Open Educational Resources

ACTIVITY:

Your students are completing a community project where they are asked to solve a community problem by presenting their idea to the city town council.

You are considering ways that students can document evidence of their learning and thinking so that others can see the process behind their project . Your school district has an ePortfolio software tool, but the students want to share their learning with the public.

Questions:

• What are the benefits of using OER?
• What kinds of OER could be used for a community project?
• How would you search for and find community based OER?

In this brief video, the benefits of open educational resources are described as a way to increase access to learning for all learners. The video describes how the internet is a means to ensure anyone around the world could have equal access to digital content to support learning. By sharing resources with other learners, everyone has the ability to make a difference.

According to UNESCO, Open Educational Resources (OER) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with a public license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs change from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.

According to David Wiley, OER include the following 5 Rs of Openness :

1. Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video);
2. Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language);
3. Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup);
4. Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend);
5. Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content.

How does OER connect to K-12 learning environments?

1. Access to Learning for all: Students, teachers and parents can access free and open digital content.

For example, if you need some credible digital resources for mathematics, you could take a math course online, find an open math textbook or follow an open math video series. The Internet provides an open and fertile learning environment for anyone if they want to learn.

2. OER have a creative commons copyright license which presents an opportunity to remix and share learning experiences and content in an iterative design learning process. We are building knowledge together.

Click HERE for more information about Creative Commons

3. Creating OER can help develop digital literacy skills and develop an awareness of digital identity.

Where we can find great OER and how we can use it will be the topics for future posts. Do you have any examples of great OER to offer?

This post was created with modified content created by ERLC a great place to find out about professional learning opportunities.

Additional Resources:

Finding Open Educational Resources (OER) for Teaching and Learning: https://libguides.library.cityu.edu.hk/oer/video