Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
from the publisher responsible for them.
Although the free provision of educational material is, many times, provided
by governmental programs, ensuring access to those who attend public schools,
problems relative to diversity, adequation, punctuality of distribution of new resources
and quality of such materials are common. This education market model
also ignores the students at the margin of the traditional system, such as self-taught
people, or even families which follow-up and intend to participate in their children’s
education. This situation is much more serious in countries in development such as
Brazil, wherein, among other problems, the teachers frequently need a better and
more comprehensive formation; the resources, many times, are scarce or inexistent;
the buildings of the public libraries are collapsing and the cost of didactic books or
complimentary resources restricts the access of many students and their families.
The Open Educational Resources respond to this reality marked by educational
problems. The proposal presented determines that the educational materials must
be obtained as common and public assets, from which everyone can and shall benefit.
Such view is especially expensive to those who receive a minimal support from
the current educational systems, both those of public and private financing. Thus,
the OER denies the mercantilistic character marking the distribution of educational
resources in current times and proposes a system of open access to learning opportunities
to all.
The OER encourage and enable the collaborative production and sharing of the
content, encourage the exchange of methodologies and the formation of practice
communities. That, on itself, is a valuable social asset, increasing the investments
made in education. Thus, the opportunity for a more fundamental and transforming
change is created: the change from a passive consumption of educational resources
to the formal engagement of educators, students, of the families and society
in the creative process of development and appropriation of educational content.
The Open Educational Resources represent, therefore, “the open provision of
educational resources, enabled by the communication and information technologies,
for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users” (UNESCO,
2002). In this sense, the OER are formed by three main elements: The concept of
learning, the software tools supporting the production, utilization and distribution
of the contents, the implementation resources such as open licenses of content (Creative
Commons) and software (such as GPL or BSD). The Cape Town Open Education
Declaration states: “These resources openly include licensed didactic material,
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