Open Education

In the article 7 Things You Should Know About Open Education, open education is a new thing that uses open education resources. Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research.  These resources make it easier for students to access the material.  The resources also help the students learn.  They can be in the forms of quizzes, tests, textbooks, course readings, and games.  All the resources open up for more options with the school subjects. This makes education much more widespread than ever imagined.  There always are downfalls when it comes to new and upcoming things.  The downfalls of the open education resources are sometimes they don't stay current, sometimes the standards are different, like if one resources was done by an university as compared to an individual, and many people need to be adapted to how to make an open educational resource.  A lot of people think they are, but they really aren't. 

I'm honestly not sure if this is what I'm supposed to do for this project, so I'm going to wing it.  I looked up 3 resources off of the website.  This website is really confusing at first, but I finally got the hang of it.  As I was on here I decided to look up just the basics.  First I typed in English and found this.  This was a resource for Visual Culture in English.  There are some essays and interviews about the visual culture. 

Next I typed in mathematics. Here this shows videos on how to model mathematics.  I like this a lot because the videos show different grade levels.  This way I could use this to help me in the future.  I am planning on going to only teach elementary children, but this could still help me as a teacher understand how to do the math. 

The last one I looked at was History.  History is my favorite subject, well only World War II.  I found a U.S. History site.  This is set up like Moodle.  that's what my high school used to keep all things in order.  Here this sets up a lesson plan.  The whole lesson  plan is set up.  This is a really easy way for children to follow along with what is going on in class.  I love this idea. 

Going away from that website, I'm looking for three other resources that can help children expand their horizons for exploration of education. 

The first one I came across is a worksheet.  This worksheet is for adoption for a textbook to a certain course of your choice.  It helps figure out how to incorporate the book into lesson plans, activities, etc.  This would be really helpful for any teacher trying to incorporate new things into what and how they want to teach.  Things like this are super helpful.  I plan on using this. 

Another website I cam across is 10 Open Education Resources You May Not Know But You Should. On this website I clicked on SmartHistory.  This is a free and open multimedia website that demonstrates how very heavy, pricey, and obsolete the traditional art history textbook is. 

  

One I came across is the Hewlet Foundation.  This website goes over what an open educational resource is. 

The Education Program invests in organizations that:

• Develop OER for K-12 and community colleges, expand OER networks, and develop guidelines and tools for the field
• Promote policies or strategies creating funds and incentives, or provide communications and technical assistance to policymakers, that will advance greater access to learning through OER
• Research and evaluate the impact of OER on teaching and learning
• Develop innovative OER models

The Program's OER investments will focus primarily on supporting:

• The infrastructure needed to sustain a well-functioning open educational ecosystem
• Demonstration projects that strengthen student access to deeper learning in K-12 and community colleges