As the world is transitioning there is a desire for opening the physical and geographical boundaries that bind us to only limited knowledge. Not to say your school isn’t good enough but don’t you want to learn more? I mean your professor might be a good
teacher but I’m sure there must be something he missed or doesn’t know. So where do we find a solution to this problem? The answer lies in OER.
Open educational resources (OERs) are freely accessible, openly formatted and openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, education, assessment and research purposes.
OER was established with the idea of bringing change and dynamism from a book, a traditional resource of education to providing channels that can reach across the globe and creating a global platform of receiving and sharing knowledge and information. These days you will see students preferring to interact over the Skype or sharing videos online and what not. Practically everything is shared on the internet, so why should education be behind.
One of the leading benefits of OER is that they are free and open to educators all over the globe. The information can be used by any student or teacher and ease out their teaching and sharing by simply visiting a website to access the material. It’s just a play and click of a few buttons from your mouse.
Four Suggested OER Options
As the word says OER -”open” educational resource, I emphasize on open because the question of where to find these resources is very easy and that too for free. There are various OER options available in the world, if you try to search the internet you will have dozens of resource sites. So the task is to just organize these resources. Many sites provide ready to use material with week by week modules and discussion forums for such a material along with direct contact with some experts, professors and open dialogues with known universities making the job of providing information the simplest task ever.
Here are a few OER options I would recommend:
As you open this resource the first thing you will see is a big box for search of any educational queries you have. Possessing a vast database this resource will help you in reaching out to educators and students across the globe. It also provides citations for future references and provides the option of choosing your search field and classifying into what area of subject you would like to study and search.
CK 12 foundation provides a library of free online textbooks, videos, exercises, flashcards and real world examples. These books are available in various formats for the ease of the user. It covers topics in math, science, life sciences, history and also provides SAT lessons. With various new twists making learning interesting, it provides applications such as Braingenie, Flexmath, and study help.
Project Gutenberg is known for its vast ebook catalogues, with over 42000 free ebooks, it is considered one of the largest database. It has various bonafide publishers working voluntarily to provide these books digitally to the world. Available in four more languages this resource is sure to help you loads and also consist of features such as ebook of the week. If you are a book lover or enthusiastic learner you might have found your heaven.
The MIT Open Courseware site offers educators and students access to full courses designed and taught by MIT professors. Users can access the entire course library along with the entire course packet. Course packets include video interviews with professors, syllabus, outlines, readings, assignments, projects and related resources. So whoever missed out the chance of not being able to study in MIT well you have a free and fair chance. Go grab the opportunity.
