We have begun the project to make a more solid and open software architecture for OCW IN MOTION.

You may access the project just clicking here or by clicking in the left menu.

The project is focused in create a more flexible and modular architecture of software valid for any standard of content syndication.

We'll continue developing the software for dokuwiki: it minds we'll finish by creating a dokuwiki plugin to use rss from educommons, any other rss and IMS (mit ocw style and generic IMS)

Keep you tuned to this!

(ps: just forget the name “revolution” in the title: it is only a private joke!)

Dear Friends:

We have work strongly for some weeks by adding some new features to ocwinmotion project and we belive we have reach the final stage of the development of this. But wait a minute!, we have found a bug and until monday afternoon we think the ocwinmotion will not run properly… sorry for the inconvenients.

Stay tunned!

Brian Lamb, an excellent professional (and buddy) I meet in last OpenContent Conference in Logan, Utah, is presenting a conference in San Juan de Puerto Rico about remixing content.

Brian ask me for a little help and ask me for a very short speech about RSS and Ocw-in-motion. He interviewed me from Vancouver using Skype and recorded the sound of my voice.

It is amazing what technology can do if (it is the key point) you use it imaginatively… Thanks Brian to let me another opportunity to speak (you know: Spanish people simply likes to talk!) about ours projects.

You can see the result here: http://wiki.elearning.ubc.ca/RemixableFormatos

I strongly recommend you to take a look!

The OCW IN MOTION project will be presented at Open Ed Conference in Logan, Utah, next September, the 26th.

The draft of the program is here →http://cosl.usu.edu/conferences/opened2007/program

We'll publish here, at www.ocwinmotion.com the final paper and recording of the presentation.

Some months ago, an article called my attention: (http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010211.html and http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010236.html) about the power of RSS and OPML to transport content from a “closed” container for open content (Yes, I know it is a contradiction) to another one more “open.”

Actually, the blog entries I've read were about an experiment driven by Tony Hirst at UK Open University.

It consists on deconstructig an OCW course (for example from OCW at MIT) from the RSS feed provided and it builds an OPML, or a more rich RSS, with all the items the course has.

Then, using a feed aggregator or an OPML aggregator one, he show the feed(s) content in an appropriate way.

Until this moment I was not interested so much in this technique because probably, the IMS content package an OCW can provide is a more effective way to transport the content and to reuse it in a LMS

But something called my attention again: I've notice this sentence:

"The disaggregation step does, however, have the beneficial side effect of producing reusable
components from effectively closed (i.e. not trivially mashable or remixable) open content ;-)"

Yes! OpenCourseWare does not aim to produce learning. The structure of an OpenCourseWare is valid - and it is very useful! - to show the rest of the world what we are doing inside the walls of the university…. and it produces a lot of benefits.

All the educational content in the OCW has a lot of educational value; it has been used for this purpose and probably they are good educational resources for a given structure (the course the teacher teaches).

But the educational value of the OpenCourseWare content does not become effective again until somebody will reuse it by adapting and localizing the original content for another specific use. The IMS the OCW provides is good to transport the resources - and even the whole course - to a LMS and to reuse it in the same way the original author did. IMS and SCORM (and the prospective IMS-LD) are good to package the resources and even the educational structure the original author did and to put them in another LMS and start learning again…. But what about deconstructing?

Probably the whole thing is not appropriate for another real situation, and needs to be adjusted. Or even it can be used not as an alternative way to learn but as an complementary workspace.

What about if we arrange to put the content in a collaborative workspace like a wiki? This is what we have done in OCW IN MOTION.