How might we create offline Open Educational Resources that can be used and adopted in regions without steady internet connection?

[char-siuu-bao]

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At a glance

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Submission Name: Open Educational Resources that can be used and adopted in regions without steady internet connection?

Contact Lead: (This is an example submission— but I would love if someone worked on it or volunteers to take the lead!)

Region: #Global

Issue Area: #OpenEducation

Issue Type: #Challenge

Description

Although one of the goals of the Open Education movement is to reduce barriers to accessing education, many OER remain reliant on digital infrastructure, and these educational materials remain inaccessible to those without wifi at home, or in regions where internet is more expensive and primarily accessed on mobile. For this challenge statement, we are asking how can we create OER that can be adapted offline, or that take into account the digital divide.

How can others contribute?

// More details coming soon — for now, leave any relevant comments, readings, or links on this thread!

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This post is part of the OpenCon 2017 Do-A-Thon. Not sure what's going on, head here

[illyz]

@lorrainechu3n I'd be interested in working on this! Has anything started yet?

[weskerfoot]

I would suggest looking at building a Progressive Web App (PWA). They enable users to use the app on their phone even with an unreliable (or absent) connection. There's a good overview here, https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/

Also, many of the people using older or less expensive phones use Opera Mini to browser the web, and it will do things that cause a lot of modern web apps to stop working, such as removing JavaScript and aggressively compressing images and pages. So I think a good approach is to build sites that do not require the use of JavaScript, or very minimal use. Filament Group has tons of articles on best practices for building static websites that load very efficiently. So I would highly recommend skimming through some of the articles, particularly about accessibility and optimizing bandwidth.

[weskerfoot]

This is a good article that explains why Opera Mini is so prevalent for people on less reliable connections, https://blogs.opera.com/news/2015/11/opera-mini-saves-african-mobile-internet-users-half-a-billion-us-2/

According to research, only 50% of Africans can afford more than 20MB of internet data, so with Africans continuing to adopt smartphones that are data hungry, compression technology is becoming increasingly relevant.
Opera Mini shrinks webpages down to as little as 10% of their original size, reducing data consumption by up to 90%. The data compression also helps render webpages faster, even while roaming, or in places with poor network conditions, making Opera Mini a great companion while on the go.

[weskerfoot]

I would love to be involved in this somehow, but I was wondering whether the intention of this was to just collect information on how to build more accessible OER, or to work on some kind of guide for how to do this (for publishers, etc).

[chartgerink]

Would it be possible that the start of decentralized internet protocols such as Dat provide the perfect way of doing this?

They are currently a bit more difficult to use for non-techies, maybe, but with Beaker browser this is becoming more reasonable by the day. It works a bit like torrents but with more stable addresses. If someone near you has the content, you can get it from them (via LAN route, but also USB for example) and serve it yourself (no server necessary).

Tagging @daniellecrobinson who might be interested in this for her work for Code for Science & Society.

[weskerfoot]

@chartgerink WebRTC might provide a good way of implementing that too. You still need a signaling server (in order to coordinate everything) but it does not require the connection to be low latency and uses a small amount of bandwidth. Edit: looks like someone has an example of using Dat over WebRTC https://gist.github.com/karissa/6c0594ae9fc215d2b750c39e7e4f8973

[weskerfoot]

@chartgerink @lorrainechu3n @illyz made a discourse server for us to brainstorm this some more https://discord.gg/FsqNCkd

[Ongironald]

Greetings I am Ronald Emojong, I am very interesting in helping share insights and where possible participate. What is pending on this project, what has currently been taking place in 2018 so far. Regards Ronald

[jamshidhashimi]

There are initiatives like RACHEL, Rumie and others, but it will be really good to explore those solutions, identify their strengths and weaknesses and propose solutions so that can be adapted and implemented.

@JosephMcArthur do we have this as a Do-a-thon/Unconference this year? I am really interested to be part of this discussion and work with others in coming up with recommendations and solutions. Thank you.

[samuk]

Hi I'm just starting a project to sell (not for profit) 32Gb SD cards into African markets.

The SD cards will be full of OER & Open Apps.

Plenty to do if anyone is still interested in this approach: https://github.com/sparcopen/doathon/issues/85