Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons is an open education resource page where you can view and share information from a vast educational database. Users can upload their own content and create share points for other users based on their educational principal. There are vast subject areas and even different educational grade levels, there is something for everyone. Many people use the site for continuing education as well as tutor resources for their children.
Many contribute to the site by offering free webinar training for those seeking to advance their teaching and learning skills. The key piece of all the material is creating an organized, structured and intellectual training module system. Focusing of strategy is another main component to the organizations mission statement, called Action Collabs.
What is an OER Action Collab? Creative user guided workshops that are designed to establish proper framework to foster ideas and actionable steps to work towards achieving the goal set forth.
Action Collabs happen in the following steps [1]:
Identify Opportunity
Design
Prototype
Scale and Spread.
Another concept to the OER education approach is setting clear ideas and implementing strategies with the assistance of other members. Road mapping is the idea of properly articulating an idea and development of a strategy.
OER has the potential to improve the lives of underservices communities. For example, one of the Curated Collections (learning modules) is titled “Citizen Science for Learning and Research”. It offers science based interactive education and users interact and even contribute to the knowledge module. Modules often take you to other master or host sites like for instance, a discussion about the changing habitats and the science behind the impacts this has on the surrounding ecosystem. The material comes from Janis Dickenson, Director of Citizen Science at Cornell University.
One strong application on the site is the ability to take modules that work with computer programming languages, which I feel are the most valuable to K-12 students. Even taking a few of the computer programing for the sake of understanding basic software functions and even the mathematics that go into coding, is another bank of knowledge students can walk away with.
Say a student takes a Java tutorial and learns about linear programing for algebra and statistical analysis [3,4]. That’s quite difficult material to work your way through but it you have the drive to do it you can take all of these modules on the OER platform and no real cost other than a good amount of time.
PRO/CON analysis:
One Con to the OER platform is for some users who are not tech savvy it might be a little difficult to maneuver the site and find modules that would benefit them. Once you spend a little time clicking around you begin to understand the layout.
On the Pro side of the material, it offers at times college grade material and also the ability to organize your own curriculum around your interest. I find the mathematics and computer based programing modules the most beneficial and offered to K-12 and continuing education, it’s what people are looking for without having to expel financial resources OER is that option.
Many contribute to the site by offering free webinar training for those seeking to advance their teaching and learning skills. The key piece of all the material is creating an organized, structured and intellectual training module system. Focusing of strategy is another main component to the organizations mission statement, called Action Collabs.
What is an OER Action Collab? Creative user guided workshops that are designed to establish proper framework to foster ideas and actionable steps to work towards achieving the goal set forth.
Action Collabs happen in the following steps [1]:
Another concept to the OER education approach is setting clear ideas and implementing strategies with the assistance of other members. Road mapping is the idea of properly articulating an idea and development of a strategy.
OER has the potential to improve the lives of underservices communities. For example, one of the Curated Collections (learning modules) is titled “Citizen Science for Learning and Research”. It offers science based interactive education and users interact and even contribute to the knowledge module. Modules often take you to other master or host sites like for instance, a discussion about the changing habitats and the science behind the impacts this has on the surrounding ecosystem. The material comes from Janis Dickenson, Director of Citizen Science at Cornell University.
One strong application on the site is the ability to take modules that work with computer programming languages, which I feel are the most valuable to K-12 students. Even taking a few of the computer programing for the sake of understanding basic software functions and even the mathematics that go into coding, is another bank of knowledge students can walk away with.
Say a student takes a Java tutorial and learns about linear programing for algebra and statistical analysis [3,4]. That’s quite difficult material to work your way through but it you have the drive to do it you can take all of these modules on the OER platform and no real cost other than a good amount of time.
PRO/CON analysis:
One Con to the OER platform is for some users who are not tech savvy it might be a little difficult to maneuver the site and find modules that would benefit them. Once you spend a little time clicking around you begin to understand the layout.
On the Pro side of the material, it offers at times college grade material and also the ability to organize your own curriculum around your interest. I find the mathematics and computer based programing modules the most beneficial and offered to K-12 and continuing education, it’s what people are looking for without having to expel financial resources OER is that option.
[1] http://iskme.org/our-work/action-collabs
[2] http://www.oercommons.org/courses/science-nation-citizen-science/view
[3] https://www.oercommons.org/courses/02-10-linesar-programming-activity-graphs-algebra-ii
[4] https://www.oercommons.org/courses/03-java-tutorial-variablen