Teachers' toolkit for creating and re-purposing OER using FOSS/Text OER

Text is an important resource format and often OER have begun with digitizing of text materials - textbooks, papers, etc. While the digital allows creation multiple kinds of resources, text holds an important position in terms of content creation. Textual OER includes text documents, web pages, PDF documents, spreadsheets and other resources which are primarily text based. Currently a large amount of textual OER is created using proprietary formats and made available in PDF formats. The PDF formats do not allow editing and limit any re-purposing. In addition, in the absence of licensed proprietary applications, these OER cannot be reused or modified. Using free and open source tools to create textual OER can allow more and more users to create content; this can also expand the universe of OER creation to languages other than English.

One important advantage of the digital tools is the possibility of creating different kinds of textual resources. We are no longer thinking of linear typed text alone; it is now possible to create concept maps, flow charts, diagrams, combine text and images and create an infographic and so on. The hypertext which is what makes web pages possible are also another form of textual output. In this chapter of the toolkit, we will look at how to access, create and re-purpose different textual OER; all the tools discussed here are concerned with text as the basic OER being created.

Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn

1. about popular repositories for accessing text OER
2. to download and create your personal digital library for organizing and reusing OER
3. to access, create and re-purpose concept maps using concept map editor (Freeplane)
4. to access, create and re-purpose text resources using a text editor (LibreOffice Writer).
5. to present text resources in a ‘slide presentation’ format (LibreOffice Impress)

Your personal digital library for OER

As a part of using this tool-kit to learn FOSS tools and create OER, we will be accessing and creating many documents / files. It is necessary to organize these files carefully on our computer so that we can access them easily later. You should now create a folder on your computer with the name of the topic you would like to create resources on; this can also have sub folders for ‘Text OER’, ‘Image OER’ and ‘Audio Video OER’ for saving your save your text, image, audio and video files respectively. By organizing your files and folders carefully on any topic, you are creating what can be termed as a ‘Personal Digital Library’ on that topic. Having personal digital libraries allows you to access and re-use OER easily and effectively.

In the last chapter on ‘Publishing OER’, we will explain how you can upload these resources on the world wide web, which can be considered as the ‘Global Digital Library’ accessible to anyone with connectivity.

Accessing text OER repositories

An OER creation process begins with reuse of existing OER; the Internet is a rich source of text OER. It is important to access OER while creating your own because you cannot use content not licensed for reuse. You could either access popular known OER repositories or you could search the internet for resources you want. A browser is needed for accessing the internet, a free and open source browser is Mozilla Firefox.

Search from known repositories

One method of accessing existing OER is to search some text repositories. The most popular text OER repository is the digital encyclopedia, Wikipedia. You can access Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is available in more than hundred other languages, so you may also be able to search for text OER in your native language. You can search for your topic in Wikipedia, by simply typing this text in the search bar. We will do this for ‘Digital Story Telling’ (DST) which is the OER proposed to be created as an exemplar by this tool-kit.

Wikipedia page

Digital Story Telling page on English Wikipedia

Language option to access Digital Story Telling page in other languages

Other popular OER sites include http://www.wikieducator.org, https://oercommons.org. A list of OER sites is available on http://www.searchoer.com/list-of-oer.html

Searching the web for OER

In addition to accessing on the Wikipedia, you could also use a search engine to access information can use a search engine such as Google search engine or DuckDuckGo search engine. You could look for information by simply typing in Digital Story Telling in the search bar of the search engine; shown below are examples of how a search for "Digital Story Telling" would look like.

DST using Google search engine

DST using DuckDuckGo search engine

The search engine will retrieve web pages for your topic that are both OER and non OER and it is important to specify OER in your search criteria. When you visit any site returned by the search results, you need to look for copyright information to ascertain that the resource is OER and you can re-use it. If the resource is not explicitly declared to be an OER (allowing you to re-use), you should not use it in making your OER.

Introducing OER as a criteria in your search

Specifying license in Google search settings

Search engines allow for search results to be filtered and displayed by license. You can do this by specifying OER as a criteria while setting your search preferences. In Google search you need to select Settings → Advanced Search. In Advanced Search, you can select Usage Rights as ‘free to use, share or modify, even commercially’ to get OER that you can re-use with or without modification.

Creating a text OER - a concept map

Concept maps are an effective way of creating a textual resource that can be organized graphically, in the form of a map or tree of ideas; it provides a pictorial overview of the concepts, related concepts / sub-concepts for a topic. A concept map helps you to create a textual OER with possibilities for linking to additional resources, adding annotations as well as graphically organizing ideas through links. A concept map can also be used to plan and design the OER by identifying areas of resource requirements as well as linking to additional resources, serving as a blue print for OER development. Concepts acquire power and meaning when they are connected to other concepts. Hence, organizing the concepts relevant to your topic is an important first step of OER creation.

Freeplane is a FOSS application that can be used to create concept maps; this toolkit will introduce you to use of Free plane and various functionalities.

Creating a concept map using Freeplane	open Freeplane

In the custom distribution of the Ubuntu operating system, accompanying this toolkit, all FOSS applications have been bundled. To open Freeplane, select Applications → Office →Freeplane

Inserting nodes

To learn working with Freeplane, we will start creating a concept map for Digital Story Telling; you will see above that Freeplane has opened a window with a box with text "New mindmap". This node, also called the "root node" will contain the core idea/ theme of the resource. Additional ideas are added by adding more nodes, called child nodes. The concept map gets built by adding further child nodes, for topics and sub-topics. Use the ‘insert’ key to create a ‘child node’ this is a sub-concept of your current concept. Use the ‘enter’ key to create a ‘sibling’ this is a parallel concept to your current concept. Thus you can create a concept map with knowing just two functions – add child node (insert) and add sibling node (enter).

Creating the node tree for a concept map

A concept map on digital story telling

As a part of this toolkit, we have developed a concept map on digital story telling. Concept maps can be stored on your folders; they are saved with an extension ".mm". We have created a concept map called Learning Digital Story Telling.mm and saved it on our folder for text resources as part of the personal digital library for digital story telling. The extension .mm stands for mindmap. Our map has nodes for the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of DST, with sub-nodes.

Likewise, please create a concept map and save it with the same name in your folder you have created with your topic name. Note that simply saving the file will save it with the name you have given in the root node. Create the sub-nodes for each node as per your imagination / thinking about the topic.

Inserting hyperlinks

Did you notice the red arrow in the root node of our concept map? This main node has a hyper-link which opens the wikipedia page on DST. You can embed a hyper-link on a node, such that clicking that node will open a page on the Internet or a file on your computer). This connects a node on your map to related resources you may want the reader to access.

Completed concept map

In our Learning Digital Story Telling.mm concept map, we have inserted a hyper-link for the main node ‘Learning Digital Story Telling’. Move your cursor to this node and select Edit → Link → Add or Modify hyperlink (type). You can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-K. Freeplane will open an input bar. We will type in our webpage address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling into this input bar

You should identify a useful web resource for any one node. You should similarly insert this hyper link for that node following the same steps. Note that Freeplane provides a pink arrow in the node, to signify that the node has a hyper link. Clicking on this pink arrow will open the web page that is linked, when there is an internet connection. In this manner, your concept map OER can provide links for each node, to access information on the world wide web, enriching the OER.

Inserting a note

In our Learning Digital Story Telling.mm concept map, you will also see a yellow label beside the arrow and if you place your mouse over the yellow label, you will see a note description. To add a note, you can click on the node, go to View--->Notes--->Display note panel; this will open a window in which you can type your notes. You can change the position and size of this note window.

Notes can be added to nodes

You should practice inserting a note for any one of your nodes in your concept map, following these steps. In this manner, your concept map OER can provide notes for each node, to provide richer and more detailed information for that node. (Advanced tip – If you export your concept map as a ‘odt’ or ‘doc’ text file, your note will be added to the section created for the node).

Adding a note window	Inserting note in Freeplane

The aim here is to get you started with concept map OER creation using Freeplane. For advanced functions, you should refer to the User Manual for the application. The Freeplane tutorial is available within Freeplane itself, which you can access anytime by pressing the F1 function key.

Saving your concept map

By default your concept map is saved by Freeplane as a '.mm' format file. However, the concept map can be saved in many other formats. You can export the map to a text document file (in .odt or .doc formats). You can also export the map as an image (in .png or .jpeg formats) or as a web page (in .html format). We will discuss how you can use this image or html pages in the subsequent chapters.

Freeplane on other platforms

Freeplane is also available on Microsoft Windows, on https://freeplane.en.softonic.com/download. In Android Mobiles we can view concept maps through Freeplane reader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeplane has more information about Freeplane and https://freeplane.org is the official website of the application. This information is also provided in an Annexure to this toolkit. For subsequent FOSS applications, please refer to the Annexure for this information.

Creating text OER as a text document

You are familiar with typing text to create a text document, you may have used a software like Microsoft Word. We will use the FOSS Office Suite application called LibreOffice Writer (LibreOffice Writer) to create a text document.

Open LibreOffice Writer on your computer, through Applications → Office – LibreOffice Writer.

Creating and saving a new text document

You should create a ‘new’ document, giving the title as the topic name of your OER. We have created a document called- ‘Learning Digital Story Telling’ and this is saved in the personal digital library folder. You should save this document, on your folder created for your personal digital library. Saving this document, creates a text document “Learning Digital Story Telling.odt” where odt stands for Open Document Text. The concept map that you have prepared for your topic can give you a plan for writing the text document. You will also refer to the OER text resources from Wikipedia and other sites for your topic that you have searched.

You can similarly create your own text OER. You will learn the following basic functions in a text editor which you need to use in creating OER.

1. Entering and formatting text
2. Inserting a numbered list
3. Inserting a table / box item
4. Insert page numbers
5. Insert section headings

Image to display – Creating a text document, creating four sections using LibreOffice Writer

Entering and formatting text

You can enter text by simply typing into this document. In our document, we have entered text under following four paragraphs

- Why Digital Story Telling

- Introduction to Digital Story Telling

- Creating a simple text story

- Adding a concept map on ‘Digital Story Telling’

UNICODE font

It is important that you choose only UNICODE font for the text entry. Non-UNICODE fonts are likely to not render correctly on a web page. Ubuntu GNU/Linux uses only UNICODE fonts, hence you will not have any problems. However if you are using Microsoft Windows, your system may have non-UNICODE fonts, which you should not use.

Formatting text

You can format your text in many ways either through Format--->Text or Format--->Character or by changing the parameters on the tool bar. Click on the Format menu option of LibreOffice Writer to see the options. Commonly used formatting includes selecting text to highlight it through the ‘bold’ ‘italic’ or ‘underline’ functions, changing the font color or size and adding text highlighting. All these functionalities are also available on the tool bar.

Formatting text using Format--->Text

Formatting text using Format--->Character

Here we will take a section from our document and format to make it bold, italicized or underlined. Remember to select the text before clicking on these options.
Image to display – Formatting a text document using LibreOffice Writer

Selecting text to format

Selected text formatted (bold)

Formatted text (bold text, colored text in larger font size)

Inserting a numbered list

You may be making a list of items in your document. Instead of manually entering the numbers, you could use automatic numbering.

You can select Format → Bullets and Numbering and select the numbering type you want.

In our document, we have created a numbered list under Objectives.

Hit the ‘enter’ key to go to the next line with the next number. For indenting and sub numbering, you can use the ‘Tab’ key.

Inserting a table / box item

You may want to put a specific information inside a box to highlight it separately. You can also use box to provide additional information, which the reader may skip, if they want to read the article quickly.

You can select Table. Select number of rows and number of columns as ‘1’. You will get a box (which is nothing but a table with one row and one column). Enter your text in this box.

In our document, we have created a box for providing the license information for the document.

You should create a box for providing similar license information for your document. You can insert this box at the beginning of the document.

Insert footer (automatic page numbers)

It is useful to have page number and name of your document on every page, this is specially useful if the reader wants to read a print copy. LibreOffice Writer allows you to easily insert this information at the bottom or top of each page. This can be done using Insert--->Footer. Once a footer has been inserted, you can go to the bottom of the page and insert multiple fields of information using Insert--->Fields. You can type any text in this footer, it will come on all pages. Other than page number, other dynamic information you can provide is the date/time stamp of the document.A similar method can also be adopted for inserting a header as well. Page numbers can also be inserted directly using Insert--->Page Number.

In our document, we have inserted the document name and page number in the footer.

Inserting a footer in your document

Adding fields to the footer

Insert section headings

It is sometimes useful to create sections in a document to allow for east reading and referencing. This can be done using the Styles--->Styles and formatting option. Select the text you want to mark as a section and then go to the Select the heading level (Heading 1, 2, 3, etc) you want to set it at. Headings can be at multiple levels to indicate sub-points. You should create similar section headings in your document.

Adding headings to the document

Continuing editing text OER

You can re-open this file from this folder anytime to continue editing your text document using LibreOffice Writer. You can add, move, modify and remove text. You can format your text in different ways. In this way, you can keep enhancing your text OER on your topic regularly.

Note that this tool-kit is not intended to provide the complete user manual for the applications explained. The aim here is to get you started with OER creation using the tool. For advanced functions, you should refer to the User Manual for the application. The LibreOffice Writer User Manual is available on https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Welcome_to_the_Writer_Help

Short videos on LibreOffice Writer are available on http://spoken-tutorial.org/tutorial-search/?search_foss=LibreOffice+Suite+Writer&search_language=English. Each video is less than 10 minutes and focuses on select features of the application.

LibreOffice Writer on other platforms

LibreOffice Writer is also available on Microsoft Windows, on http://www.libreoffice.org/download/download. LibreOffice Writer is part of the LibreOffice suite on Windows

In Android Mobiles we can view text documents through "OpenDocumentReader" App or WPS Office App

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice_Writer has more information about LibreOffice Writer.

Creating a slide presentation (LibreOffice Impress)

A slide presentation is a useful method of sharing information, or in training or teaching. Once your text document on OER is fully complete (You will continue to add text and resources in other formats, in the subsequent sections), you can bring the highlights of the content on slides in bullet points. You can embed images, audio links, video links in the presentation. You can do a ‘slide show’ of this presentation while engaging your learners.

We create a slide presentation - ‘Learning Digital Story Telling’ using LibreOffice Impress (LibreOffice Impress).

Libroffice Impress start menu

Open LibreOffice Writer on your computer, through Applications → Office → LibreOffice Impress.

You will learn the following basic functions in LibreOffice Impress which you need to use in creating OER.

1. Managing slides
2. Entering text
3. Formating text
4. Inserting a numbered list
5. Inserting a text box

Managing slides

A slide presentation is a document that consists of slides, each slide can be considered as a ‘page’ which will contain a coherent set of information, usually presented as bulleted points.

You can create a slide presentation with as many slides (Slide → Create New slide) as you want using LibreOffice Impress. You can duplicate a slide (Slide → Duplicate Slide) if you want to create a slide using the contents (or the format) of another slide. You can move slides across using the drag-drop in the slide sorter view (View → Slide Sorter).

Image to display – Creating a slide presentation, using LibreOffice Impress

Entering text, formating text, inserting a numbered list and inserting a text box

A useful feature of the LibreOffice suite is that the Writer and Impress products are fully integrated and have the same interface. When you select File → Open, you get to chose if you will create a text file or a presentation file. Hence, these four functions mentioned above for LibreOffice Impress are identical to perform as was explained in the LibreOffice Writer section.

In our slide presentation, we have entered text (by simply typing the text) and formatted text (changed font colour – Format → Character → Font Effects → Font color) on the first slide.

Image to display – DST slide presentation, entering and formating text using LibreOffice Impress

In the second slide, we copy pasted the objectives from our text file. We created a numbered list (Selecting the text and then → Format → Bullets and Numbering → Numbering Type).

We have also inserted a text box (Insert → Shape → Basic → Rectangle) at the bottom of the slide and typed the text ‘Can you suggest more possible objectives of DST?’. The background colour in this box is blue, to change the colour, select Format → Style → Edit Style → Area. Select the colour you want (white is a good background). Similarly, if you do not want a border for the text box, you can remove it. Select Format → Style → Edit Style → Line → Style → None.

Image to display – DST slide presentation, creating a numbered list and inserting a text box using LibreOffice Impress

LibreOffice Impress on other platforms

LibreOffice Impress is also available on Microsoft Windows, on http://www.libreoffice.org/download/download. LibreOffice Impress is part of the LibreOffice suite on Windows

In Android Mobiles we can view text documents through "OpenDocumentReader" App or WPS Office App

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice_Impress has more information about LibreOffice Impress.

Short videos on LibreOffice Impress are available on http://spoken-tutorial.org/tutorial-search/?search_foss=LibreOffice+Suite+Impress&search_language=English. Each video is less than 10 minutes and focuses on select features of the application.

Alternative FOSS applications

1. Freemind is an alternative to Freeplane for making concept maps. Its features and interface is similar to Freeplane.
2. An alternative to LibreOffice for creating text resources and slide presentations is OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org also has a similar Writer and Impress applications.
3. gedit is a plain text editor. If you are copying content from a website into your LibreOffice Writer document and the formatting is very messed up, you could instead copy from the website and paste into a gedit file and then copy from the gedit file to your LibreOffice Writer document, this will remove all formatting and help you organize the text more easily.