Open Educational Resources

What is OER?  So the first time I saw this in our discussions for my graduates course I automatically thought about work since we use OER often but to stand for Officer Evaluation Report, which I hate to write but required for officer promotions. So the use of OER was first introduced to me in graduates school and ti stands for Open Education Resources.  According to JISC, OER are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner.  This subject became very important in the development of our blogs and some of our assignments for the course.  I was amazed in the number of OER materials that was actually out there and found that really people were eager to share information for free, as long as people didn't abuse it for profit.  So how do you know if something is an OER or not?  Nicole Comforto in her article, The Teacher’s Guide To Open Educational Resources, points out one of the best places to turn to is to look for a Creative Commons (CC) license.  Each license is not same and it is important to look how the author has ok'd the use.  You can also look at the permissions section on the websites to get more information on what they have agreed to the use of the material.  

Last semester we worked with various tools to create some items.  One of those items was an eBook, in which I created one based on my daughters list of Endangered Species she likes to read about and her teacher started to use it in the classroom.  My plan is to expand this book and in checking out OER resources in order to make this book available beyond my daughters class and for every little naturalist out there.