Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

The Open University of Sri Lanka
Matara
Pathfinders
9.2
Our first perceptions
At the very beginning, we were very curious about the totally new experience we
were going to encounter; our enthusiasm was very high to face a novel experience.
We were totally unaware about the concept of OER. However, knowing that it was
something related to technology, it made us feel that it was worth the effort to experience
and see. Further, we got to know that this opportunity was given only to a
selected group of PGDE students. We were highly encouraged by being selected for
this opportunity, and even though we were slightly hesitant, we had the desire to
learn about such a new trend in the modern world.
Starting point
The very attractive video clip titled “Copying is not theft” that was presented to
us on 02.04.2015 at the very first workshop held at the Matara Regional Centre,
enhanced our enthusiasm at being exposed to this novel concept, OER. It was a
wonderful creation which gave a total insight to OER in a very short period of time.
Sessions followed by the video presentation gave us a full-fledged readiness to identify
and use OER.
Drawing concept maps gave us an opportunity to think about “openness in education”.
Two of our first concept maps are given in Fig. 9.2.1.
During the workshop, we engaged in various other activities as well, starting with
logging in to the Moodle online learning platform. We were supported by the facilitators
in various ways. We understood the importance of OER, the 4R concept
(Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute), Creative Common license types (CC-BY,
CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC, and CC-BY-NC-SA), various types of OER and their
characteristics, and the effective use of OER. All new concepts were practically experienced
by going through existing OER available in various repositories.
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