3rd Learning Reflection

This session started with Frances Ferreira who talked about illiteracy rate among children especially in developing countries. I strongly agree with her, that if we want to scale up education, we should not only develop educational resources but also choose the right licenses for these educational resources. Ahrash Bissell mentioned the phrase "when sharing, simple is best". For educators to reuse, revise, remix or redistribute the learning resources, it is essential that they are published under CC-BY. CC-BY automatically encompasses the four essential freedoms. I also learnt about the copyleft license model and its conditions are that any remixes and derivatives should carry the same licence as the original which according to me will limit freedom of use on educational resources. Lastly in this session, the objective of OER university which will be a blessing especially to students from developing countries.

Overall, this micro open online course was really an enriching experience for me. Although the last five sessions were very time consuming, I really enjoyed completing all the activities. This was my first online course and I must admit I learned more than traditional courses. The activities, case study, learning reflections and also small personal thoughts have played a major role to reinforce learning. This course gave me the opportunity to use micro blogs and to create my own blog. Equally the term "Open Educational Resources" (OER), prior to the start of this course was totally new to me. I got the opportunity to know how OER can contribute to standardize the quality of education worldwide and at the same time provide free education to students in developing countries. 

I was totally unaware about the existence of Creative Commons licenses and I was amazed how creative commons CC-BY can help in the battle to make Educational Resources "open". The Creative Commons licenses combination were also interesting and I was happy to learn about the advantages and limitations. Previously when researching an information or image from the internet, I did not checked whether the work was copyrighted but henceforth I will definitely check the licenses of any resource before downloading from the internet. Regarding the choice of license, I strongly agree with Ahrash Bissell recommendation that for the sake of simplicity OERs should all aim to be CC BY. As an educator, I consider teaching more like a vocation than business. So educators should not bother to publish their work under the CC-BY-NC license as our aims should be to promote learning and build on existing resources. So henceforth, I will opt for a CC-BY license when publishing my educational resources.