Open Educational Resources(OER)

An introduction to a vast collection of copyright friendly resources for teachers

What are Open Educational Resources?

• Substitute “freely available” for “open”

• Open to everyone to use• Open to everyone to create

• Copyrights do vary among the various different public licenses

The basic OER process: 1 of 3 • First, a curriculum is broken into it’s

component pieces.– Handouts– Tests and quizzes– Texts– Lesson Plans– Video and audio files– PowerPoints

• These pieces must be in a digital format

The basic OER process: 2 of 3

• Second, the pieces are licensed with one of the various public use licenses so they can be shared easily.– GNU– Creative Commons– GPL

• Restrictive copyrights defeat the intent of OER

The basic OER process: 3 of 3

• Lastly, the pieces are made available online.

• To be “Open” it must be openly distributed.

Where is all this free curriculum?

A few sites to start your collection• CNX.org– 14,066 reusable modules

• OERcommons.org– A vast collection of materials in a wide variety of

subjects• OCW.MIT.EDU– The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open

Courseware

How about an open source solution to distribute this open curriculum ?

Moodle.org• Moodle is one way to distribute OER to your

students.• Moodle is an online course management tool.• Moodle is SCORM compliant• Click here for the Moodle introduction video

The number of new Moodle sites is growing quickly !!

Moodle.org makes this image available under GNU Public License

The number of users is exploding!Over 750,000 users

as of July 2009

Moodle.org makes this image available under GNU Public License

Moodle Users are worldwide

Moodle.org makes this image available under

GNU Public License

OER is the future

By harnessing the collective power of educators world wide, OER is a philosophy that can lead to a sustainable revolution in education.

Monetary profit shouldn’t be a hindrance to good education. Open ideals can help provide curriculum and the tools to deliver it for free.