Post date: May 23, 2016 12:8:0 PM
Open Educational Resources (OER) are resources designed for teaching, learning, and education. These resources are in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. Quite often, commercial use of the resource is excluded. They have become more commonplace as the online/distance education movement has gained steam. Many people consider them to only be digital resources, but others count any educational resource as falling under the OER umbrella.
I found this cool video about creative commons by creative commons:
There are a variety of Creative Commons licenses that pertain to OER:
Attribution (BY) - you may copy, distribute, perform, display, and adapt the work as long as you give the author or licensor credit in the manner specified
Share-alike (SA) - you may distribute the work only under a license identical to the original work.
Noncommercial (NC) - licensees may distribute, copy, perform, and display the work only if used for non-commercial purposes
No Derivative Works (ND) - licensees may distribute, copy, perform, and display only verbatim copies of the work. No remixes and/or derivatives of the work are allowed.
It is important to know which license the resource you would like to use is governed under and make sure that you adhere to the rules within that license.
I used the following resources to cobble together my definition of OER:
Wikipedia - Open Educational Resource
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
And the following resources to research Creative Commons licenses: