Gita-Promila Freed.In Presentation

Developing Open Educational Resources:
WikiEducatorGargi 2009
–A Step Forward

Dr. Gita Mathur & Dr. Promila Kumar
Gargi College, University of Delhi

WikiEducatorGargi 2009 – A Step Forward

This Meet:

Freed.in 2009:
Getting There Together

Where do we fit in?

Focus area: Unfettered access to
knowledge especially for Education


The Five 'Tatvas' or Elements of Nature are:
Earth – Prithvi,
Water – Jal
Air – Vayu
Fire – Agni
Space – Aakash
These are all Available for Free


The Sixth element for the survival of
intellectual community is
'Education'
and the basis for this is Knowledge
This too needs to be freely available for all


We Imitate Nature
We saw birds flying and invented Airplane.
●

We saw fishes swimming and invented Boat.
●

We saw flowers of different colors and made our
●

surroundings colorful.

When everything in Nature is available for free, how
can we not share knowledge, it is our basic nature
to share our thoughts and knowledge.


Education is the very basis of

advancement and progress in society...we
all agree...

Is educational material freely available to

all those who want it?
 Knowledge needs to be set free...yes certainly...

 Who will do this?

 We bring to you a case study from Gargi
College.


Gargi College
University of Delhi


You may be wondering:
Who are we?


Why are we here?


Why are open educational resources our

concern?
Have we taken the right step forward?


Who will guide us?


Who will support us?


Who will be benifited by our efforts?


In this talk we will try to answer these.


Who are we?
We are teachers from a college of
University of Delhi.
We teach undergraduates in college and
some post graduates in the University.
We follow the curriculum of Delhi University
and are bound by the system.
The concept of OER's is new to us.


We are very passionate about teaching our
subjects and the idea of free educational
resources seems very attractive to us.

We did not know how to go about it till one
of us attended a workshop on
WikiEducator website
www.wikieducator.org


WikiEducator is a website for educators
and teachers, launched by the
Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
in 2006, it has grown into a dynamic
and exciting worldwide community of
educators, who believe that learning
materials should be free and open to
all.


COL is an inter-governmental
organisation
created by Commonwealth
Heads of Government
to encourage the development and
sharing of open and distance
education, knowledge, resources and
technologies.


Have we taken the right step forward?
Uploading Open Educational materials
prepared by us on WikiEducator appears
to be a good option for us because of five
good reasons:
1. It is easy to learn for us.
2. Gives us our own space.
3. Provides interactive approach with a
whole community of Educators globally.


4. Strongly supports the concept of Free and
Open Educational Resources.

5. Promotes collaborative content
development in all subjects and areas of
study.


Tell me and I'll forget...

.....show me and I may not remember...

.............involve me, and I'll understand.


For converting “I” to “WE”

Gargi College organized a workshop
WikiEducatorGargi 2009
on
Open Educational Resources
for arts, science and commerce faculties of
the college


In this workshop we discussed:
Two important aspects:

To develop Skills to work in WikiEducator

To understand the concept of Free & Open
Educational Resources and learn the way
they can be created and uploaded on
WikiEducator.


The Open Educational Resources Group


This jumpstarted thirty one educationists as
WikiEducators committed to contributing
educational content, and led to establishment of
WikiEducatorGargi College MultiDisciplinary
Academic Advancement Hub
All contributions by Gargi academia are being
linked to this hub, which in turn is linked to
WikiEducatorIndia.


Our Experience
as WikiEducators was:


It is exciting to find other teachers who teach the


same subject in other parts of the world.
The concept of sharing knowledge is very


appealing.
As teachers for more than two decades, we have


a treasure of experiences related to our subjects,
WikiEducator provides the forum to share them.
This is a wonderful way of updating our own


skills.


It is very user friendly and easy to work with.


The interactive approach is very meaningful for


academics.
Now students are looking for educational materials


on the internet, we can give them correct content as
well as guidance.
We can build up a collection of multiedited subject


content for students the world over.
We have added some educational content as seen


here:

OER for Botany

OER for Mathematics


As academia, we would also like to
think about:


...in future, if everything is free...
How will an academician survive?


From where will he earn his livelihood?


Well, that can happen even now, as for

any subject, so many books are available.
Encyclopedias are there to guide anybody

on any topic what so ever.
Even then, there is a problem getting

admission in a good institute at all levels.


The answer is right here.
●

You always need a GURU to learn anything in
●

depth.
Notice the difference between distant learning
●

and regular classroom learning of today.
It is the Gurus/teachers of today who need to
●

open up and share knowledge for the benefit
of all


– When you share your knowledge through
any open source you are only getting
more and more popularity amongst your
students.
– You are also getting a global community
of students.
– The Knowledge: the more you share, the
more you get


This is our culture
 OER is not a new concept for us
Indians.
 Our ancestors gave us wealth of free
knowledge in terms of four VEDAS:
 Sam Veda

 Rig Veda

 Yajur Veda

 Atherv Veda


“Be the change you want to see in
the world”
Mahatma Gandhi


After talking about Gargi faculty's interest

in opening up for Educational Resources
and about the WikiEducator website which
is instrumental in doing this,

The bigger question still remains about

...How to develop these 'Open Resources'?

For this we need Free and Open Software.



Why are we here?
Mr. Niyam Bhushan talked to us on the topic
“Goddess Saraswati in Jail Because of
You”

All the teachers were made to understand the
importance of Free Source Software. We all decided
to get the Goddess out of jail...


Half a day of very interactive discussions
resulted in formation of
Linux Gargi Group
of Gargi faculty.

This is the reason we are here.


Newly formed Linux Gargi Group


Linux Gargi Group
Is a group of teachers who now
undestand why Open Source Software
is necessary for releasing Open
Educational Resources.
All are subject experts and will be
happy to release study materials in
their respective areas of
specialization.


Many of us are using Ubuntu on
computers at home but have never
installed it ourselves.

We would like to go stepwise into
Ubuntu and not totally replace
Windows rightaway.


We would like to install Open Office on
the computers in the college within
Windows.

We need Volunteers and Technical
Support.

A Linux Festival can be organised for
this in Gargi College.


We have talked about only technical

help, that may not be difficult to get
from this community here.
 We want more than that...

 The most important task at hand
is....How to sustain this group?
 How to ensure that they are not
reverted back in concepts seeing
unfamiliar grounds?


How do we run the group activities?


 Does anyone here volunteer to
becoming regular support for us?
 Can some of you get associated with
us to solve our day-to-day problems?
 We are aware of the Ubuntu-online
group, but will all our group members
feel comfortable with only online
support?


WikiEducator supports the following
type of files for uploading:
png, gif, jpg, jpeg, elp, swf, flv, pdf, odt,
mp3, svg, odp, ods.
We want to know
about all these


We would like to extend
Linux Gargi Group
to our students too.

We at Gargi need Your Help


THANK YOU


Looking Forward to your feedback & support:

Dr. Gita Mathur
Reader (Associate Professor) in Botany
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Gita_Mathur
Gita Mathur <gita.mathur@gmail.com >

Dr. Promila Kumar
Reader (Associate Professor) in Mathematics
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Promilakumar
Promila Kumar < kumar.promila@gmail.com >

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