Localisation of OER in India

In India, OER was welcomed as a legitimate way to distribute educational resources by the state authorities though use and awareness is not widespread. So localisation through translation and reference to place and culture can lead to greater learner engagement.

When a team of localisers for subject areas such as Language and Literacy, Maths, Science and English were brought together to translate OER material. 

Four forms of practitioner agency identified:

• Those who wanted the localisation process to involve both teachers and students "whenever I felt there was something missing from the OER, I used to take help from a child from the class itself" Pilot use of the OER in the classroom allowing further refinement.
• Collective and individual action-becoming familiar with the OER material and mapping against the State textbooks to move forward.
• New teaching practices-new ways of viewing the professional development process, teachers through encountering the OER are transferring their new knowledge to colleagues.
• Collective movement in practice-workshop mode brought new benefits and ways of looking at the material, it was better to brainstorm in this environment than work on localising the material as individuals. For example, translators worked individually on translating paragraphs then discussed their output together, giving feedback to each other.

Wolfenden, F & Adinolfi, A (2019) 'An exploration of agency in the localisation of open educational resources for teacher development', Learning, Media and Technology vol. 44, no. 3, pp 327-344 Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1628046

Theory of eLearning by Mark Nichols

 

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 © 2008 John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler.

John Seely Brown and Richard Adler note how improvements in communications and transportation allow for any markets in the world to be connected and become globally competitive. The article focuses more on socially constructed learning, where students share ideas and construct their own knowledge. Where

mastering a field of knowledge is not only "learning about" the subject matter but "learning to be" a full participant in the field.

Examples of such an approach include the field of architecture where new practitioners slowly gain more experience and knowledge by following an established architect. When reading articles that are over 10 years old it’s always interesting to see if the projects mentioned are still in existence or are being updated. The first one that I looked at as I scrolled on is The Faulkes Telescope Project. From an initial search it seems most articles about the project were in the period 2007-2009 and there didn't seem to be much current writing on the project. I looked at the Project website and saw that the last post on the website was from October 2020 and in fact, only last week there was a post on twitter about Year 12 students from Radly college Physics Department in Oxfordshire participating in some live observing. There was also a recent article in the Journal of Science Education and technology from 2020 where a study of inquiry-based learning found that students understanding of physics and nature of science instruction was greatly improved. The Faulkes telescope project is mentioned allowing students to access astronomical research based on remote observations.  

References: 

 https://twitter.com/kevinmosedale/status/1357369480259784706?s=20 The Influence of Inquiry-Based Remote Observations via Powerful Optic Robotic Telescopes on High School Students’ Conceptions of Physics and of Learning Physics Zohar, B. Ron ; Trumper, R Journal of science education and technology, 2020-09, Vol.29 (5), p.635-645