Eclectic Technology

Are you ready to move away from textbooks and use Open Education Resources (OER)? This post provides links to 24 sites that provide free resources.

Perhaps you are wondering why schools are choosing to use free curriculum. Michael Gorman provides a list of ten reasons in this post that include:

* Provides  opportunity to make learning more authentic by giving you the ability to localize learning

* Can provide differentiations and allow educator to adapt to their students’ needs

An explanation is provided for each link he provides so you get a sense of what is available, and materials are available for students from elementary school through college. Below are a few of the sites listed.

* SAS Curriculum Pathways - a resource that has been around for a number of years and continues to innovate. The website states “The products make learning more profound and efficient, not simply more entertaining.” 

* Concord Consortium - a website that provides excellent STEM resources with hundreds on interactive, research based activities.

* Vision Learning - Peer reviewed materials for learning science available in English and Spanish that emphasize science as a process (inline with the new Next Generation Science Standards)

* CK12.org - CK12 is now focused on STEM and provides a wide variety of free courses from Arithmatic to Probability to Calculus in the area of math (a total of nine math courses); Life Science, Earth Science, Physical Science, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Technology, Astronomy and Engineering; a few xourses are available for English and History and there is a new course in Economics. CK12 also provides support through a variety of resources including: studyHELP, FlexMath, Braingenie and I Need a Pencil (SAT prep). One of the older sites they continue to revise courses and materials to meet the needs of todays students.

Check out the complete list by clicking through to the post, and consider not only using these materials but sharing materials you have created in some of the communities provided.

Are you interested in learning more about US copyright law for educators (and also for those in Australia) or how to find and adapt Creative Common materials for you class? These two classes (and others) are being offered at the School of Open through P2PU. There are also courses that you may take any time. For the courses mentioned above you must register by Sunday, March 17th and they begin next week. The others are available at any time.

Many schools are beginning to look at using open source materials, and if you search this Scoop.it you will find quite a few resources about open source materials, but these are the first classes I have seen that are geared to educators around issues that we should educate ourselves if we are going to be going in the direction of open source. If you have the time consider signing up for one of the classes.

Are you looking for resources for free digital books? This post provides information on 12 sites (plus 3 bonus sites with hot links but no information) including the types and levels of books available. Although most are for college level you will find some of middle school and high school. Some of the sites listed are below:

* Bookboon

* Boundless

* California Learning Resource Network (for K-12 and higher ed)

* The Global Text Project (some books available in Chinese, Spanish and English)

* Open Stax which also provides some additional teaching materials (high school and college)

* Open Education Group (out of Brigham Young University) has six science textbooks designed for middle and high school.

Find more information at the site.

Are you interested in creating open source content but have questions about what you need to do? This post provides insight that may help you create open content. Sections include:

* Defining the scope

* Collecting resources

* Checking licenses

* Finalizing the working outline

* Writing and/or curating

* Assembling the work

* Editing

* Publishing

* Understanding that open content is only partially about content