We tried Skype as the voice client, due to its reliability and popularity in Japan, but we still needed to find native speakers to talk to our students. At the time, there were only a few free sites where teachers could look for language exchanges and they weren’t very efficient. We also frequently ran into problems after contacting potential partners, due to time differences and semester schedules. As an alternative, Professor Meguro began looking for individual English learners on a Japanese social networking site called Mixi. It was much easier to organize. The site allowed her to post the day and time when her class would be in the language lab, and asked students in Japan to message her if they were interested in a language exchange with our students.

It was a huge success! Professor Meguro’s students enjoyed putting to use what they’d learned in the classroom, and the dynamics of the class fundamentally changed once the students recognized they would be practicing what they learned from each chapter during regular language exchanges with native Japanese speakers. The next step was to find a way to make this possible in all of our languages. To do this, I created the Mixxer. It is little more than a social networking site built with a Drupal platform, allowing users to find partners for language exchanges.

Today, because it is simple and free, Mixxer has grown to over 100,000 users. Now our students, or any user, can sign up and find a language partner on their own. Any instructor from any academic institution can also create an account and organize an “event” for their class, which sends out an invitation for native speakers of the target language to sign up for a language exchange. Mixxer is now large enough that an instructor can be confident of connecting their students with a native speaker of almost any language. I can’t emphasize enough what a positive change this has had on language students. My hope for the future is to provide a suggested structure and content for these exchanges using OER materials from COERLL, Connexions, and MERLOT, among other language learning resource portals.

Contact Todd Bryant at bryantt@dickinson.edu or by twitter (@bryantt).

It contains, among other things, an extensive series of videos of talks given by some of the world’s most inspiring speakers on a huge range of topics, including the environment, technology, food, education, war and peace, and women’s role in reshaping the world. These are not materials designed for the language classroom. However, they are freely available on the web with a Creative Commons licence.

The licensing choice made by TED organizers serves a dual purpose: first, it fulfills their mission of spreading the ideas of their speakers. Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on how schools kill creativity, for example, has been viewed over 11 million times. At the same time, and of greater relevance to language professionals, it provides us with top quality video materials which can be adapted and repurposed to suit the needs of our language students. We can then share the resulting materials with other teachers around the world.

I have used TED videos for a number of purposes:

• to create authentic listening materials for upper-intermediate and advanced classes;
• to trigger debates on hot topics, which can then lead to the production of class wikis or to the students contributing to the debates on the TED website;
• to enhance reading materials found in the students’ textbooks;
• to encourage the acquisition of field-specific lexis in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses; and
• to provide university students from a range of different academic fields with top-quality video materials for self-guided study.

Often, the students’ curiosity, triggered by a video watched in class, makes them want to explore the website and listen to other talks on other subjects. As one of my students observed, “TED was a true revelation; I never thought there were so many fascinating talks in one single place.”

The next stage in the process is that of making those materials freely available to colleagues worldwide as Open Educational Resources (OER). This, for many teachers, is the difficult step. There are many issues involved, both practical and psychological, including whether the materials are good enough to be subjected to the scrutiny of one’s peers, or concerns about how those resources will be used. These should be addressed as part of professional development initiatives. Embracing openness is a slow process, and requires not only the necessary practical information but a true cultural shift.

Once you understand the benefits of sharing, a whole universe opens up before you. Personally, this has been the most enriching development in my professional career.

Performing Languages is a Grundtvig adult education partnership project, which enables amateur actors from France, Spain, and Italy to work with language teachers at the Open University (OU). Together they explore, amongst other issues, how drama activities can be adapted to the language classroom. The primary aim of the learning partnership is not to produce materials but to share experiences and develop common understandings; however, from the beginning we were convinced that any resources we produced for our project (such as workshop activities, lesson plans, texts and video recordings) should be available as Open Educational Resources (OER), published under a Creative Commons licence. That way, they will be available to everyone working in the lifelong learning areas of drama, language learning, and intercultural education. In this way, we are hoping that the experiences and ideas from this project can be either replicated by others or adapted to their specific contexts and needs. We believe that by making our resources open we will increase the impact of the project.

It has not always been easy, but we are finding that you just have to keep making the case for openness, and that slowly, one person at a time, you can make a difference. Most of the teachers who have taken part in the project have written activities for the language classroom based on what they learnt in the theatre, and have published them as OER. That in itself has been great to see (published in OU’s language learning website LORO, Languages Open Resource Online repository of OER, and tagged as “performing languages”).

I would encourage all teachers to think about making the results of their scholarship activities (be they teaching resources, case studies, workshop or conference presentations, or indeed journal articles) open to all, and to publish them through open licenses such as Creative Commons whenever that’s appropriate. Others will be able to use them and adapt them, and the work will have a greater impact and help improve the quality of teaching and learning everywhere.

The next step was to figure out how to deliver the resources from my course to my students and–why not?–to anyone else who may want to learn from them. The answer was iTunes U. Apple launched iTunes U in 2007 to disseminate educational content provided by universities, initially only from the USA and Canada. Since then, it has opened up to other educational institutions and countries. The vast majority of the content is freely available to the general public. In many instances, providers retain copyright of the materials they offer. In that sense those materials only fit partially with the definition of Open Educational Resources: the content is provided for free for learners and teachers, who may choose to use them as learning or teaching tools, but there are restrictions on modifications and re-purposing. There is a growing trend towards change in this respect, however; some institutions, including Oxford University in the UK and Stanford and MIT in the US, now offer some of their materials under a variety of Creative Commons (CC) licences, some allowing sharing and remixing for derivative works.

The Open University joined iTunes U in June 2008 and since then has become a key player, providing more downloads than any other provider (over 52 million as of June 2012 – over a quarter of these originating from the USA). With over 40 years’ experience in producing resources for distance learning, the Open University offers materials that have been designed specifically for the independent learner. It offers thousands of free audio and video tracks as well as eBooks, including language learning resources for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, English, and Welsh. Despite the fact that language materials only represent about 10% of the content that the Open University provides on iTunes U, they account for almost a third of all downloads, making languages the most successful among its resources. Open University language resources often take up the entire Top 10 downloads chart for languages on iTunes U.

In a recent 21-month large-scale survey I conducted, the results showed over 80% of respondents rated Open University language materials on iTunes U positively, and 97.2% stated they believe the materials they download are helping them learn the language they are studying. iTunes U can help deliver free language learning resources to a worldwide audience, and the Open University experience is a prime example of success in delivering open language content that is both popular and high quality.

Many of the units match the thematic units of my classes: visiting a market, touring a French house, attending a birthday party. The videos and the interviews bring the language and culture to life. My high school students also like the videos that document college students living their “French lives” while studying abroad. These videos have helped my students understand what happens when studying abroad. I think this aspect has encouraged many to think about studying abroad when they go to college.

In addition to using Français interactif in class, I also have a Wikispace for my classes where students can work independently. Sometimes I link an activity or video from Français interactif on my Wikipage so students can just practice when we have lab time. I also like to use the resources as a type of “flipped classroom” where students learn things at home and leave more time to practice in class. I especially like the Tex’s French Grammar website that offers students another way to comprehend challenging grammar concepts. I have this site linked on the AP and IB summer practice site, too.

Like many high school teachers, I have several multilevel classes. With this OER, students can learn on their own at their own pace while I am working with the other levels in class. Sometimes students just decide to choose a thematic unit and learn beyond what is happening in class. I also let parents know about this OER. They love it because it provides support for their children at home. I’d encourage teachers, students, and parents to learn about the wonderful world of OER.

Français interactif: http://laits.utexas.edu/fi/
Tex’s French Grammar: http://laits.utexas.edu/tex/

In community college, as elsewhere, we see learners of all learning styles, proficiency levels, and achievement in language studies. The MERLOT language collection allows me to provide free access to high quality OER, from simple target language exercises to whole open courses and texts. There is video, audio, realia, and virtually every other kind of material that can be used in any classroom–face to face (f2f), hybrid, and online. My online students get to use the same excellent media that f2f students use, with the particular benefit of quality listening materials done by native speakers.

A project I am particularly proud of is the MERLOT Africa Network, which has made excellent use of OER for the benefit of the students on that continent. People all over the world are seeing the benefit of sharing knowledge–one of the greatest affordances of educational technologies and an appealing solution in difficult economic times. OER and technology tools make learning possible for the many as opposed to the few, and they open up avenues for collaboration around the globe. I am extremely happy to be a part of this energizing time for education. Discovering new materials for learning and the best way to use them keeps me professionally alive!

Find out more about MERLOT at http://www.merlot.org.

Armed with video cameras, my colleagues and I set out to document the experiences of our study abroad students as they sought to communicate in France. Our efforts resulted in Tex’s French Grammar and Français interactif, two online resources that broke a lot of unwritten rules for pedagogical materials. In 2004, we made both resources available to the Internet public and were astounded by how quickly their popularity spread among French learners and teachers. We had produced Open Educational Resources (OER) without even knowing what OER meant!

I first heard the acronym “OER” a few years later while watching a TED talk with the provocative title, “Goodbye textbooks; Hello open source learning.” The speaker, Richard Baraniuk, professor of computer engineering at Rice University and a leading figure in the Open Education movement, painted a compelling vision: an educational ecosystem where knowledge was free and open to use and re-use and where educators shared their ideas and materials with each other.

Not everyone is convinced, however. Surveys indicate that teachers remain wary about the quality and authority of OER, and rightly so. Significant educational changes should be met with healthy skepticism. At COERLL, all materials are developed by experts in their foreign language. Moreover, the developmental process includes multiple cycles of classroom testing and revision. And since COERLL products are free to the public, teachers or students can examine their contents fully before using them.

Fortunately, there are many professional organizations concerned with vetting OER such as OER Commons, Community College Open Textbook Collaborative, and WikiEducator. Another good example is Multimedia Educational Resource of Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), an online community of faculty and instructional technologists. Many COERLL materials have been thoroughly reviewed by the MERLOT editorial board. Moreover, because organizations such as MERLOT or WikiEducator have no vested interest in the product under review and employ actual teachers, the evaluations tend to be very practical and well-informed.

If you are a foreign language teacher frustrated by some aspect of commercial textbooks—their rising cost, their reliance on inauthentic language, their lack of appropriate role models for language learning—I would encourage you to learn more about OER. A good place to start is the Department of Education’s National Foreign Language Resource Centers portal where you will find a trove of free foreign language materials (http://nflrc.msu.edu).

A couple of years ago we [the Brazilpod team] received a request to retool our online video clips for proficiency testing purposes. We had never thought of applying those video-based materials to testing, and it was impressive to see that somebody else had thought of them in those terms. Similarly, many of the video topics that we came up with for our Conversa Brasileira series originated from video skits that our students had recorded, as part of their assignments with the Portuguese Communication Tasks. That is to say, the students used one set of materials to generate ideas for their skits, and we, in turn, created a whole new series of video-based materials based on their ideas. Each new phase grew out of original applications to existing materials. I remember the first time we found out that our Spanish Proficiency Exercises website was getting hits from people in Togo, Africa and Reykjavik, Iceland. Really, Africa and Iceland! We once received an email from a user of Interviews with Latin American Executives who taught Spanish in Hungary. He asked for permission to make a Hungarian translation of the video clips. We were more than happy to give him permission. More recently, a user of our Conversa Brasileira series decided to create “lesson plans” to go with our online materials. All on her own, and simply for the pleasure of enhancing the materials, she decided to share her lesson plans with the world! (Read more about this user, Nicola Mabbot.)

It is wonderful that the textbook is available for free online. It allows the student to have access to course materials even during holidays when one does not feel like traveling home with books. I found it very convenient. I was concerned at first to see a free textbook. It was my first time using free online instructional materials, so it was a surprise to find that it was extremely user friendly and did a great job in gradually pulling the student into the Yoruba language, without the overwhelming effects usually attached to learning a new language.

Later, I was involved in acting and singing in Yoruba videos, which we students uploaded onto Youtube. The experience was a new one, but exciting to be able to work with other students while learning Yoruba. The atmosphere was energetic. It made the language more interesting and fun. I believe the videos are important because it presents a new style of learning that’s not the usual lecture. And because it’s in the form of a song, I felt it made learning Yoruba easier to remember. Being a teacher of Yoruba language is definitely not something I thought I would ever do, but it feels great to be able to pass on what I’ve learned to others.

Yoruba Ye Mi can be accessed at http://www.coerll.utexas.edu/yemi.
Also check out the Yoruba youtube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOiT_9IQHh4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGRoOybWvBE

The term OER is really new to me, even though I was probably involved in using them and later creating them for a much longer time. Retrospectively, I would say I have been a user of OER for 20 years or so. When I was in high school I always tried to find free educational resources online to prepare and study for big upcoming exams. When I worked at Mt. Holyoke College later, I was fascinated by the way my mentors taught: engaging the students and realizing innovative ideas. Not only did I get inspired to create my own material, I also built my first personal website which provided information and material for German students at the college. I never thought I would enjoy teaching. Through the work with my mentors I was introduced to Dr. Zsuzsanna Abrams and her German language projects: Deutsch im Blick (DiB), a first year German textbook, and Grimm Grammar, an online grammar tool. These were open resources with a Creative Commons (CC) license.

I found the project original, authentic, and cool. After my first year working with Dr. Abrams I was thrilled when she asked me to actively work on its content, which meant not only to edit, collect realia, and design new exercises, but to actually apply what I had learned and share it freely with my German language students.

I think it is important to educate users about open licensed material. As an instructor I have found it dissatisfying if a picture or a file that was used to create a great exercise has to be taken out of a lesson because we cannot acquire rights or permission to use website content. Also, some exercises become useless if content has been taken off the web or its URL changes.

I hope that promoting and speaking for the general utility and value of open educational resources can help open up more venues and ways of realizing issues, such as integrating music videos and other culturally valuable material. Ideally, developers will find a way to communicate and cooperate in a more transparent yet secure form with the different user groups (teachers, students, administrators). As of now there is no way for us to share testing and evaluation material. Assessment should only be available for teachers, and I am not aware of an open and free platform that would allow such cooperation and sharing. I hope folks knowledgeable in how to realize this will soon step forward, so that projects like DiB (and its various users) can benefit from an even greater collaborative community and successful learning outcome.

Access DiB at http://coerll.utexas.edu/dib/.