Language: English
Session: Together: The Values of Open Education. Collaborating Internationally and Creating an Openly Licensed Picture Book. Now What? #GOGN Together: The Values of Open Education. Collaborating Internationally and Creating an Openly Licensed Picture Book. Now what? #GOGN :async:
Presenters:
Gino Fransman (Nelson Mandela University/ OpenEdInfluencers), Chrissi Nerantzi (Manchester Metropolitan University), Paola Corti (Politecnico di Milano), Ody Frank (Clarendon Six-Form College)
Number of participants: 8 replies, 180 views, 6 users and 16 likes
Countries of the participants (non-exhaustive list): South Africa, United Kingdom, Canada, and Greece.
Observations of the Interactive Activity:
This activity introduces conference attendees to Together, an openly licensed and collaborative picture book. The project was supported by a 2020 Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) fellowship. The research team conducted an international study about themes in OER, metaphors and the meanings of different animals around the world. Using survey and workshop results, the team developed Together, the story of 3 friends on a journey to build a new playground.
The activity provides the opportunity to translate Together into additional languages; the collection contains at least 28 translations. It also provides the opportunity for participants to use open tools to practice remixing and adapting the open book. While interacting with Together, attendees can consider how the book can be used to foster engagement and promote the values of Open.
Key Findings:
Open content translation can be a powerful tool to build capacity in the Open movement. Together has already been translated into at least 28 languages, including many of the national languages of South Africa. As discussed in other sessions at the conference, translation brings Open into a local culture and context. It expands the opportunity for participation in building and using open resources.
The activity also demonstrates how easy it can be to adapt and remix open resources. The Together team did considerable work to ease the way for attendees to participate from publishing the book on Zenodo to creating the Doodlefan page and tutorial. Their preliminary work allowed conference participants to begin working with the text immediately. This type of preparatory work won’t be available with every open text we might wish to adapt. But, their efforts lower the barrier of entry for those wishing to explore remixing, making it accessible to youth and adults new to Open.
Positive points regarding focal areas outlined in the Recommendation area:
Three sub-points of the Building Capacity action area are particularly relevant to this interactive activity: a) building awareness among relevant stakeholder groups, d) leveraging open licensed tools, and f) promoting digital literacy skills.
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Lowering the barrier for entry while introducing participants to new tools and skills – the team took advantage of easy to use open tools like Doodlefan and Zendo to share their book and promote remixing. Participants can practice using the tools while interacting with Together. Also, the team utilized items and images from exhibits made available by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and bringing awareness to the use of open museum materials in book design.
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Building awareness and empowering educators and learners to be co-creators – this story and the act of remixing it can be applicable to youth and adults alike. It can be used to raise awareness of and promote the values of open. It can also be used in different learning settings across cultures and languages.
Negative points regarding focal areas outlined in the Recommendation area:
This question was not particularly applicable to this activity. No negative points were raised or discussed. I would welcome input from the GO-GN team on potential negative points to consider.
Complex Issues:
These two complex issues were conceived after reviewing the activity and associated documentation provided by the GO-GN team. They were not explicitly discussed as part of the activity. I welcome the opportunity to discuss them further with the research team.
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Tracking and compiling versions, translations and remixes – How will the team track versions of the story as the project grows and spreads? How will it be made discoverable beyond platforms used by experience OE practitioners?
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The use of the open material for reasons other than intended – This may not be a concern of the creators, but it remains a prevailing concern of may open creators and could be applicable to this story. Are there tools or practices that can be used to minimize this issue?
Technology Considerations:
The team made it as easy as possible to contribute to the project and remix the Together story. They use Doodlefan to enable remixers to select book scenes and types of brushes to easily adapt the story. The team also provided a brief Doodlefan tutorial to help conference attendees quickly begin participating in the activity. As mentioned above, this work involved a lot of advanced preparation but then enables relatively easy interaction with and remixing of the content.