NDLR Symposium

Last Tuesday, 2nd December, I attended the second annual NDLR (National Digital Learning Repository) Symposium. The NDLR is a project involving all HEA funded Higher Education Institutions in Ireland and is now moving from a 4-year pilot phase through a transition phase to a full service. According to the NDLR website:

The NDLR project is establishing a framework to enable development and sharing of digital learning resources between the seven Universities of Ireland and the Institutes of Technology.

The event last week was a celebration of the work being carried out within the communities of practice associated with the NDLR. All the sessions were recorded, and the recordings are all freely available online.

For me, the most interesting talk of the day was from Dr. Ahrash N Bissell, Executive Director, ccLearn, Creative Commons. Ahrash spoke about the ideal of a global pool of educational resources, offered openly to use and re-use. He discussed the legal, technical and social barriers to such a global repository and proposed that Creative Commons can provide support in two out of three of these areas. His full presentation can be viewed online.

Co-incidentally, via Stephen Downes, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, one of the largest Universities in the World, has opened its vast repository of materials. The materials are under copyright to the IGNOU, making it somewhat restrictive, and users must register, although registration is free.