Notes:

1. Where is there demand for OER?

• Arabic speaking region. Students unable to qualify for an English-language track, so Arabic resources needed. (Daniel W)
• Doha, Cairo, Dubai: Creative Commons local community. Huge thirst for Arabic OERs. (Cathy C)
• Translation community: Open Stax (Ed)
• Spanish and Portuguese regions in Africa, Latin America. Teacher training. How to engage government, helping teachers & students to use OER… (Carolina R, Priscila G)
  • What infrastructure is missing? (Daniel W)
  • Improving teachers' confidence, identity as an author as opposed to a consumer. (PG)
  • Brazil has a huge Arabic speaking (Lebanese) community. (CR)
  • The Brazilian government is purchasing electronic devices as way to improve education, but if they don't invest in teachers training, nothing will change. Huge companies are  offering free technological platforms but suddenly disable and the educators can't develop their projects anymore. We have a demand for using open source platforms. What else besides "moodle" they could use?
• Demand for OER ? demand for education; perhaps think about both. Are people even investing in education? (Cable G)
• People with disabilities, and specialized educational needs. (CR)
• Huge demand: an expectation that there will be O(or at least free)ER. If students enroll for free, they do not want to encounter a paywall. (Howard L)
• Learning communities developing with no connection to educational institutions, e.g. Wikipedia (Pete F)
• Sub-Saharan Africa will have a huge demand for vocational training. (Jenny G)
• Case study: Pick a region (to keep the focus on how to serve regional communities) (Kathy N)
  • Arabic region -- and, more specific?
• Including OER component in census in Brazil about how teachers use technology in education (http://www.cetic.br/educacao/2011/) (CR)
• Difficult to think about OER policy independent of education policy more generally (Neil)
  • Policy instruments are generally focused on *restricting* what people can do. It may be more important to dismantle policies, rather than establishing new ones. Making teachers busy and/or fearful is a core problem. (Neil)
  • Open policies (open data, open science…) Bringing change from outside the system (eg national textbooks), and persuade that it can be a good source for innovation. But also find your allies and heros inside the system and work with them. The pieces need to move together, but we cannot wait for structural changes forever. (CR)
• Look for "soft spots" -- where are the opportunities? Maybe not formal public schools, maybe (for instance) in less formal, self-organized environments in rural India. (Mike S)
• Several ways to tackle policy issue: influencing social movements. Influencing bureacracies. Governments may not look at spending if there is no policy in place. If no OER-specific policy, maybe OER needs should be inserted into broader policy initiatives. (Vis)
• Informing and engaging constituents as well as policy makers is important. (PF)
• ?? (KN)
• If you are aiming for (??) or if you are aiming to meet core requirements they will take you down different paths. (David H)
• Risk of oversimplifying. In many countries, there is no policy. We don't use our greatest assets. Our ability to work openly and transparently can be an inspiration and an opportunity. For instance, develop funding proposals openly. (Wayne M)
• "State of the field" agenda item is at the end of our 2 day meeting. It's the most interesting part! It might be better to *start* with that, so we can have robust debates about how to move things forward. We have a relatively small field, we have strong common understanding of problems and solutions, and we may miss an opportunity to organize ourselves around that strength. (CG)
• It's helpful for me at the State Department, with a lot of interest in openness, to tap into the wisdom of people who are already knowledgeable in the field. For instance focus on tech/voc is a good intersection with what US Depts of Labor and Ed are working on. (Paul)
• Very large NGOs and banks that look at education globally: how to work with them? (MS)
• Teacher certification program in north India: OER was a no-brainer, a five minute discussion allocated $250,000. Advantages in developing world, where there are not wealthy publishers to struggle against etc. (Neil)
• The more partners we get, the better we are. Grow the movement. (Vis)
• Tech/voc and economic, growth, social development, educational perspectives: these will be key drivers, and if we can show there are already good OERs, that is a good opportunity to have an impact. (Vis)
• Give Pete a piece of paper with the name of a Wikipedia article related to your work, your name, your email address, and Communicate OER will get in touch! Pete (pete@wikistrategies.net)