The innovation du jour for teaching and learning, OERs are at their core of some of the largest grant-funding sources for new courses and course materials— including the Department of Labor's TAA grant which provides $2billion for community colleges and workforce development. What are OERs? What makes them unique? A phrase that was coined in 2002 at a UNESCO forum, OERs are defined as “educational resources—lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.—that are freely-available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing.” Why should faculty and educational technologists care? This workshop is designed for faculty and educational technologists using existing and developing new OERs, but elements will be useful for administrators who have faculty and staff who are using or developing OERs. Attend this workshop to: understand the OER landscape; learn how to find, critically evaluate and use OERs developed by others; identify and select open educational resources for use in discipline-specific courses; understand Creative Commons licenses; learn what resources exist for developing and/or adopting OERs; and learn about the issues involved in adopting OERs and localizing them. Presented by Brandon Muramatsu and Jean Runyon, at Elearning 2012 preconference workshop on February 18, 2012