0.6 What is localization?  (Page 2/2)

While creating materials for your own educational use, it may be difficult to imagine how someone in a different circumstance in another part of the world may want to use your material. However, if you keep the following tips in mind while you are creating these materials for sharing, it can assist in making the modification process easier for the next person who wants to customize them for their own use.

• Document file format : Create materials in the most flexible formats available. HTML is one of the most widely available formats—HTML documents can be viewed with any web browser and the files are easily modifiable. Another popular format for document creation is Microsoft Word. Because Microsoft Word is a commercial product, some people may not own this program. Instead of saving your material as a Word document (.doc format), save the Microsoft Word document as a text (.txt) file or a rich text format file (.rtf). Both .txt and .rtf formats can be opened with any word-processing program.
• Design : Keep the design of your materials simple. Following W3C’s 10 Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites , will help make your materials accessible to those with disabilities.
• Share : Make your materials easy to find by submitting them to an OER repository like OER Commons. This helps others find your materials because they can be searched by many factors, such as keywords, grade level, subject area, or type of material.
• License : License your materials using a Creative Commons license so others can use, re-use, or remix your work.

Activity: localization exercise

Locate educational materials from any OER repository site such as OER Commons and adapt them for your own use. Share them back. For information on how to submit your materials to OER Commons, read“ Submitting Materials to OER Commons .”

Activity: group localization exercise

This localization activity is from iCommons: The goal of this activity is to produce modified content that is adapted and suitable to a new purpose, situation or locale; to analyze and reflect upon the process and gain insights into the challenges for practitioners, content developers, and framework/tool providers.

Activity: share your experience

Participate in discussions about how open education content is localized and how the creation of OER facilitates or impedes making content be context-specific. In the OER Commons discussion“ Localization ,”share your thoughts about this important issue. Here are a few questions to consider in your post:

• What modifications did you make in the materials you used from an OER site? Did you share these modifications back? If not, why not?
• How is content localized at the individual, school, cultural, and national level, and what are the benefits?
• What considerations, constraints, and enablers exist in sharing, using and reusing my project's OER content in local teaching and learning situations?
• Is localization only a process of adapting existing materials for local conditions? Or is it also a methodology for creating new materials?

For more information

The following resources have been selected to provide more information on concepts we covered in this module.

• Openness, Localization, and the Future of Learning Objects: (External Link)
• Overview of the OSS and OER in Education Series: (External Link)
• OER’S, DL’s, Reuse and Culture: (External Link)

Other modules in this course include…

• Why OER?
• Finding OER Materials You Can Start Using Now
• Tagging, Rating, and Reviewing OER Materials
• My OER Portfolio
• Submitting Materials to OER Commons
• OER Licensing and Conditions of Use
• Students and OER
• What are Open Textbooks?
• OER Case Study
• Glossary

This module offered an overview of localization—making content context-specific. The next module,“ Students and OER ,”will present OER activities you can use with your students.

Oer commons links

For more information about OER Commons, send an email to info@oercommons.org .

Use this feedback form to send OER Commons general feedback, a feature request, or information about a bug/problem you had using the site.

To see the ever-growing list of the new content providers and contributors to OER Commons, visit the Content Providers page often. You can be one too!

“Quotable quote”

Diversity promotes quality.

About this module

The "How Tos" of OER Commons is a set of learning modules evolving out of the development of OER Commons ( (External Link) ), a teaching and learning network for free-to-use educational materials from around the world, created and licensed by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).

Course contributors are Lisa Petrides, Amee Godwin, and Cynthia Jimes, and online learning consultant, Patricia Delich.

For more information, visit (External Link) and (External Link) .