Some opinions re: Open Education Reasources

1. 5. It’s easily shared! Other educators and students can
access it, adapt it, remix it and learn from it anywhere
there’s an Internet connection.
4. It’s customizable! You can modify and update when you
see fit without waiting for—or paying for—the “next
edition.”
3. It’s more engaging than texts! How many textbooks or
study packets have you seen with interactive, multimedia
activities? And lots of OER materials work great on
SMART boards and Elmos, so they can be used effectively
in-class, too.
Licensed Under Creative Commons BY 2.5

2. 2. It’s can be personalized to your students! Assemble the
OER materials you find in a way that works for your
students and at a pace that works for them—not what some
publisher tells you works.
1. A lot of it is GREAT, and all of it is FREE! Why put your
district’s or school’s money in the pockets of publishers and
their shareholders (or engage in illicit copying) when you
can use free materials shared by a community of educators
who have found success with these materials in their own
classrooms? Use that money to pay teachers to create and
share more OER materials, or buy some more laptops for
your students, or some extra apple-fritters for Donuts with
Dads Day.

3. And then there are those who question the quality of OER
vs. publisher-produced curriculum: Let’s show them what
we have found—and what we have built.
Separating the wheat from the chaff: There’s a lot of OER
material out there, and not all of it is great, but that’s true of
publisher-produced materials, as well—which you not only
have to carefully study and screen, but you then have to pay
for!
Sometimes you just can’t find what you need: It can be
difficult to find the right materials, but it seems to get easier
with practice and knowledge of what’s available. And while
there are some things we might not be able to find, we can
build them, make them OER, and share them!