From August 21 to 23, 2023, the OER & IT Summer Camp took place in the beautiful city of Weimar. This camp was hosted by the edu-sharing network.

Our representatives, Noreen Krause from twillo, Tim Wiegers from the Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate (VCRP) and Alexander Clauss from the e-learning working group of the LRK Saxony, were there to participate in the discourse in the working groups and lightning talks and to contribute to the exchange of knowledge.

A central aspect of the camp were the lightning talks, where experts from different fields presented their insights and findings on OER and IT topics. Topics ranged from Open Data to Knowledge Graphs and ontologies to educational infrastructures without data silos. These talks provided valuable input.

In addition to the exciting lightning talks, workshops were also offered where participants could actively work on OER-relevant topics. Here is an overview of the workshops:

  • Workshop A: Editorial networks and OERde statistics.
  • Workshop B: Adaptive theme pages against shortage of specialists
  • Workshop C: Magic curricula
  • Workshop D: Good metadata and OER publishing using the example of zum.de
  • Workshop E: Capabilities of educational organizations/OER actors
  • Workshop F: How to bring media to the users – integration in country infrastructures

These workshops offered participants the opportunity to flesh out their ideas and develop solutions to current challenges in the field of OER and IT.

In addition to the workshops and lightning talks, the summer camp placed a strong emphasis on networking and the exchange of ideas. The participants were able to establish contacts, share experiences and support each other in order to strengthen and advance the OER community.

For the evening program, the summer camp had a special surprise in store – the OER band played, among other things, a new OER song written by Anne Zobel. The as always very good atmosphere of the camp.

The OER & IT Summer Camp 2023 in Weimar was a complete success and showed once again how collaboration and cooperation can flourish in the OER community.