OER@UCT

A couple months back we created a screencast which was aimed at assisting OER producers at UCT in getting a Creative Commons logo onto their teaching and learning material – most often offline yet digital files like Powerpoint presentations and Word documents. 

I made the video available to the UCT community and then on Youtube under an open license.  I was quite pleased when Creative Commons International caught wind of the video and included a link on their wiki page of Creative Commons relevant videos.  Creative Commons representatives in Germany, Guatamala, Switzerland, the United States and Greece took note of the video and suggested we make it even more accessible by adding subtitles. 

Claude Almansi from Switzerland took the liberty of transcribing my voice to audio subtitles so that the video could be interpreted by the hearing impaired.  She then went a step further by transcribing it in both French and Italian so that we now had the original audio plus three caption tracks!

I have uploaded the captions to the original Youtube video file so that viewers can choose to watch with subtitles in either English, French, or Italian.  We intend to add additional language tracks in the near future so that anyone in the world can make use of this video! 

This demonstrates the amazing potential that open licensing has in improving and enhancing online content.  I initially made this screencast to satisfy a local need, but it has now reached the world in a number of languages because like minded people in six countries used the power of the network.  Another great example and motivator for this movement of openness and the idea of open educational resources.