OpenScout

The OpenScout Tool Library is hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focusws on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development", a first version of which will be launched in April 2012 at the Open Educational Resources 2012 conference in Cambridge, UK. The final version has been scheduled for August 2012 in conjunction with the Leaner 2012 conference, at the Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK.

From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.