This is my talk at the Open Course Ware Conference in Cambridge UK, April 2012. It is quite dense, since it was a 15 minute talk. It illustrates my work to make it easier to create remixable education content. To remix content it is helpful to have a format that emphasizes semantics and structure. We are starting to work on an open source editor that helps authors either create content from scratch or import and then add nice structure and semantics without undue pain.

1. Expanding the Ecosystem for Remixable
OER
Kathi Fletcher
OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2012
April 16­18, 2012
Photograph courtesy Joe Crawford (http://www.flickr.com/people/artlung/) under th Creative Commons Attribution License.

2. My background
Kathi Fletcher
Background :
Connexions PM and Technical Director 4 Yrs
Lessons: Do what you are best at and empower the
community to build an ecosystem around you.
Fellowship:
An OER Roadmap for an Ecosystem of OER
Technical plumbing for OER
• concentrating on publishing

3. Web/Online Accessibility Tools
EPUB/E­Book
PDF/Print
Repositories
Benefits of Remixability:
Learn anywhere
Library photograph courtesy Joe Crawford (http://www.flickr.com/people/artlung/) under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

4. Benefits of remixability:
The community adds value
Edit / Remixable Transform
Translate.
OER
Learning &
Practicing
Publish, Compile, Accredit Tools
Photograph courtesy Joe Crawford (http://www.flickr.com/people/artlung/) under the Creative Commons
Attribution License.

5. What makes a repository
remixable?
Modular : Reusable components
Pluggable : Editable, structured format (hard to do)
Shareable : CC license, permission to reuse
Reliable : You can count on it being there

6. Pluggability is hard to support, though
Authoring remixable OER is too hard right now
Make it easier
1) Grow the developer community solving the
problem by providing APIs
2) Create an importer/editor that is as easy as Word.

7. OER APIs: Publishing
OERPub based on SWORD
Simple Webservice Offering Repository Deposit
OERPub /
SWORD
OERPub /
OERPub / SWORD
SWORD
Photograph courtesy Joe Crawford (http://www.flickr.com/people/artlung/) under th Creative Commons Attribution License.

8. Making Authoring Easier
Transform open teaching materials to
remixable format
6/17/11

9. Connexions Importer
Convert, Preview, and Upload docs (word/oo/gdocs/blogs) to
Connexions and more

10. Wherever the learning is – start there.
Word → Remix
6/17/11

11. Wherever the learning is – start there.
Word → Remix
6/17/11

12. Web → Remix
6/17/11

13. Web → Remix
6/17/11

14. Google Docs → Remix
6/17/11

15. Google Docs → Remix
6/17/11

16. The result – Biology Ch1.1
6/17/11

17. The result – Biology - Ch1.2
6/17/11

18. The result – Biology - Ch1.3
6/17/11

19. Next Steps – Build an editor
Engage developer community
Target HTML5
Use just-in-time semantics and templates

20. Author Behaviors that Subvert
Semantics
Cut and paste – incredibly useful for authors, but tends to
result in crazy formatting (ex: a table has a heading style)
Actions that “do” rather than “describe”
[Tab] for table/list
“*”, “1” for bulleted or numbered list
Bold for heading, term,
Italics for foreign term, citation

21. Just-in-time Semantics

Use authors' looks-oriented actions to elicit meaning-
oriented helpers.

Example: author tabs –
ask about paragraph
vs. table
vs. list
Image used with permission from P. Flynn's study on usability of authoring structured
documents (http://wiki.ucc.ie/structed/).

22. Templates – Provide Scaffolding and
Consistency for Authors
This example is taken from American Mathematics Institutes's Unsolved
Problems List (aimpl.org)

23. Existing editors to target

TinyMCE

New Wikipedia visual editor

Sigil EPUB editor

Wordpress/Pressbooks

Aloha

Mercury

WYM

24. Potential Collaborators : Booktype
Possibilities:

Use Booktype as a book editor and publish to Connexions

Collaborate on TinyMCE as a structured editor

Create conversions between CNX and Booktype and other
structured formats (DocBook perhaps)

Collaborate on tools to create HTML, EPUB, Mobi, PDF
from single source
Screenshot taken from http://booktype.org

25. Potential Collaborators : Siyavula
Building tools for teachers to
collaborate and create open
textbooks.
Image used with permission from Mark Horner's presentations on Siyavula.com

26. Potential Collaborators : AIM
American Institute of Mathematics
Collaborative Authoring Tool (for Mathematics
Textbooks)
This image is taken from David Farmer of American Mathematics Institutes's talk at a
workshop on collaborative textbook authoring.

27. Potential Collaborators: Connexions
Building a whole textbook with drag and drop
Screenshot of a Connexions experimental adaptation of “Smallest Federated Wiki”
https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki.

28. Potential Collaborators: Folks here!
Find Out More – Get Involved
Kathi Fletcher – Email me
kathi.fletcher@shuttleworthfoundation.org
Blog and Mailing Lists:
kefletcher@blogspot.com, oerpub-
dev@googlegroups.com
Project page:
code.google.com/p/oer-roadmap

29. Misc Image Attributions
Gold medal - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ksiom, CC-BY-SA
Coffee Table Book – By User:Mattis (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Package - By GNOME icon artists (GNOME SVN / GNOME FTP) [GPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)], via
Wikimedia Commons
Translation - By Jesse Burgheimer [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
Magnifying glass – By David Vignoni [LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
School room – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MrHarman – CC-BY-SA
Intelligent tutor – By Richard Wilson (died 1782) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Editing pencil - By Everaldo Coelho (YellowIcon) [LGPL (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)], via Wikimedia
Commons
Blackberry phone : By Ricmoo at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons