As I reflect on my journey for Topic 2, I realise what an awesome journey.  Firstly, it was my first time to be the co-presenter of this topic so naturally I felt a bit scared – but my team (ONL 01) and co-partner was amazing and just went with the flow of sharing and assisting where needed. 

I have learnt as I collaborated with my team that sharing and openness has so many opportunities:

• more people can be reached with knowledge including students from other countries;
• open to other countries means more courses can be offered and more revenue generated;
• networking opportunities;
• open work opportunities to write content for other education sectors; and
• the list goes on.

However, as with any advantage there is a potential disadvantage – in openness and sharing people can steal your information and publish as theirs – so its best to reference/license even your own work!  I have learnt about Creative Commons which is the most common way to openly license copyrighted education resources – making them OER (open educational resources).  So if you ever want to share your information/course it is best to add a Creative Commons (CC) licence to the resource. When authors add a CC licence to their work, they keep their copyright and share their work with the public, for free, under the terms and conditions they choose.

Here’s the link to read more:

https://en.unesco.org/courier/julio-septiembre-2017/sharing-legally-and-freely-better-learning

When you are a first time content creator that wants to share your course – here’s some simple advise:

• create a group of people who can work together on a course e.g. peer reviewers who will give you good feedback before your work goes public.
• When your course is ready – you must market your course so that it gets known out there – use social media, posters on your campus, etc.

I learnt to use an amazing tool in this Topic 2 journey – ‘Prezi’ and I must say being exposed to wonderful new tools is making me becoming stronger in the digital world – so there are times when I no longer feel like a visitor but a resident in this ever so increasing technology world!