Debates have developed worldwide to point out the importance of Open Educational Resources, a broad concept that includes Open Learning Objects. In turn, this has brought on the development of hundreds of repositories around the world, which allow people to share educational resources in a very easy way.

This week, you will be introduced to the concept of Open Educational Resources, and you will visit some international and national repositories that could become an important source of educational materials for your work!

The idea of sharing resources through the Web is based on the idea of re-usable and modifiable objects. But how could they be if they are "all rights reserved"?

The Open Content model, and the related copy left licenses, are the solution. You will start by reading how the Open Content model has developed from similar sharing models in the software world. In addition, you will learn about the Creative Commons, an example of copy left licences, that allow Net users to freely share resources, by specifying restrictions for reuse or modifications.

1. Please read the book "Sharing free/open LOs".
2. Explore the Creative Commons for Hungary (just follow the links immediately listed after the book), and acquaint yourself with Creative Commons.
3. Then, read the book "Open Educational Resources and Repositories".
4. Explore as many repositories as you can (minimum: 2 international and 1 national repositories); you can start with the repositories listed in the "Open Educational Resources and Repositories" book, but you should also search the Web for further repositories.
5. Whenever you find a repository containing resources in Hungarian, add it to the "Hungarian repositories" wiki. See further instructions in the next "Additional Activities" section.
6. In the repositories that you have identified, try to find educational resources that you consider useful for your work.
7. Post your comments on the repositories you have visited and the resources you have found in the "Repositories and Resources" forum; in particular, you should comment on the quantity and quality of resources that you have found in the repository, which difficulties have you met in finding repositories and/or resources, and so on. NOTE: comments in the "European repositories" wiki should be short and refer to the repository as a whole. In the forum, you can specifically comment on resources, and debate with your colleagues on what you have found (or not found)
8. Comment on others' posts.

Additional Activities
Evaluation of this week is heavily based on your participation in the forum "Repositories and Resources", so please try to find as many resources as you can. If you do not find any resource you consider valuable for your work, please tell us the main problems you have met in finding resources.

Remember, you have to document your progress in your learning diary!
Visit the forum to discuss which repositories have you visited, and which educational resources you have found!

"European repositories" wiki (these same instructions are directly included in the description of the wiki):
For each repository that you want to include in the wiki, please add a new wiki page and a link to that page at the beginning of the wiki.
The page for each wiki should contain instructions to visit the repository; in some cases, the URL of the repository could be enough; but sometimes you could also indicate how to find resources in your country in an international repository, or how to change the repository language into Hungarian. It is up to you. The more information you include, the more interesting your work will be for your colleagues.
In addition, you should include a brief comment on the repository (e.g. if you recommend it).
Before adding a new repository, please be sure it is not already listed there. In case it is listed, go to the corresponding page in the wiki, and add your comment.
Last modified: Thursday, 23 April 2015, 4:43 PM