Hi again,

Today we learned about various online resources and how these can be useful to help students succeed both in the classroom and at home. With the use of internet and the rise of online educational resources in schools, online educational resources play a huge part.  An OER is known as open educational resources; these help students be able to learn effective searching strategies as they provide people with direct access to information. Some may say that OER’s have their purpose and are effective resources, while others may believe that they took away some aspects of creativity and critical thinking; while others may believe that they help push these ideas as it provides access to learning and worldwide views and situations. Even though we are moving towards everyone having a computer and internet including school, we still need to consider opportunity and how some may not have access to these resources; therefore schools can help provide these experiences to provide an equal access. With the use of internet people today are informed about situations happening all over the world as they have access to the internet.The following article addresses the pros and cons of free open educational resources https://opensource.com/article/18/2/open-educational-resources-drive-teaching-renaissance. 

As children, I know I can say I used Wikipedia which is a website that anyone can modify. However moving through elementary, we start to learn that the effectiveness and reliability of various resources and how some may not always share realistic information. As such, if this is taught in the early years of a child’s development, this can lead to a very important lesson as students start to evaluate and learn while approaching things with a critical lens (being not everything is valid on the internet). Resources like Khan Academy, for example can help students learn at their own pace as well as learn from another teacher who may have a different teaching strategy. As such, allowing children to learn from various sources can serve as an asset if it is properly framed about all aspects of the internet, so children can explore and think rather than just find one thing.

This idea of online resources is also key when it comes to the idea of inquiry based education as children are able to search a subject of their choosing through various interphases. However students should also experience using physical books and physical resources as it allows them to learn different searching and critical thinking strategies. Here is a link to a website that addressed the use of OER’s  towards inquiry and personalized education https://practices.learningaccelerator.org/problem-of-practice/how-can-i-leverage-open-educational-resources-when-planning-lessons-and-assessments-to-meet-my-students-needs-in-my-personalized-learning-classroom

In relation to the use of online resources, there is also the need to teach about copyright. As stated in the video RIP -A Remix Manifesto, is that even though it is online and commonly known such as the Happy Birthday song, you need to be aware of who made this and give them credits. This made me think about all the covers and creativity behind people and artists who want to make remixes which can be considered copyright. Someone may accidentally copyright something as everything comes from something, therefore this is an important conversation.

Here is a video that sums up the idea of why open educational resources matters

Figure 10.2.1 © Giulia Forsyth, 2012

10.2 Open educational resources (OER)