Summary

What are your thoughts about digitalization in education?

Some people use digital tools unstrategically. They do it because it's in now or because it's fashionable. By strategic use of tools, I mean the conscious decision to do it.

How do you define OER?

Open means that materials are available. That is, they are formulated in an open standard so that other people can use the material. They are educational in the sense that there is already an objective or an intentionality in the production of these resources - that they were generated for pedagogical-didactic contexts. 

What are advantages/disadvantages of OER?

What interests me most about Open Educational Resources is the modularity of these resources. That I can say, okay, I don't have a compact thing here like a textbook. A bound textbook is not open for me in that sense, because then I would have to tear out a page and bind it into a new book.

The exciting thing about Open Educational Resources is that I can take them out of a certain context and embed them in a new, broader context

I'll say I have a cake and the whole cake is a bit much for me because my students can't eat that much. I just want to be able to cut out a piece of the cake and present that. But how do I do that now, cut something out so that the whole thing still makes sense? That's not always easy.

If I wanted to generate an online course where there would be a lot of teacher-centered learning situations, like Delivery of Information or Wisdom, it would be great to be able to just draw on existing material and not have to produce it myself.

One of the biggest challenges of the Luxembourg education system is to nurture and value multilingualism.

Having an online resource that would allow students and their parents to receive this in their first language would go a long way.

We don't want students' products to end up just sitting in their instructors' drawers, but to be made available to other people in the field or people who are generally interested. We think that our students produce really cool stuff.

What is your understanding of inclusion?

Often the idea of inclusion seems to be that you provide something extra for the children with special needs. For me, however, inclusion actually means that you basically include everyone in teaching situations.

What are the benefits/limitations of digitalization for inclusive education?

I see a danger with Open Educational Resources in the fact that videos or texts are automatically translated and we blindly trust this technical process. In this way, the critical distance to the translation service could be lost. We cannot regain this distance because we have not gained access to the original source ourselves.