Thing 29: Open Educational Resources

I am embarrassed to say that before this assignment, I really knew very little about search tools that existed for Open Educational Resources. I spent some time in the beginning of this assignment getting a better understanding of OER's by watching the OER video embedded in the assignment and reading through some of the resources. I particularly found the FAQ: OER for K-12 Educator pdf useful.

After reading through the materials and getting a better understanding, I started exploring many of the search tools that were suggested. Each of the tools opened a new window of excitement for me, so much so that I spent way too much time searching on some of them. My excitement quickly turned to, "How can I share this with my teachers without overwhelming them?" I decided that sending out the resources in a newsletter might be best and limiting the resources to my top 3 choices, I really didn't want to overwhelm them.

In my newsletter, I started off by giving them a brief overview, which included the video that I found to be useful and a link to the FAQ resource. Then I provided a brief description of resource with a link to the material, followed by an invitation for further help if they were interested.

From the list of OER search tools, I picked the tools that I felt had good content for Elementary teachers, were user friendly, and offered a variety of resources. Here are some of the features that I loved about each of the resources that I chose:

OER Commons
I loved OER Commons because of the search ability features, specifically that you could narrow your search between educational levels (lower primary and upper primary). In addition, I loved that they had a STEM Literacy section with resources that include templates, resources to prepare educators and teaching materials.

Open Ed
Although I didn't find this search tool as visually appealing, it was user friendly, with great advanced search options, even allowing the user to search by publisher. This search tool also provided resources in a large variety of formats such as videos, audio, lesson plans, games, interactive homework and much more. I felt that this would be extremely beneficial in an elementary school because of the discrepancy of instructional needs. Finally, our teachers could really benefit from the resources specifically designed for NGSS.

Curriki
Personally, I loved this search tool for all of the information and media literacy resources. However, I also thought that it was a great tool for teachers and students as well. The resources were laid out in a user friendly way. There was also more resources than just lessons and units, there were resources to further teachers and student understanding. I also liked the variety of formats of the resources, from links to downloadable files to webinars (there is a great one on teaching NGSS in a first grade classroom). A nice touch to this tool is that the resources could be reviewed, making searching for good resources a little easier. I will say that I didn't find a couple of resources on here with broken links, so having a review or being able to write a review is helpful.