” ( available at Amazon )

We had little in terms of real research evidence to present in the chapter and at the session – the use of virtual worlds in education is so new. It was a good chapter and a good talk but I wanted to give more useful information, but, like everybody else, I will have to wait until the experts in the field of the mind begin their studies.

The conclusion we came to is: be aware that one persons immersive experience can be anothers stifling uncomfortable nightmare, so proceed with caution, but do it anyway!

Like TV channels, more doesn’t mean better, just better is better hidden. But amongst the noise of blogs, Twitter and paradigm shifts such as Open Educational Resources, are we in fact uncovering a new openness, a willingless to share what before was kept private? So is it more and better or will we eventually become as we were before, an mis-informed mass of easily manipulated peasants going back to waving pitchforks and dunking suspected witches in the local pond? Or, as our brains are freed from the drugery of decades spent aquiring information, as we delegate that task to the wires that criss-cross the planet, we can use this new found free time to practice Thinking Very Well?

I think the answer is yes.  The ignorant will still crave ignorance  and scuttle towards that comfortable darkness. Those educated in enquiry will enquire and search endlessly for ultimate truths reconciled it is the journey not the destination which is important. Both options will just become easier to aquire that is all.

If future generations become feckless ignoramuses then I apologise.

The Subject Centre  where I work gets some linkage from the post Engineering in Virtual Worlds, a round up of  Second Life/virtual world things:

“There have been recent reports of the failure of Second Life to live up to the hype, but the potential of virtual worlds – multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) – is still being explored in education. It is perhaps Second Life’s potential as a First Life marketplace that has failed to live up to the hype.”

Worth a read.

Good that the hype has died down. The idea and the potential still remain long after the “Second Life Stole my Wife” copywriters have moved on. Its good we got a mention and a citation – all good for business – if people are now asking “so what is it all about?” we are in a slightly better than the average position to say, which is our job!

My long standing gripe with the whole SL thing is that the very people who have never even tried SL are the ones slagging it off – incredible! It was easier to persuade those same people about the commercial Internet 15 years ago than it was with SL. I’m generalising wildly, but I think the reason for that is its a generational thing. The Internet was new for everybody of all ages. But the virtual world, or indeed, virtuality generally, is harder to grasp for older people.