Come discuss successes, strategies, and challenges for opening content in developing countries. We hope this session will provoke hearty dialogue and opportunities for collaboration.
Open Content for Development (www.OC4D.org) fills a specific niche for OER access by facilitators of lower- literate learners in low-tech areas with a paucity of critical content tools related to community development and self reliance (e.g. health, human rights, environmental stewardship, income generation and community action).
OC4D was created in 2006 with support from Utah State University's Instructional Psychology & Technology (IPT) Department and the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL). OC4D gained encouragement from the Hewlett Foundation together with Dr. David Wiley (founder of the concept of "open content") for specific launch in Nepal (2007) to find ways to improve access to critical content in remote Himalayan community centers.
During the past 10 years, technology has leapfrogged and mobile devices have proliferated. The scaffolding of OC4D is transforming to improve mobile responsiveness and user-friendliness for peoples across the globe. Our reach is now expanding in Africa and the Middle East as well as for Islamic communities and Arabic-speaking users.
OC4D hosts literacy materials in disparate languages (French, English, Spanish, Portugese, Kiswahili, Xhosa, Tagalog, Nepali, Hindi, Haitian Creole, Guyanan Gulu and more). We have just agreed with Interweave Solutions to host their self reliance modules and manuals for open access in 60 countries around the world. We anticipate that the new OC4D will increase opportunity for even more users with expanded access to content and improved capacity to house more iterations of localized tools to grow the repository. But, are we ready for the growth? What questions must be considered?
