Open Educational Resources, Who knew?

This summer I took a course and we were required to locate open educational resources that we could use in our classrooms. First of all I had no idea what an open educational resource was or how to find them. Thankfully, our professor gave us the link to OER Commons to use as a resource for finding such information. Unlike teacherspayteachers.com or Pinterest, OER Commons gives you resources and materials for lessons that adhere to copyright and fair use laws. They are meant to be shared and used by teachers. It is a community of educators adding and sharing lessons or resources with one another.

Our class did some amazing research and we compiled all our findings into a Padlet for us to reference. I've shared that Padlet with you so that you too can go and explore this great resource. I enjoyed learning about all these amazing lessons and resources that are available to us and we don't have to worry about copyright laws or paying for multiple licenses to disperse to our teaching partners.

This lesson also helped me learn about how to use resources wisely and respectfully. How many times have you purchased something from teacherspayteachers and just made additional copies for your teaching partners? I found out that is illegal and we have to purchase additional licenses, often at a cheaper price, to share. I also learned that what we teach with technology should be tied to specific technology standards. We have learned about common core, IL state standards, NextGen Science standards, and now I've learned about ISTE standards for technology. These are standards we should be using alongside our curriculum standards. They are meant to help ensure that our students, who are growing up in this digital age, are going to be able to meet specific technology standards when they are older and entering the workforce. As an educator that uses technology daily in her classroom I was shocked to learn about these standards for the first time during this course.

If you are interested in learning more about ISTE then please visit their website by clicking the link here.

Want to learn more about open educational resources? Click here to visit their website.

*I just want to say that I love teacherspayteachers and Pinterest! I am going to be able to do even more amazing things in my classroom this year using all of the new resources I've learned about and teacherspayteachers and pinterest. Want to check out these resources too? Click the links below:

teacherspayteachers Pinterest To veiw the padlet that we created with our open educational resources click the link below to go to padlet.

All work was created by the students in MSED 675z Summer 2017 at University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois.