Learning Objects

In the readings for this week I noticed that Open Educational Resources and Learning Objects are very similar. Both are intangible electronic documents (videos, pdf, audio recordings) that can be accessed to facilitate learning. What became apparent is, the difference between the two lies in the copyright or licences that protect them.

These copyrights and licences in my opinion is the reason behind the downfall of Learning Objects. It became clear to me that educators/students who were interested in using these learning objects had to go through quite a lot of trouble to actually acquire the rights to use the learning object in question. This in turn made people negative toward the use there off and it slowly died out.

OER's differ in this instance where they are protected under different sub-divisions of the creative commons license and is infinately easier to use and use legally. One may even change and add to the work as long as there is no financial gain (fair use).

Another area that is of particular interest to me was the part on sustainability. For me a part of the downfall of Learning Objects was the difficult meta data technique of organising material in the repositories. With OER things are easier. Every person in the world is able to tag an object. After writing this post I will also tag it, making it easier for someone interested in OER to find it and use it. Sites like Diigo, Delicious and more are all based on the principle of social bookmarking. These types of sites are extremely valuable in OER as they replace the need for complex meta data organisation of content and in my opinion raises the sustainability of OER.

That's my two cents and understanding, please feel free to correct me or comment!

Have a cracking weekend!

Schalk