A Pitch for K-12 Teachers and Their Students to Create O.E.R

Nathan Standing

The purpose of this presentation is to provide K-12 teachers with an explanation of open education and to encourage them to create O.E.R. with their students.

Why did you choose to become a teacher? It is very probable that your response would include that you want to bless the lives of children. You may want to bless the lives of as many children as possible.
Today, I am going to discuss ways that you can expand your influence to bless children even those outside of your classroom. Open education is one way to do this. I will discuss simple ways to use open education.
First off, open education is a way of carrying out education that is free meaning both free of cost (gratis) and free to use without limitation(libre). Openness often involves the creation of open education resources which are materials that are not restrained by copyright and are open.
The person who coined the term, open education, was David Wiley. He also came up with the five R’s that he argues must be present in order for something to be considered open. Understanding these five R’s helps you gain a more complete understanding of open.
The first R is retain, meaning people can own and make copies of the materials. Then there is reuse, meaning people are free to use the material. Revise refers to the freedom people have to also change the material to fit their own needs.
Remix refers to the ability to combine the resource with other resources in order to form something new. Lastly, redistribute means that people are allowed to share the content they create with whoever they wish.
As a teacher, you have limited time. I am going to suggest only two things that you can implement in order to participate in open education. 1) Create open education resources 2) Involve your students in creating open educational resources.
Open education resources or O.E.R. are instructional resources that have at least 4 of the five R’s. O.E.R. is not restricted by copyright.
As a teacher, you can actually license the things that you are already making with an open license called a creative commons license. Doing this will essentially allow people anywhere in the world to use your material. There are many types of creative licenses. Click on the link to learn more.
Secondly, you can involve your students in open pedagogy. This isn’t just teaching your students about open education, but allowing them to create O.E.R. themselves. For example, you could have students create educational videos and then assign them a creative license.
There are many examples of teachers doing this successfully. Some teachers have their students create O.E.R. textbooks. There is actually an online high school called Mountain Heights Academy whose curriculum is based on O.E.R and regularly involves their students in creating O.E.R.
In closing, thank you for listening to me today. I am no expert, but if you have any questions feel free to reach out. Thank you.

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