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;Open Educational Resources Some reflections on OER ’13
;THATCamp London have you registered yet?


[[File:Communicate_OER_logo.png|thumb|200px|right|The Communicate OER project logo]]
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''This post was written by Dr Martin Poulter, Wikimedia UK Associate''
''This post was written by Martin Lugton, co-organiser of THATCamp London 2013 –  The Humanities and Technology Camp. It is the first in a week of guest posts related to our GLAM-WIKI Conference, which takes place this weekend at the British Library, London.''


[http://www.oer13.org/ OER13], a two-day international conference about Open Educational Resources, took place last week in the University of Nottingham. As well as providing a focus for new developments and findings in open education, it addressed overlapping issues such as open access to research, student perspectives and digital literacy. Wikipedia and Wikimedia had a very strong presence.
I’m excited about THATCamp London 2013 because I’m trying to understand what digital technology might mean for culture. What are digital’s possibilities for the creation, sharing and experiencing of meaning? How might digital help us understand ourselves and our works, or allow us to challenge and transform our understandings of the world?


I attended on behalf of Wikimedia UK, to deliver a presentation, set up a little stall, and offer the [http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Education_Program_Case_Studies_%28WMUK_version%29.pdf How Universities are Using Wikipedia case-study brochure], which went like hot cakes. The presentation explained how Wikipedia and its sister projects can be used as educational platforms. Its main example was the Wikipedia Education Program in which students improve Wikipedia articles for course credit. According to [http://oer13.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/wikipedia-education-program-open-educational-practice-on-a-global-scale-abs70/ a blog post by Terese Bird] of the University of Leicester’s Institute of Learning Innovation, the presentation “made a compelling case” for including Wikipedia-based assignments in formal learning.
My academic background is in ‘non-digital’ history, so I’m still quite new to this area of thought. While I encountered some weighty work with datasets in my time as an undergraduate – for example the work of the Cambridge Population Studies Group – my course did not explore digital humanities. My primary interest was in cultural history, and reading Chartier’s Forms and Meanings started me off thinking about forms, context and meaning. So I’ll be hoping to think about meaning and culture as well as seeing examples of work with large datasets at THATCamp London 2013.


[http://philwane.com/ Phil Wane], a Nottingham Trent University lecturer and previous speaker at [http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/EduWiki_Conference_2012 the EduWiki Conference], gave both a paper poster and an electronic poster about the [http://philwane.com/wikibook.html Wikipedia Book Tool] and how lecturers can use it to create and customise lists of articles.
I’ve been developing my skills to better enable me to actively participate in digital culture. In the last year I’ve started learning programming (Python and C), and I hope that THATCamp London 2013 will allow me to get a better idea of the types of projects I might be able to contribute to, and the directions in which I might like to develop these skills.


The gold star, however, must go to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:COMMOER Communicate OER project], which is bringing together Wikipedians, educators, and support staff to improve articles about open education. The project’s Pete Forsyth and Sarah Frank Bristow attended the conference, and thanks to them all delegates got a copy of the [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Welcome_to_Wikipedia_booklet,_UK_version.pdf Welcome to Wikipedia booklet]. They had a stall, a poster, and [http://oer13.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/opening-up-our-minds-to-wikipedia-at-oer13/ two sessions to introduce their project] and invite participants to School of Open’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Communicate_OER_SOO_Course new online course on Writing Wikipedia Articles]. As if that weren’t enough, they also ran a post-conference editing session.
In addition to participant-run seminars and workshops, as part of THATCamp London 2013 we’re also hosting a Europeana hackathon. So there’s going to be lots of creative activity around the Europeana catalogue of cultural works, using the Europeana API. I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of things people are doing with APIs – or could be doing! It’ll be my first hackathon, so I’m interested to see what sort of scope and scale of activity can feasibly be carried out in such a short sprint.


The open education genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Open Educational Resources are not a new idea, but there was a sense at the conference that we were all part of a movement that is only just getting started. One discussion group argued that it is now within our reach to have public, open education on the model of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service  the National Health Service]: available to everyone, life-long without charge, with both rights and responsibilities for citizens who need it. Wikipedia was mentioned not just as an example of this free global service, but as a way for citizens to contribute back to the common good.
I’m looking forward to a varied, challenging and exciting day, and to making some connections with other THATCampers.


We [http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2013/03/learning-and-teaching-in-the-age-of-wikipedia/ covered recently on this blog] how some educators are resistant to the educational potential of Wikipedia, yet our warm acceptance from the OER community shows that the shared goals between Wikimedians and formal education are impossible to ignore. <span class="plainlinks">[http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2013/04/announcement-qrpedia-donated-to-wikimedia-uk/<nowiki>[</nowiki>...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>
If you’d like to join us, this free one-day unconference – supported by Wikimedia UK and held at the British Library – is taking place on Sunday 14 April. This comes at the end of the GLAM-WIKI conference, which brings Wikimedians and cultural institutions together to share experience and ideas. We’d love for you to join us. To register your free place, [http://london2013.thatcamp.org/2013/02/20/you-are-invited-to-thatcamp-london-2013/ please head over to the THATCamp London 2013 website].<span class="plainlinks">[http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2013/04/thatcamp-london-have-you-registered-yet/<nowiki>[</nowiki>...<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</span>


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Revision as of 16:25, 8 April 2013

Cymraeg | English

Wikimedia UK

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Для української мови Вікіпедії ласка, відвідайте http://uk.wikipedia.org; для Вікімедіа Україна відвідайте http://ua.wikimedia.org
For the Ukrainian language Wikipedia please visit http://uk.wikipedia.org; for Wikimedia Ukraine please visit http://ua.wikimedia.org

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