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Thanks for wading in, Suzanne - your blog post is interesting (I've not read your colleague's yet) although once curriculum mapping got mentioned my eyes glazed over a bit as that is one hell of a large, complex and technically tricky topic. I gather from the post, and what you wrote in your message, that you're saying that we, as tech developers, have to take the horse to water, stick its head in, and massage its throat to get it to drink from the OER reservoir. The difficulty then is knowing WTF teachers actually want, so you then have to 'embed' yourself deeply into your subject and teaching environments to get inside their minds. Is that a fair comment? > I am not talking about individual teachers here, I am talking about > embedding OERs at curriculum level, so that we take away as much > technical interaction as possible, dynamically pushing the right > resources to the right people at the right time. Two tough definitions of "right" there, Suzanne. It's always a toughie, finding the balance between spoon-feeding and user autonomy, and I'm not sure we'll ever find it with OER. It's hard enough defining OER (no, I don't want to start a discussion on this), let alone trying to make sense of the immense amount that's out there. You could, perhaps, act as a 'filter' for teaching staff and tell them what's good for them and what's junk food, but a) you'd need a strong understanding of subject and pedagogy, and b) teachers would argue that they want to choose what they want to use, thankuverymuch. Anyway, the whole spoon-feeding filtering thing looks to be sooooo noughties, with JISC having killed off Intute as a subject portal, for instance. I still think that there will be a crying need for user-cuddly search/aggregation tools for OER, across the subjects, so Pat's quest to try to spec out a 'repository of everything' is a worthwhile effort (I'm doing something similar but specific to healthcare). However, local hand-holding and customisation is essential to get hard-pressed time-poor teachers to use the high-quality OER that's out there and which will eventually save them time and effort. Perhaps that's an evolving role for Learning Technologists? I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say here as things are a bit 'fluffy' in the OER discovery and reuse field, it being relatively new. Still, you did want discussion... Fred ---- This email represents my own personal views and is not at all reflective of policy or opinions at my institution. So there. ---- This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.