OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES.


If i look at how i sat some of my papers in the early years they were done either by coming to the poly tech or by correspondence.I found the personal interaction worked better for me rather than just reading it from a paper booklet.I found that the open education offered me lots of flexibility in that i could do it any time (day or night) and when ever it suited me personally especially when my children were younger.
Basically it was set up like i was sent the material, i worked through it,then i sent the work back where it was marked and then i received any feedback that was necessary.
This worked reasonably well if there were no problems but if  i needed any advice then i would have to chase up the respective tutor on the other end of the phone(this sometimes wasn't always conducive to normal everyday living).


If i look at how i run the Automech classes now it is mainly project based learning with a lot of practical in engineering and automotive plus some embedded theory after they have learnt the practical.


What do i mean?


If I sat them down in a classroom and quoted Pythagoras's theorem they would all be asleep or completely bored as they had supposedly learnt this at school but could not apply this any where.

This has no relevance in normal life for what the guys relate to.   

What we had to do then was to relate it through a practical sense but also with an OER.

Firstly we had them work on a wishbone (front suspension of a car.) We then applied the theory around its design, (a triangle) this is purely for strength and rigidity and then we applied a few You Tube examples of Pythagoras and it seemed to make a lot more sense.

If you look at some of the video examples they are really good examples, we then encourage the guys to look up at least  about three examples and rate them.

Another example of what we use is a site called workings of machinery where we show them firstly how to operate a Lathe safely and then we get them to look onto Moodle and find the site and look up The Centre lathe  and how to set up the tool height and do basic  machining operations.

This site gives them various options including machinery,hand tools, power tools etc.It can be accessed any time as long as the student has access to a computer.

If you look at a lot of state schools in different countries  then they are already digitising a lot of their text books.Bangladesh are doing this in all of  their text books from grades 1-12. South Korea are planning to digitise all of its text books and provide each student with a P.C.

If you look at this then we have to indeed acknowledge what is happening and implement changes,

i think with students owning P.C's this is a start and then they can access the course work when ever they need to. The only thing stopping us from doing this right now is cost.

 

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/enable/disacc00.htm

If you read the above link it says of how OER are always under review or development, which means that it will get easier to access as long as you have the right accessibility and resources.

One that we are already trying to set up is the use of machinery particularly the Centre Lathe.

We are filming certain segments of machining steps and we then hope to firstly make it available to our students and then hopefully put it under the O.P. banner and use it as a OER. This is currently being done and i have enlisted the help of the EDC as my filming and editing skills are not the best.I do however believe that this will be a useful tool both internally and externally.

Cheers,