From the blog TOETOE (ˈtɔɪtɔɪ): Technology for Open English - Toying with Open E-resources http://www.alannahfitzgerald.org/re-using-oxford-openspires-content/

1. Articles from TOETOE Technology for
Open English Toying with Open E-
resources (ˈtɔɪtɔɪ)
Re-using Oxford OpenSpires content in podcast
corpora
2013-03-26 08:03:58 admin
OpenSpires OER project at the University of Oxford
This is the seventh post in a blog series based on the the TOETOE
International project with the University of Oxford, the UK Higher Education
Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
Do-It-Yourself Corpora
Standard industry tools in corpus linguistics for doing translation,
summarisation, extraction of information, and the formatting of data for analysis
in linguistic software programs were generally what was needed before one
could get started with building a corpus. It is safe to say that language teachers
and many researchers who do not have a background in computer science will
never have the time or the interest in these processes. This is why simple
interface designs like those in the FLAX language project that have been
designed for the non-expert corpus user, namely language teachers and
learners, are enabling teaching practitioners to be part of the language
collections building process.
Stable open source software (OSS) has been designed to enable non-corpus
specialists to build their own language collections consisting of text and audio-
visual content that benefit from powerful text analysis tools and resources in

2. FLAX. These collections can be hosted directly on the FLAX website under the
registered users section or the OSS can be hosted on the users’ preferred
website or content management system. A Moodle version of the FLAX tools
has also been developed and new tools and interactive games are currently in
the beta development stage for stable release later this year in 2013.
This post from the TOETOE International project includes links to two training
videos for building do-it-yourself (DIY) podcast corpora as can be seen below.
These demonstrate new OSS tools and interfaces from FLAX for developing
interactive open language collections, based on creative commons resources
from the Oxford OpenSpires project and a TED Talk given by Oxford
academic, Ian Goldin. These training videos and others in the FLAX series
from this project will be promoted via Russell Stannard’s Teacher Training
Videos (TTV) site to reach wider international audiences including those who
do not have access to YouTube. Further plans for the re-use of resource
outputs from this project include the translation of the FLAX training videos into
Chinese, Vietnamese, and Portuguese. And, later in 2013, the FLAX project
will be releasing further OSS for enabling teachers to build more interaction into
the development of DIY open language collections.
FLAX Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Podcast
Corpora with Oxford OER part one
Learn how to build powerful open language collections through this training video
demonstration. Featuring audio and video podcast corpora using the FLAX Language tools and
open educational resources (OER) from the OpenSpires project at the University of Oxford and
TED Talks.
FLAX Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Podcast
Corpora with Oxford OER part two

3. Continue to learn how to make powerful open language collections and how to build
interactivity into those collections with a wide variety of automated interactive language
learning tasks through this demonstration training video. Featuring audio and video podcast
corpora, using the FLAX Language tools and open educational resources (OER) from the
OpenSpires project at the University of Oxford and TED Talks.
It is anticipated that these open tools and resources will provide simple and
replicable pathways for other higher education institutions to develop language
support collections around their own OER podcasts for wider uptake and
accessibility with international audiences. The training videos demonstrate how
a variety of activities have also been built into the FLAX OSS for enabling
teachers to manipulate texts within the collections to create language-learning
interaction with the open podcast content. The following slideshow from the
2013 eLearning Symposium with the Centre for Languages, Linguistics, and
Area Studies (LLAS) at the University of Southampton shows the interactivity
that can be built into the DIY corpora with FLAX. It also highlights how corpus-
based resources and Data-Driven Learning did not feature at the recent
BALEAP Professional Issues Meeting on Blending EAP with Technology at
Southampton in the A-Z of Technology in EAP that was later compiled by the
event organisers. This points to a lack of awareness around corpus-based
resources in EAP where there have been no studies conducted on the user
interface designs of most concordancing software for usability in mainstream
language education as well as highlighting the lack of comprehensive research
on technology in EAP.

4. FLAX Weaving with Oxford Open Educational Resources: Open Practices for
English Language Teaching from Alannah Fitzgerald
TED (Ideas worth Spreading) encourages the re-use of their creative commons
content for non-commercial educational purposes and many stakeholders have
engaged in the re-use of TED Talks and YouTube with the TED-Ed
programme. However, adding value to an open resource can also result in the
decision by ELT materials developers to create a paywall around the support
resource as can be seen below in the English Attack language learning
software interface for TED Talks, free movie trailers etc. Perhaps this says
something about the industry of ELT which views OER as yet more resources
to make money from – high quality accessible resources no less that have
been expressly released for sharing and the promotion of understanding…
The English Attack pay-for version of re-use with TED Talk

5. Creative Commons content
The Re-using Oxford OpenSpires content in podcast corpora by Alannah Fitzgerald,
unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this
license may be available at www.alannahfitzgerald.org.