Developing reading skills in English for agricultural purposes

Abstract

The development of the information society and information technology gave rise to new opportunities for learning and challenged established practices considering how teaching and learning should be organized. Yet, until recently, much of the learning materials were protected by propriety rights and not reachable without passwords. The open educational resource (OER) movement aims to encourage and enable freely sharing content. Open educational resources (OER) are digitalized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (Center for Educational Research and Innovation, OECD, 2007) including learning content, software tools, and implementation resources such as open licenses. With the development of the World Wide Web and open educational resources, more texts are now processed on screen. Reading in online environment is often considered as reading practice that is different to that of reading in print. A key difference between the two kinds of reading is considered to be rooted in the nature of hypertext where presentation of information is not linear but multi-linear affording different access routes and different reading options. In order to put the reading into specific context, this material has been prepared as a short guide for reading and using online resources in the field of agriculture. Various online resources are presented, both generally and specifically for the agriculture and related disciplines. A guide for reading and using online resources is designed to be used by high school teachers in the field of agriculture and related fields, and agricultural advisors in Serbia. It can be useful for the current and future students of both agriculture and other fields of science, and for professionals in other domains. Printing of the guide is funded by TEMPUS project CaSA Building Capacity of Serbian Agricultural Education to Link with Society, coordinated by University of Belgrade, Faculty of Agriculture.