What I believe and why I got involved in OER Differentiating instruction is essential to improving education. Textbooks are not a good tool for this. Technology coupled with high quality content is. Teachers need high quality resources that they can use legally to build interactive lessons, podcasts, multimedia presentations, etc. Sharing is good.

What is OER? Open Educational Resources (OER) are: Digital, free, and OPEN for anyone to use, adapt, and redistribute Tools, content, and implementation resources For teachers, students, and lifelong learners

How is OER relevant to education? Suitable for “remixing” for differentiation  Examples Brings equity FREE

Traditional copyright - all rights reserved Public domain - unrestricted use

Traditional copyright - all rights reserved Public domain - unrestricted use Copyright with open licenses - some rights reserved

Attribution (BY) ▪ Non-commercial (NC) ▪ No derivatives (ND) ▪ Copyleft - Share-Alike (SA)‏ Recommended for education: CC BY

Creative Commons:  CC BY – You can use however you want; just cite the source.  CC BY SA – You can use however you want, but you must cite the source AND license your work under a sharing license.  CC BY NC – You can use only if it is noncommercial (you can’t charge $); cite the source.  CC BY ND – You can use the work but you can’t change it or put it into a bigger work; also cite the source.

Others: GFDL – Share-alike license used by Wikipedia and others. Public domain – not copyrighted; you can use however you like. Custom licenses (e.g. morguefile and Teacher’s Domain)‏

Citing Sources ALWAYS cite sources Can be under the image or at the end in credits Screen names are ok (optional) Include source URL

More Formal Citation Formats MLA Author’s name, the name of the work, publication/site, the date of creation, and the medium of publication Bronayur. “Hershey, PA sign.” Wikipedia, Jan. 9, JPG file. APA Name of the organization, followed by the date. In brackets, provide a brief explanation of what type of data is there and in what form it appears. Finally, provide the project name and retrieval information. Hershey, PA sign. (Jan. 9, 2007). [Photo of Hershey, PA sign, JPG]. Wikipedia. Retrieved from

Content – Photos, Clip Art, and Video Photos  Flickr (CC)‏ - Advanced search Flickr  Wikipedia Wikipedia  Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons  Google Images – Advanced image search Google Images  The Open Photo Project The Open Photo Project Clip art  WPClipArt WPClipArt  Open Clip Art Library Open Clip Art Library

Content – Music and Sound Video  Khan Academy Khan Academy  NextVista NextVista  Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons  Teacher’s Domain Teacher’s Domain Music and sound  MusOpen MusOpen  ccMixter ccMixter  The FreeSound project The FreeSound project

Conversion Tools Zamzar.com YouConvertIt.com

Content – Education Lesson Plans Curriki BetterLesson Open Textbooks CK12 Connexions Wikibooks Curriculum FreeReading

Content – Education (cont.) Online courses NROC and Hippocampus MERLOT MIT OpenCourseWare Other educational content PhET Kids Open Dictionary Ebooks OER Commons

. How You Can Open License Your Own Work Just write “licensed under Creative Commons CC BY” on the work Use the Creative Commons “License Your Work” tool  Will provide you with artwork  Optional code you can put on a web site to be accessed by open search engines

. How You Can Contribute If you publish something you are willing to share, open license it. Post photos (to Flickr or elsewhere) with an open license. Publish on an open platform like Wikispaces If you see a mistake on a wiki like Wikipedia, FIX IT! Tell three people you know about open content and Creative Commons

Thank you. Karen Fasimpaur First screen image credits: Linux computer lab – Michael Surran Linux penguin - Larry Ewing with the GIMP Books - Tizzie Globe – NASA Cloud background - Anca Mosoiu