OER Love

If you don’t have OER, you’ve got to get some. No kidding.

Open educational resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or 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” (Report to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2007).

See what I mean. You need to know about this stuff if you’re in college, if you know someone in college, if you are a grad student, if you’re a teacher, if you are a writer, if you want to go to grad school, if you’re a parent, if you’re a school administrator, if you even know someone whose cousin is a substitute traveling elementary school teacher in Stanley, Idaho–if any of this applies to you, then you need to know about this OER business, the movement of open and education where they converge.

OER isn’t about doing away with books; it’s about doing away with the waste of publishing books that people don’t use all of; it’s about doing away with the waste of books wasting away on shelves and holding information we can’t get our hands on or that’s out of date; it’s about managing information in new ways to ensure information gets to who needs it when they need it; it’s about making the next generation of book that is on-demand, just-in-time, to-the-point, and spot on.

Intellectual property is at the heart of OER–see Creative Commons to understand how this licensing can change our world and enable everyone to get the education they want, or that they can’t even dream of, yet. (This isn’t about the publishing of literary texts–see the link below by Richard Baraniuk for a nice run down of licensing and what’s unique about open and education. BUT also see Neil Gaiman about his take on copyright and piracy on the web–this is really great.)

Here is a partial list of OER I like:

Writing Spaces. Find these incredible OER created through this project: Volumes 1 & 2. Each volume contains chapters on writing by writing professors and professionals for writing students edited by writing professors; the brand-spanking-new-hot-off-the-digital presses: Web Writing Style Guide. Write on. This project goes first on any list of OER for me because it’s a commons I’m part of–how could I not list it first? Everything else is in no special order, except Open Michigan. I like them–so they go next.

Open Michigan. The University of Michigan’s open initiative. Impressive stuff. Please visit–you’ll want to take a lot of time to dig around here, I promise.

7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing. Informative and the .pdf is only two pages–MY kind of reading.

MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This open course ware project is old: 10 years old now. Want to know anything they are teaching at MIT without moving or paying tuition? Visit this site and dig in.

College Open Textbooks. This is funded by the W. & F. Hewlett Foundation–and money well spent, I say. When you teach, never require students to pay for books again. I said it. Under “Open Textbook Content,” then “Open Textbooks by Subject” and click the button for “English & Composition.” The choices will blow you away, and this is actually pretty slim pickings compared to some of the OER and portals for OER listed here.

MERLOT. Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching. Batten down the hatches before you get involved here. The first page is overwhelming (to say the least), but it’s a great place to search for learning and teaching materials.

OER Commons: Learning is Sharing. Included here are open textbooks, materials on career and technical education, classroom management, science as inquiry, art as inquiry, leadership in education and so much more. Visit once and visit often.

Writing Spaces. Find these incredible OER created through this project: Volumes 1 & 2 contain chapters on writing by writing professors and professionals for writing students; the brand-spanking-new-hot-off-the-digital presses: Web Writing Style Guide. Write on.

The Free to Learn Guide. So great. It’s a quick and easy read (and will be required later on) about open educational resources.

P2PU. Peer to Peer University. This is such a great site, you will weep when you read through and learn all that you can learn.

Connexions. From Rice University–but with contributors and users from all over the world. You can learn about one of its founders from his Ted.com talk, Richard Baraniuk or by visiting the site. You’ll be asked to watch this before we formally watch RiP! or immediately after.

Kahn Academy. “Watch. Practice. Learn almost anything–for free.” When I go back to school to finish my math degree, I’m going to totally work this resource. But there’s so much here that you can learn. More proof that one person can change the world.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. When I needed some support for an article I was writing this spring, regarding Aristotle, I went to this place. Magic.