Using Open Educational Resources (OERs) can be great for the classroom because they allow educators to adapt free resources to their own needs. Use can also be overwhelming because of how many OERs there are out there, so Edudemic has compiled a list of tips and sites to help educators determine what's best for their needs.

For one, Edudemic helps educators determine what is in fact a OER and what is not .

"The easiest way to find out whether a work is an OER is to look for a Creative Commons (CC) license. Creative Commons makes it easy for people to openly license and share their works by posting their work with a CC license (think of it as an alternative to the copyright symbol). There are several types of CC licenses, so make sure to check what permissions are available before you get started," the article said.

To get started, Edudemic provided several starting points where educators can typically search for resources by state and Common Core Standards.

Such sites include:

"Gooru, [which] offers a platform that helps you search for free online learning resources, modify them, and create 'playlists' that allow you to save and share sets of resources with students and other teachers," and "Curriki, [which] is both a place to search for OERs and a platform that allows you to assemble and modify your own curriculum," the article said.

It also provides educators with several sites where they can find free resources for classic literature mostly published before 1923 in several different languages and also resources for literature created to be OERs.

Math and science teachers fear not, Edudemic also offers resource for those subjects as well as other resources for general videos and courses.

The last bit of advice?

"An important piece of OER etiquette: Be sure to attribute the work to the original creator when you use it. For example, if you’re using a CC-licensed image in a presentation, check to see who created it and include it in a note with the image in your presentation (see the OER logo in this post for an example)."

Read the full article to find more OER resources here and comment with your thoughts below.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

07/29/2015