My name is Offray Luna. I’m a researcher finishing my PhD on design and creation in Caldas University (Manizales, Colombia). I have been exploring the creation of OER with my undergrad students since 2002 and my postgrad students since 2008 (a presentation about the process I have followed with them is here, in Spanish).
This dated practices and explorations evolved, since mid 2014, in Grafoscopio, a tool for reproducible research and publishing and data storytelling and agile visualization and the Data Week, a hackathon+workshop where we learn how to use and extend Grafoscopio to deal with citizen concerns and amplify more plural voices. In the process we constantly create agile documentation and some of it take the form of books and booklets, for example the open sourced Data Journalism Handbook (in Spanish). You can see more examples of what we have done from hackerspaces and using a perspective from/for the Global South (we are located in Colombia), building digital tools and community practices around OER in citizen and activist practices and bridging academia, grassroots communities and activism, via open source tools and ethos. (I would put more links, but I think this Forum software prevents that, and you will find it anyway in the page I have offered).
I’m really glad to find this initiative and its particular approach for book and other media format and the idea of making marginal voices and subjects more visible and central.
We, at the local hackerspace will be building some booklet(s) in the last quarter of the year using CodiMD and Grafoscopio and we hope to share the experience with this community and bridge what is happening in the “Global South” to what happens in the “Global North”.
@offray.luna Hi Offray! Welcome to the Rebus Community! Thanks so much for pointing to your presentation, tools you’ve used, and resources you’ve created since your involvement with the open movement. It’s very inspiring to see how you’ve managed to use Grafoscopio in so many different ways, and not just for publishing or storytelling.
I’d love to hear more about your experience building tools and community practices around OER in Colombia! I’m sorry that you weren’t able to point to all the links in your first post, but hope you will be able to do so in future replies.
As you said, we’re very keen to build a model that is equitable and surfaces all voices or subjects, and are glad that you’ll be joining us along the way!
Yes, please share the booklets you create and anything else that might highlight your experience! Looking forward to hearing more from you, and working together.
@apurva Thanks for your welcoming message and yes, I will be sharing more info. I think that the more you participate in the community, the more unrestricted amount of links you can post in each message (as a spammer prevention measure, which I agree with).
The community dynamic I have been building lately in our HackBo, our local hackerspace, is called the Data Week, that is kind of a (anti)hackathon+workshop, where we learn how to use and extend Grafoscopio to amplify civic voices and concerns, learning together about code, data and visualization and using/building civic tech to interact better with state or private agents. This have a companion activity, called the “Data Rodas”, that are more agile meetings in between, that help to organize and keep the community together. Also we have a mailing list (mostly in Spanish, but Spanglish and English are welcomed) and public Telegram Channel. We started with this community since mid 2015, using the infrastructure provided by the HackBo hackerspace, and is a small growing and welcoming community.
Our upcoming booklet will be about “Reproducible, Remixable Research and Publishing” (R3P) and we will showcase how we use CodiMD, Fossil and Grafoscopio for that. As usual, we will extend, modify and create OER and tools while making the workshop that creates the booklet. Because of reproducibility, the history and resources behind the booklet will be traceable and usable for others to extend and remix such publication.
@offray.luna Thank you! Your explanation regarding the links makes a lot of sense.
Data Week sounds like a very cool workshop! It’s really great to hear that the community has been around since 2015 and is still vibrant and growing!
Really looking forward to seeing the completed booklet. No doubt it will be helpful to the community of OER creators around the world, and as you said, the opportunities to reuse and remix are . Will these booklets be released in both English and Spanish?
Thanks for keeping us posted. Looking forward to updates!
Data Week sounds like a very cool workshop! It’s really great to hear that the community has been around since 2015 and is still vibrant and growing!
Yes, is growing slowly. We have 43 subscribers in the mailing list, 28 in the Telegram Channel and over half a dozen active members participating actively. As a long member of FLOSS communities I know that growing communities requires a lot of care and patience. Small communities can be pretty fragile.
Really looking forward to seeing the completed booklet. No doubt it will be helpful to the community of OER creators around the world, and as you said, the opportunities to reuse and remix are . Will these booklets be released in both English and Spanish?
They will be in English. We followed a local first approach, so most of our documentation (mainly in the Etherpads and Wiki) is in Spanish, but for some documentation that is going to be circulating in more international context, I write it in English, like the Grafoscopio User Manual, or prototypes like the Panama Papers as reproducible research, Domain Specific Visualizations for Medicine Information and the Twitter Data Selfies. Because this Booklet was conceived in an international residency for a Digital Citizen Investigation Kit, we will be using mainly English, but Spanish and “Spanglish” will be allowed for some documentation practices.
Thanks for keeping us posted. Looking forward to updates!
Yes, is growing slowly. We have 43 subscribers in the mailing list, 28 in the Telegram Channel and over half a dozen active members participating actively. As a long member of FLOSS communities I know that growing communities requires a lot of care and patience. Small communities can be pretty fragile.
Those are good numbers! You’re spot on about community building and engagement – it is slow hard work, but the outcomes are worth it! Hoping your community keeps growing, even if slowly
They will be in English. We followed a local first approach, so most of our documentation (mainly in the Etherpads and Wiki) is in Spanish, but for some documentation that is going to be circulating in more international context, I write it in English, like the Grafoscopio User Manual, or prototypes like the Panama Papers as reproducible research, Domain Specific Visualizations for Medicine Information and the Twitter Data Selfies. Because this Booklet was conceived in an international residency for a Digital Citizen Investigation Kit, we will be using mainly English, but Spanish and “Spanglish” will be allowed for some documentation practices.
Of course! It’s always wonderful to hear about what others are doing in these areas, and to identify ways to collaborate and work towards goals collectively.
@apurva Thanks. I have seen the two projects you pointed me, but they have only show the table of contents. I imagine that that workflow Rebus follow is private until the translation has been released, first coordinating the translation and peer review and then making the product openly available. We are going to try a different approach, more close to open source development, where almost everything is open across the process.
Once we start it, we will let you know, but I imagine that will be the last chapters the ones that explain open participation for this and other projects.
@offray.luna Actually, a private workflow is the absolute opposite of what we are trying to encourage at Rebus! We’re very much in favour of open, transparent processes that anyone can look at and follow/modify to suit their own project needs. While we encourage project leads to be transparent with their processes, the decision at the end of the day lies with them. In the case with these two projects, they are run by @wernerwestermannj and seem to have a good system working for them so far!
It’s excellent that you are going for a fully open approach! We are excited to see it unfold, and to also point potential contributors to the project so they can participate.
@apurva Ohh, good to know. I will see how the open process develop for the digital citizenship works. For the moment I only see contributors and a table of content, but I imagine that some other parts will be open while progress is being done.
Our Reproducible Remixable Research and Publishing will be happening in the last quarter of the year, and we will be slowly, as a self-funded project in the hackerspace, but we will be sharing the process here also.
@offray.luna That’s the hope! As I mentioned, it’s really up to the person leading the project to be open and transparent with the community, sharing updates or progress made on the project.
Great to hear about “Reproducible Remixable Research and Publishing.” Looking forward to seeing the updates and learning more about your process!
