The corridor of uncertainty: OER and linguistic diversity

"The spread of English as the language of the world has certainly been accelerated thanks to digital media and it could be argued that this threatens to wipe out many smaller languages, some teetering on the brink of extinction. András Kornai describes this danger in an article, Digital Language Death, showing how many languages have a very low digital presence. Even if enthusiasts have accomplished much to create for example a Wikipedia presence for many smaller languages  Kornai argues that this will not be enough to create a community strong enough to help push the language truly into the digital space: Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide.” At the same time technology could also empower many of these threatened languages and cultures that have been marginalised in the past. Could the development of open educational resources (OER) be a key to empowerment for smaller languages? This was the theme of a workshop, International workshop on policy for OER and less used languages, run by ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Education) along with two projects I'm associated with, NordicOER and LangOER. This gathered an impressive cast of OER experts, stakeholders and policy makers to discuss how the development of quality OER and open educational practices can strengthen the position of such languages. For a full programme of the speakers and further details, have a look at the ICDE article on the workshop.  UNESCO is one of the main driving forces behind the global uptake of OER, emphasizing the right for free and open access to knowledge to all people in all languages. Their representative in this workshop,Abel Caine, gave several examples of recent initiatives, especially the2012 UNESCO OER Paris declaration calling on all member governments to make all educational materials produced with public funds freely available to all. This has resulted in many national and regional initiatives such as Indonesia (national OER policy) and West Africa. See more in the UNESCO OER Programme ... Some takeaways from the workshop: [1] It’s not what you share, it’s how you share it. Share for reuse, include source code, provide a declaration of contents and purpose and systematic tagging and other metadata. [2] See OER more as data to be adapted than as finished learning objects. [3] Open standards, collaboration and search skills allow anyone to study anything from anywhere. [4] Infrastructure must support process, not just output ..."