OER

= Open Educational Resources (OER) = = Introduction = One of the most exciting things to come out of the Creative Commons movement is the OER Commons. The most highly-rated content in the OER Commons comes from the [|MIT Open Courseware (OCW)] project -- an online repository of free lecture notes, exams, and other resources (including, increasingly, audio and video) from more than **2000 courses** spanning MIT's entire curriculum. MIT recently announced a subsection of OCW called [|Highlights for High School]. Other examples of OER include the National Repository of Online Resources (NROC), HippoCampus, iTunesU(Mac device required), Khan Academy, Ted-Ed and CK12 Foundation.

This week we'll focus on a couple of the popular video-based learning sites, but one of your tasks will be to explore FREE textbooks.

Open Educational Resources, or Openly Licensed Educational resources, are any resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under creative commons permitting their free use, reuse, and modification. OER can include images, textbooks, videos, assessment items, or complete online courses. Many states are making a commitment to #GoOpen to replace or supplement existing paid resources. You may be using OER without even realizing that's what you're doing.
 * What is OER? **

**Why use Openly Licensed Educational Resources? ([|from US Dept. of Ed]**.)
Resources that are openly licensed benefit schools in a number of ways, but most notably they help to:


 * Increase Equity – All students have access to high quality learning materials that have the most up-to-date and relevant content because openly licensed educational resources can be freely distributed to anyone.
 * Save Money – Switching to educational materials that are openly licensed enables schools to repurpose funding spent on static textbooks for other pressing needs, such as investing in the transition to digital learning. In some districts, replacing just one textbook has made tens of thousands of dollars available for other purposes.
 * Keep Content Relevant and High Quality – Traditional textbooks are perpetually outdated, forcing districts to re-invest significant portions of their budgets on replacing them. The terms of use of openly licensed educational resources allows educators to maintain the quality and relevance of their materials through continuous updates.
 * Empower Teachers – Openly licensed educational resources empower teachers as creative professionals by giving them the ability to adapt and customize learning materials to meet the needs of their students without breaking copyright laws.

**Discovery Exercise**

View the [|OER] examples linked in this presentation to explore. [|OER Google Slides]

** TED- Ed Overview **
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**Maureen's Favorite Ted-Ed Lesson**
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Resources TED-Ed FAQ's

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 * OER in 3 Minutes**

Khan Academy- Math, Science, Computer Science, Humanities==

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 * Overview**

Resources [|KA Teacher Quick Start Guide] Don't miss out on the coaching option

MIT Highlights for High School
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World Language Teachers- This one's for you!
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Other Resources
[|OER (Wikipedia)] [|OER Commons] [|Federal Gov Urges K-12 Schools to Try OER-] [|US Secretary of Ed Highlights Schools Using OER] [|CK12 Playlist on YouTube]
 * 1) GoOpen Initiative - []

**Task 1** http://learningregistry.org/educators/ Pick one resource you feel will be helpful to you this year. Share it in your blog post.
 * Test Drive the Learning Registry**

**Task 2** [] Pick one resource you think can help a D36 Learning 2.0 classmate. Share it in your blog post and with your D36 Learning 2.0 classmate.
 * Explore Illinois Shared Learning Environment- IOER**

Peruse the Twitter Hashtag for the [|#GoOpen] initiative. Favorite at least three tweets, retweet at least three tweets, and follow at least 5 people who are contributing to the #GoOpen hashtag.
 * Task 3 **

Have some fun with some of the OER image apps like [|Spell with Flickr] or [|Big Huge Labs].
 * Task 4 **

= Blog post will be combined for Thing 23 and 24 =

Write a blog post reflecting on how you think Creative Commons and OER may affect you professionally and/or personally. Be sure to include "Thing 23/24" in your post title. Share the resources you found/created this week. Be sure to label/tag your post with Thing 24. Also, remember to comment on the blogs of at least three other classmates.

Stretch Tasks
Explore [|HippoCampus], [|PheT] (Science simulations) and [|CK12 Foundation](math and science) in your search