Open Educational Resources

Things to Know About Open Educational Resources (OER)

-Open Educational Resources are basically free or reduced items that can be used for academic learning and teaching such as digital textbooks, shared lesson plans, textbooks, games and generally anything technological. 

-OER is typically either a large offering from a single institution or a collection of things gathered from multiple people, places, and areas. 

-The OpenCourseWare project from MIT is where OER initiated from. It began in 2002 and roughly covers 2,000 MIT courses.

-Due to open and shared ideas, lesson plans, and different perspectives, teachers are revolutionizing the teaching movement. There is much more to be learned when a large amount of information is shared through a technological tool. 

Want to know more? Check out the website where this information came from, you should actually read this 'scenario' on the page, it gives great insight on OER in real life terms.

For all of my audio and visual learners, I've found this youtube video that describes in great detail the benefits, origins, meanings, and ideas of Open Educational Learning...

 

 

On the Open Educational Resources website of collections you can find shared ideas on any grade level and in any field of academics. Since my career is driven towards younger children, Pre-K through fourth grade, I've checked out their 'primary' grade level activities. I've stumbled upon a few that are excellent, and have them bookmarked for future reference! After you read through a few of these, you really start to appreciate the collaboration of ideas, notes, lesson plans, and true passion that these other educators are bringing forth with their entries.

First I decided to check out the Math area of interest, and came across quite a few ideas that I plan to use in the future. For example, The 100th Day of School activity is a great idea to activate the student's minds into using higher level thinking and problem solving. The basic idea, is on the 100th day of school, to set up a mathematical activity for the students to figure out 100 different ways to represent the number 100. Now of course students will immediately find ideas such as adding 50 and 50 together, or 99 and 1. After explaining to the class to think outside of the box, and to use geometry, algebra, patterns, data, and probability, students will begin to get creative. I would probably create a bulletin board with the title and number 100 (like the site suggests) and have each student pick their favorite chosen way to represent the number 100 and have them make a presentation of it to go on the bulletin board for everyone to share. Great idea and fun activity to get the brain going!

Next I decided to check out all of the goodies that were in the 'arts' primary grade level section, and came across a great resource from the Open Educational Resources website. This post had a link to a list of activities for students to participate in that helped them create self-identity, self-worth, integrity, and so on. By using photographs, magazine clippings, finger printing equipment and poems/stories, there are enough activities (and ideas for activities) to allow children room to explore and use common things surrounding them in everyday life and get their mind developing appropriately in the social/emotional developmental area. Great ideas, plan to use them in the future as well!

Finally, I checked out what the website offered in the primary division of social sciences and found a great shared plan from a teacher that includes resources and gives instructions for other teachers to teach the importance of being a leader and also goes over a few famous leaders in history. The actual resource gives a week long list of ideas, theories, points, and activities to work upon in the classroom. It is based on a second grade level classroom, but involves enough activity to keep the students' minds awake and learning. This is another great tool that I've bookmarked because it's just something I wouldn't think of on my own.

 

After reading through some of these different resources, I've learned that I am very happy that this idea has been created, because sometimes in teaching you just need advice, opinions, and ideas from others. No one is a perfect person, let alone a perfect teacher, so whenever you need a helping hand, a little creativity, or just some plain and simple quiz questions, this website is perfect! The ability to view feedback on  some of the ideas is great too, so you can understand how it worked in another's classroom. The website is so easy to navigate, so helpful and informative, and I personally believe that everyone in the education field should be opened up to it so they can experience how great it is for themselves!

"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under and intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." as stated on the website that I checked out from my google search on OER. Not only does the website go over the idea and usefulness that has come about from OER, but they've given links for more helpful information and the project's strategic plan. These explanations will help educators fully understand the point of OER as well as the benefits.

 

On another website I found 10 Open Educational Resources that you may not have known about. This website is great because, it too, has plenty of ideas and activities all combined from educators from all over. It makes the possibilities endless in terms of academic teaching strategies, questions, activities, assignments, and so on.


 

The last website that I checked out was actually another OER, and in the early childhood education section it covered foundations for success, initiatives, unit resources, and early learning resources! Just amazing how much information is actually out there and how much easier it can be to create a lesson plan using the advice and ideas from others.

In conclusion...

Open Educational Resources are an amazing part of technology and I am so happy that I've been introduced to them at such an early stage of my teaching career. By the time I graduate college I could have lesson plans worked out for all grades Pre-K through fourth just by using OER's! But in all seriousness, OER is a great tool for any early children advocates or educators of any kind to be aware of, understand, and have access to.