OER Hack Days

The CETIS UKOLN Hack days was a two day event hacking content, systems and services for open educational resources on the 31 Mar & 1 Apr 2011 in Manchester. This event was organised under the DevCSI and OER Technical Interest Group initiatives. The aim was to bring together software developers, project managers, academics, learning technologists, researchers and users who were interested in hacking OER content, systems and services.

During the event, delegates working in multi-disciplinary teams to work on ideas that had been suggested before and at the beginning of the hack days. The links below show those ideas that were worked on and developed during the day and, just for the record, some of the ideas which weren't picked up by a team.

Some initial reflections on the event by John Robertson are available on his blog, and a more in-depth review of the hack days by Kirsty Pitkin appeared in Ariadne.

Ideas that were developed

 * Bookmarking tools for OER
 * Generating Paradata from mediawiki pages
 * Wordpress widgets/plugins. Extend the utility of Wordpress as a host / presentation vehicle for OER collections.
 * Hacking a Google CSE for course directories
 * SWORD desktop app
 * Email-based deposit plugin for SWORD

Outline ideas
The following ideas were suggested, but not developed during the day.
 * JS widget to Wookie widget
 * Metadata Extraction Tools
 * PORSCHE thoughts
 * Document Import/Export Service
 * OER Playlist picker
 * Additions to OERbit
 * Prototyping a new OERca

Other things we looked at

 * Test install of @MHawskey 's wookie server on usb stick
 * Looking at @psychemedia 's visualisation of people/ tag/ relations and it's possible relevancy to paradata
 * worked on getting Xpert content into Learning Registry - ironing out bugs; setting up harvest {Julian, Dan, John)
 * Jorum Api details
 * Wookie version of Jorum widget - link needed
 * FAQs and Plugins for Wordpress OER work

Useful Links

 * List of delegates
 * OER Hackday google group, set up to help communication about the event
 * Initial reflections by CETIS's John Robertson
 * Ariadne article by Kirsty Pitkin