Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

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The Open University of Sri Lanka Sound of Gems Sasheeka Karunanayake and Anoma Ariyaratne 10.1 The use of OER didn’t come easily to student teachers in the Ratnapura centre. “OER” is a new concept introduced to Ratnapura teachers, which was a new concept for almost all. Like searching for Blue Belle by digging deeper, OER is a concept where they dig deeper by questioning the existing practices. This included a series of workshops and individual contacts which provided guidance to improve their professional practices as teachers. The series of workshops has been scheduled to conduct in line with the teaching practice period of the PGDE students. Due to that, the student teachers were motivated in attending this workshop as they wanted to enhance their skills in practicing teaching in different ways. We feel that we conducted the series of workshops on OER in the best time frame because these workshops focused on integrating OER into teaching and capacity building among teachers. We were aware that, though many teachers had computer literacy, they were not highly competent in incorporating different resources into the teaching-learning process. Further, almost all of them were aware of basics in lesson planning and teaching-learning process, some of them were lacking in their skill in designing lesson plans and incorporating resources into lesson planning. Due to that we felt it was a challenge to work with them. The selected group of teachers was a combination of teachers who taught different subjects in their schools. Almost all of them had English knowledge up to some extent. The introductory workshop commenced bilingually which made student teachers more comfortable and confident. After the introduction to OER, the students were asked to write a reflection based on the guidelines provided. They were happy that they were allowed to find free software where they could type in their native language and post their reflections onto an online platform. As the student teachers were able to write in their native language, this helped us to find their reflective ideas in detail with regards to OER. Participants expressed their views on OER in their reflections which are given below; 20.03.2015 - OER was a new concept to me. It’s very creative. Searching for OER supports my lesson planning. Today was the first time. So it’s difficult, but I know I can do that. I know how to write creative lesson plans now. The above reflective entry stands for how Ratnapura teachers laid their stepping stone on OER and how they have identified their status in this regard. Further, one 209
Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices ICT teacher has stated as follows: 2015.03.20- I’m glad that I could participate in this research because I find it very useful to my profession. I usually search the internet in search of proper information and lesson materials for my lessons. But I always had difficulties in using them publicly due to the legal framework. And OER solved my problem because today I got to know about the license types and what I can do with them. It helped me in selecting more appropriate course material for my students. Thank you” The above reflection shows how this teacher was enthusiastic and motivated in engaging with OER. At the workshop, the teachers were guided to develop a concept map illustrating their understanding about OER and related concepts. Though the concept, “OER” was new, the teachers were able to illustrate their understanding on “Openness in Education” by developing concept maps. An initial concept map developed by one participant is shown in Fig. 10.1.1. Fig. 10.1.1: An Initial Concept Map The next task was to introduce a mechanism in searching for OER in different websites and repositories. The teachers who have the chance to use the computers in day to day work quickly identified strategies to search for relevant OER from relevant websites. We noticed that those who were lacking skills in using computers faced a difficulty in searching. For such students, we helped in person by explaining the whole process. It was a hard task in explaining the whole process from scratch. We were tired of explaining the same process over and over again. But it made us happy when they tried and were able to search and find relevant OER after some time. 210
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This book is dedicated to the hard-
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The Open University of Sri Lanka Ac
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Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

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