Sharing: Open Educational Resources for Language Teachers

Abstract

The last decade has seen an increase in the number of open online spaces through which users can share their educational content. These may be institutional websites, national initiatives (such as Jorum in the UK or COERLL in the US), online communities of practice (see Chapter 8), or commercial websites. At the same time, the notion that using and creating Open Educational Resources (OER) is a positive, beneficial activity has gathered momentum across the world at political and strategic levels with the establishment of a range of initiatives aimed at promoting engagement with OER. In 2012, UNESCO adopted the ‘Paris OER Declaration’, which affirmed support and encouragement for the development of governmental policies integrating OER into education, and in 2013, the European Commission launched the ‘Open Education Initiative’ which aims to enhance the digital skills of European Union residents through ‘the development and availability of OER’ (European Commission, 2013). Since then many European projects have been funded to expand the integration of OER into teachers’ practices (such as LangOER, which aims to harness open practice to support minority, regional and less used languages).