Open education resources are essential tools that help to empower educators and students in multiple ways, the OER resources make the education system flexible, affordable, and more inclusive. In this modern era, one of the major goals of the school is to adopt more inclusive practices that help shape the students’ personalities and boost their confidence. Open educational resources are the freely licensed teaching and learning tools that are openly licensed which help the individuals to access. There are numerous resources such as textbooks, such as CK-12, and Khan Academy, with different videos, engaging lesson plans with many attached activities, test papers, and quizzes.
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Without a doubt, OER is beneficial for teachers and students because the materials offer knowledge that is updated content, saves money, interactive and multimedia encourages sharing and collaboration among students. These are wonderful tools that have no financial burden to purchase expensive textbooks, and they are available anytime, which shows flexibility. Moreover, the one thing that I liked the most is that it encourages independent learning where the learners can explore the concepts in detail outside the classroom walls.
Also, Open Global Education is celebrating Open Education Week (OEW) that is an annual event that celebrates and promotes open education worldwide. It is a platform where educators, students, and schools can participate to share and learn about open educational practices and online material. This fosters community discussions, and accessible learning on webinars or panel discussions.
Furthermore, the OER platform CK12 Foundation I found it beneficial because it is California- based non-profit organization that offers numerous open educational resources, major focusing on STEM subjects.
The major aim is to reduce the course and to provide high quality education among the learners. The curriculum of CK12 Foundation is well structured covering mathematics, science, social studies, English, and Adult education subjects. It is designed to be user-friendly allowing the educators and students to vast library resources, and enabling users to quickly locate the materials according to their needs. The structure and content of the resources is aligning with the curriculum standards. Also educators have the flexibility to customize their materials according to the lesson plan. To enhance the productivity and teaching efficiency CK12 Foundation is a valuable tool for the educators.
Great post, Nancy. I agree that OERs are powerful tools that provide flexible learning and encourage curiousity. It certainly sounds like CK-12 is a great resource (I’ve only checked it out a little so far). My only concern with OERs is how they might broaden the digital divide, rather than narrow the gaps. While free information does remove many financial barriers, not all students have reliable internet access or the necessary technology. I questioned in my blog how communities can come together to provide supports for all people. One resource dear to my heart is public libraries. What are your thoughts?
Hi Nancy,
Thanks for your post! You are the second person this week who has recommended this resource! I like how the CK-12 website is organized and, like you said, there are a lot of topics to explore. I didn’t realize that the information was mostly text based until I looked around the site a bit. I did notice that you can assign an article to your class through Google Classroom which I think is a great way to curate information for students when they are doing online research. Thanks for sharing!