The Pacific Partnership for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning is working to establish national OER collections. The idea is that Ministries will assign national moderators to commence work to enable teachers to share OER and map these to the national curriculum.
We invite you to share your thoughts and ideas on the opportunities and obstacles to establishing national OER collections by posting in the forum.
This information will be valuable in developing and improving implementation plans for the future.
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The establishment of national OER collections will enable students and teachers across the Pacific to share ideas and resources. However, poor reception of network will be an obstacle for remote areas.
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Sharing OER is good, and should be open. My question how open this can be, when looking and considering the cost, geographical location, etc. Some countries will be unfortunate when talking about costing. My country, Kiribati, on the island am online from, the more devices connected online, the longer time you will spent looking at the spinning wheel, they say, 'still connecting"
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Indeed, accessing and using OER is not always straightforward. There are challenges associated and good and reliable access to ICT is one of them. However, there are possible ways to mediate this challenge. For example, one could download the resources on-behalf and share it offline (via portable drives) within the community. In addition, depending on the usage rights for the open resource, one could reproduce and make the materials available to students in printed form.
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Establishing national online OER can only be seen as an opportunity without obstacles if only if we see and do things in using the ‘heart’ of real teachers, blended with vacation and professionalism
In Fiji, it will enable teachers to explore a variety of learning materials which will support their teaching and learning. Teaching will become more accessible when teachers will share materials. However, teacher’s lack of knowledge on how open educational resources can be shared or obtained becomes an obstacle in implementing this. Moreover, technological limitations and inability to afford devices in some parts of the island may become an issue.
An important point which alludes to the importance of raising awareness of OER. Here is where all participants of the DS4OER course can help. When speaking with fellow teachers, tell them about OER :-).
We can also use the power of OER to build capacity using open courses which, like this one, are assembled entirely from OER.
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Thank you Sir. This is what I’m doing with our team of teachers.
The establishment of national OER collections will enable students and teachers across the Pacific to share ideas and resources.
It is a good idea to have a centralised OER collection as long as it is sustainable, accessible and quality control is maintained.
Sustainability is essential. If it will be.more sustainablé for institutions and education districts to have separate OER repositories, why not implement that?
National Online OER currently adopted has both positive and negative of it, some countries may experience slow access to information while others access information on very fast mood, however, learning become instrument to many success.
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#OERS enable teachers to explore a variety of learning materials which will support their teaching and learning. Teaching will become more accessible when teachers will share materials. However, teacher’s lack of knowledge on how open educational resources can be shared or obtained becomes an obstacle in implementing this. Moreover, technological limitations and inability to afford devices in some parts of the island may become an issue.
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The OER enable educators and learners to share ideas and resources. But having gadgets at home is a luxury for some. So not affording these will be a hinderance to learning.
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It is a brilliant idea to establish a national OER collection. The Ministry of Education with the people in leadership hierarchy should have knowledge of OER before work can commence on this. Lot of opportunities will be there when Fiji establishes national OER collections such as copyright and licenses issues will be solved, Fiji can build own resources such as videos, images and PowerPoint presentation and Fiji curriculum notes and activities which everyone can use. Obstacles will be there because at the moment OER awareness is not there; neither amongst school leaders nor among teachers. Its only a few that are aware of it and some people don’t want to know about it since they are in the comfort zone doing things that is expected…no one wants to go beyond expectation since there is no incentive. To begin with this, Train the trainers initiative may work but still without directives and incentives, it may happen slowly. The National Day for OER after a bit of awareness can be good incentive where every teacher in Fiji can prepare a resource 1422 ECE teachers, 6186 primary teachers and 5576 secondary teachers which means a total of 13184 resources in a day…that would be great. 
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DS4OERS participants completing this course is the beginning of the journey to achieve a national OER collections. I am just wondering about the awareness of this course that teachers are doing. Does MoE give recognition to it or is it just another certificate that is for self development and also may become shelf development if nothing is done about it. If the directive comes from the top hierarchy leaders then only it is possible for teachers as OER practitioners to take the idea forward into schools. I think the OER practitioners who complete this course should become part of Train the Trainers program and then a National Day allocated for preparing OER resources. Also now the Talanoa platform introduced in Fiji can assist in good discussion on such topics and sharing of ideas. Mastodon or forum can also be used to share ideas. Image collection for resources should also be encouraged which can be uploaded by teachers as Pacific Image collection. 
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That is a good question - I’m not sure if MOE provides any recognition, but that said, the MOE FEMIS site did circulate information widely about this course.
The Talanoa Karo Pasifika site is a powerful hub featured in the DS4OERS course materials. Perhaps in the future this burgeoning community can assit in promoting DS4OER learning opportunities on the community site.
Lots of opportunities and spaces to build a thriving OER community of practice in Fiji.
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It would be wonderful for Education Ministries to assign national moderators as soon as possible. But funding could be an issue? Exertnal agencies such as UNESCO et al could provide additional assistance to get the ball rolling.
The Digicel Foundation’s emphasis on ‘infrastructure’ might hopefully include digital or connectivity infrastructure one day, to increase capacity, speed and affordability of data processing and transmissions, that would aid in making OER collections much more accessible, particularly to schools in remote locations.
Every school, every teacher, every child - In the Pacific! Let’s keep the dream alive! 
Portable drives are a great idea! 
All available and open resourse materials could be uploaded onto a USB ‘enrolment card’ and given to each student at the beginning of the academic year. Wouldn’t it be nice if every student in PNG could be given a ‘portable device’ as well. Like a tablet, to access materials, as not all homes or schools will have computer labs? And given the Pacific’s vulnerability to climate change, am hopeful that much more sustainable options would be available instead of printed material. The cost associated with transport is significant.
Lots to think about.
Thank you so much for your comments.
Learning process is changing every year, good example is the current Covid situation, we can not stop the learning of our children, there are new implementation coming out, by saying this, i believed the the approach will help many student across the Global. further more, inclusive learning required free learning material, the result of illiterates in many society was so expense to purchase for learning material.