Summary
OpenContent has made significant progress in expanding and extending the reach of educational material. One challenge that remains is to better understand and facilitate the uptake of this content. Using a variety of software tools and technologies, most notably from the broad area of social software, experiments in creating viral communities and content will be undertaken, largely by leveraging existing assets. Some of the existing material may be augmented when appropriate with other approaches. These experiments will partner with the nascent OER portal.
The initial focus will be in the content areas of music and physics. Music units have proven to be some of the most popular “classes” in the OpenContent collection (specifically at Connexions), and hence have a good possibility for viral approaches. The PI is a practicing musician, and is active in online distribution, remix, and other applicable technologies/sociologies. Physics has a high availability of content and important possible K-12 applications. The PI is well versed in the hard sciences, especially in online distribution, having been a chemistry professor from 1995 until 2000 (working with physics faculty on various technology/pedagogy issues), and an early integrator of web technologies into science curriculum.
The approach will be to first connect with current content providers and aggregators to gain a better understanding of successes and failures. Then a set of online experiments mixing content with appropriate tools will be undertaken to better understand the particular dynamics. A conference/workshop, portal site, and white papers will be deliverables to disseminate the work.