Changes

Text is an important format of resource creation 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.       

Text is an important format of resource creation 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.       

In this chapter of the toolkit, we will look at how to access different textual OER as well as create and repurpose textual OER using different free and open source tools.      

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 ===

=== Objectives ===