OER

OER

Open Educational Resources seems to be a pretty interesting resource. It's any resource available at little or no cost at all. It's a way to provide individuals with information. People who generally share information include, universities, the government, publishers, and different organizations. It's a way for people to use information provided by these different people and learn more. The information is generally provided through multi media. The article "7 things you should know about OER" talks about a lot of different things that obviously you should know about Open Educational Resources. One thing that I found interesting was that "Each resource is issued under a license that spells out how it can be used: Some materials may only be used in their original form; in other cases, learning resources can be modified, remixed, and redistributed." This is a pretty cool resource to be able to use. However, if one is going to go in and change information I think that there should be some sort of alert, or message sent out. I think this because if someone has already viewed the information and studied it, then an instructor goes and changes some things or adds more information, the likelihood of catching that are probably pretty slim. Anyways, many people are starting to replicate this model, including quite a few colleges. They are putting course material online for anyone to use.

Of course, however like most things, there are downsides and Open Educational Resources are no exception. First, the quality of Open Educational Resources can be uneven and it depends on its sources. Second, some of the Open Educational Resources are ineffective at presenting content in a valuable manner. and finally, not all Open Educational Resource collections give feedback. This being said, my idea of Open Educational Resources is still the same. It's a great tool to help people learn! Whether or not you want to reteach yourself some information you don't typically use and might have forgotten or you just are interested in learning more, this can be a great way to get on top of your work. This might not be something that everyone will use but, for people who are interested in learning more it's an awesome tool.

Using the Google Commons to explore OER, I found 3 ideas that I can use within my classroom as a future educator. We can all remember how important the 100th day of school was. In elementary school you couldn't walk down the hall without seeing 100 on every wall, door, or even hanging from the ceiling. One idea that I found through research on this site is an activity for the 100th day of school. It includes creating a large poster that students will use to create different ways to display "100" using math. For example, 99+1=100, 50+50=100 and so on. However, we would want these to be a little more complex and have our students using higher level thinking.

Another idea that I found through research on this site was a budgeting lesson. Teaching life skills is something that I really want to do, and i think learning how to budget is a very important life skill. The lesson includes having students list items that they use each day and then they would calculate how much money they need to earn to be able to afford these items if they live on their own. Not only do I think this is a great lesson, it's going to teach the students so much about appreciation for what they have now, and the true value of a dollar.

Finally, the last lesson that I found that I really enjoyed was a lesson about fighting hunger. It was called, "Feeding minds fighting hunger curriculum". I think that this would also be a great lesson to teach my students in the future because we as Americans waste so much food every year, when we could be helping someone who is in need. I would go into detail with statistics and we could create a blog about what we eat and what we could do to help others get the food they need. At the end of this project I would enjoy bringing in canned goods to donate and possibly getting other grades and classes involved and make a game of it. The class who brings in the most food wins a prize! I think this would be a very informative lesson but it would also be really fun and competitive for the students.


The Hewlett Foundation has been perhaps the leading champion of OER projects around the world, supporting institutions and organizations that develop and provide online access to open educational content around the world. They give grants to education, environment, performing arts and other areas as well.
 Another site that I found that you can use to find Open Educational Resources was OPAL. This site allows you to get introduced to OER, you can tell them about OER in your school and you can also be entered to win prizes! COOL! Finally, the last resource that I have is, Open Educational Resources info kit.
This site gives search engines that you can use to find OER's, it talks about what OER is, some myths,  and much more. I found this site most helpful when I was trying to search for different OER's, and this gave the search engines to use which worked out great!