Developing a national OER collection will be a great asset as all resources will be correctly licensed and of good quality but on the other hand it will only be o great use if all teacher are aware of how to use and share the resources appropriately.
Basic obstacles to establish national online OER collections in PNG:
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OER concept is not really used and not well known to teachers here in PNG
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There are no trainings provided to orient and up skill teachers on the use of OER
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Most schools have no good computer laboratory, few teachers have their own personal computers, not all schools provided teachers their own machines
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Teachers are not well versed with the needed digital skills for OER sharing
Opportunities to establish national online OER collections in PNG:
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Teachers are willing to learn
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Very good local materials established in different subject areas
Establishing OER in all pacific nations is something of great benefit. Teachers will learn new teaching methods, students exposed to new classrooms (online). Some opportunities will be:
- available opportunity to teach students of different pacific islands (eg Fijian techer to teach Kiribati students)
- teachers learning new teaching methods and or resources is a great opportunity
- sharing teaching resources and various teaching (preparation methods) from different pacific island countries
- this may also reduce teachers time in lesson preparation, everything is stored online.
Considering Obstacles in establishing this OER I think of the following, few obstacles:
- Different Pacific islands may have different interests, ideas etc as regarding OER. Wish all teachers get enrolled in this course (including those officers from the Ministry of Education from all pacific countries)
- Cost is probably the factor, to some pacific islands.
- Another obstacle I may see, is selecting personnel from different countries to join in the Establishment of the OER panel, which is the fact of the Pacific root. We always go for those we know, instead of those âwho know what to doâ
- another Obstacle to consider is the fact of the internet. If we can have a standard 'bandwidth for all pacific nations. then we can able to assess the reliability of the OER via the internet. A good illustration is the âAccounting Systemâ. If you are in New Zealand, and you can easily prepare, analyse and report the Financial statements just as you will do in the Philippines. All because there is a Standard Accounting Method we use. The internet where OER is operating needs to have a standard Internet SPEED etc.
Establishing OER at the national level is a grand opportunity for my country - Kiribati.
Kiribati has 33 islands scattered all over the pacific islands. Establishing OER will be a great benefit for the Ministry of Education in Kiribati. As for establishing OER in Kiribati I want to look at the Obstacles more that opportunity. If we look at obstacles then we are prepared to establish good and better OER in Kiribati. For these, here the few obstacles to establishing OER in Kiribati.
- OER is a complete new thing to Teachers as well as students
- Selecting a team to form an OER establishing team will be an obstacles due to fact #1 above
- Internet is surely very costly in Kiribati, Costing is one obstacle to establishing OER in Kiribati
- With too many island of Kiribati schools scattered over the rim of the pacific ocean can be also the obstacle, this may also fall in the Costing category.
- Most classrooms and teachers in Kiribati have non-existence understanding of OER
- Some School settings in Kiribati (physical classrooms) are certainly a great obstacles to OER.
It is going to be a great idea to develop our own resource (OER) inline with the syllabus with cooperative effort . However, the challenges we may face may be internet access particularly in the remote schools.
One of the main obstacle is that OER is going to be totally new to most teachers in Papua New Guinea and also most of the teachers lack digital skills, therefore most trainings and awareness is needed.
Indeed, it is challenging since the OER depends on IoTs and the Digital Ecosystem. Each subset from network providers to broadband and the technology must be seen to be effectively working for efficiency. The geographical locations of this global community matter in the sense that the ICT infrastructure is not the same as captured by varying experiences expressed here. But the gains so far from far outweigh the challenges and thus the very reason we are intellectualizing here from across the lunar.
Thank you, should have thought of this âdownloading the resourceâ, the âspinning wheelâ may take time, but the result thereof is a joy of knowing fewer inconveniences.
National or Regional OER repository is an absolute is good idea the question is when,how to establish natonal collections can be of many challenges. Expertise, costs, knowledge and a lot of other issues - type of devices, internet and may also can be politically challenged.
Establishing a national level OER collection, say âKiOERâ is a great idea. Let us think of:
1)Obstacles - lack of technical skills personnel for the start. then we will look at cost of training these officers. Another problem we may face is the collection of materials for the repository itself? How many teachers in Kiribati will be willing to provide OER collections of their own for FREE? something to think about.
2)Opportunities - too many teachers in Kiribati if they support OER, and the materials to be collected are huge. Ministry of Education serves as the centre of all schools in Kiribati storage, so collections of materials are mostly available.
Opportunities vs Obstacles in National Online OER Collections
Providing OER training with my limited experience has taught me to search for content and read up on OERs continuously. Therefore, I have recently come across ROER-repositories for OERs. Imagine everyone having links to these repositories in terms of having access and downloading. How much time would be saved in the actual engagement with students instead of having to prepare content all the time? Higher institutions can grant access to their repositories to each other to share resources. That would be an excellent opportunity.
The challenge or obstacle may be found in terms of quality assurance, as whoever modifies content has the right to share as well. Perhaps, separate requirements or terms and conditions could be made available to review each content before it is loaded?
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There are more opportunities to establish national online OER collections and are challenges. If we continue to work on them, someone else may invent a better strategy for the quality assurance aspect.
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