1. Open Educational Resources By Katie Trudeau, Brent Vyvyan, & Kate Perar di Introduction: The Open Educational Resources (OER) main idea is to share knowledge with other learners and help move education in a positive direction. The reason that teachers can use and reuse this is because it is released under the intellectual property license. It is easily accessible to teachers and future teachers, and not only encourages you to learn from it but also add to it. We found materials in all subject areas and grade levels. The different materials that we found included: activities, labs, assessments, audio lectures, curriculum standards, discussion forums, games, assignments, lecture notes, lesson plans, readings, simulations, syllabi, strategies, textbooks, training materials, and video lectures. These materials are very helpful and easily accessible for a teacher, which saves them time and decreases their worries about budget. With these materials they can create new ideas, expand on old ideas, and give suggestions or feedback to other teachers. The support of OER is increasing and very strong because it is a simple idea of sharing, reusing, and implementing for educational purposes. It is good that there is so much support because putting this info on-line, getting the proper license, and formatting the right material can be quiet expensive. Massachusetts Institute of Technology quoted that one course requires an investment of 10,000-15,000 dollars for just one program. Hopefully in the near future people will start to see the benefits of OER. When people start to understand OER the infrastructure will start to grow and more resources will be available. With all of this information being on the World Wide Web, it is accessible to many far and near to help with teaching or learning. The OER is a never-ending cycle using open gaming, open textbooks and participatory learning. Innovation takes place with new ideas made; they are then put into the resource collections and accessible to everyone, making the cycle continue. Our research question is ‘Do you know about OER and how to use it?’. ‘Learning is sharing…’ Method: In order to gather information about OER and understand the actual usage we needed to understand to the best of our ability so we could ask practical questions. We made our survey using yes/no questions, multiple choice, and short answer. We made sure the survey taker had to answer every questions so we could get maximum results. We also had some questions where you could pick more than one option. Our survey was given to elementary, middle, secondary, and college level teachers. We also sent it to some principals who forwarded it to their staff. We got a total of 21 responses which we were very pleased with because we know how busy teachers are. We appreciated the time they took to help us in our quest for knowledge. Our Survey: 1)How often do you use the internet to find resources for your lesson plans? a) Once a week 48% b) Twice a week 19% c) Daily 19% d) Never 14% 2) Do you alter the material you find for your lesson plans? a) Yes 90% b) No10% 3)What content level do you have the most trouble finding resources for? a) Math19% b) Reading5% c) Science19% d) Social Studies 10% e) Language Arts14% f) Other33% 4) What age level material is most common when looking for lesson plans? a) K-3 28% b) 4-614% c) 7-8 10% d) 9-1248% 5) Where do you get your materials for lesson plans? a) Internet 67% b) Textbooks67% c) Fellow Teachers 71% d) Yourself71% e) Other29% 6) How many of your lesson plans are original? 7) What websites do you find beneficial when looking for lesson plan ideas? 8) How do you share your lesson plans? 9) How do you find new ideas from other teachers? 10) How do you give or receive feedback on lesson plans? Results: We found that about 50% of teachers and professors use the internet for their lessons plans once a week. 90% of the teachers/professors alter the material they find adding their own zest. The content material found is evenly spaced for the most part. We are lacking knowledge on the other category. The main ways to get ideas or resources were internet, textbooks, fellow teachers, and yourself. A combination of all seemed most applicable. The websites that were beneficial were: Central for Disease Control, Google, Ncte.org, nyt.com, Kidscount1234.com, carlsconer.us.com, American Society of Microbiologist, Science Educational Resource Center, P.C Center, AARHERD, DAPE website, pbs.org, thinkfnity.com, and enote.com. Many share their lesson plans via conversation, meetings, and e-mail. The new ideas for lesson plans come from conferences, meetings, e-mails, books, internet, and journals. Feedback on lesson plans is received through student surveys, colleagues, supervisors and self evaluation. Conclusion: The teachers that took our survey were ranging from elementary teachers to college professors. Many of them told us that they make their own lessons plans and go to the internet for ideas and brainstorming. From their answers we conclude that ncte.org, pbs.org, and nyt.com would be beneficial websites to explore. The easiest way for them to share lessons plans was by word of mouth, meetings, and e-mail occasionally. Teachers are very busy, so we understand how it could be difficult to find time to meet with every teacher. New ideas come to them in many ways such as other teachers, meetings, conversation, books, internet, and professional journals. They receive feedback through students, intuitions, outcomes, and trusted colleagues. They share ideas about how they would approach a lesson and engage in conversation about different scenarios that could take place. Our survey results show that many teachers use OER depending on the content and grade level, but they also use other forms of communication. From all of the results OER seems beneficial when you combine it with your own ideas and are open to change. References : MITOPENCOURSEWARE. (2002-2009). Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. Retrieved February 9, 2009, from http://ocw.mit.edu/ocwweb/web/about/about/index.htm OER Commons. (2007). Educational Resources. Open Educational Resources are all about sharing. Retrieved February 9, 2009, from http://www.oercommons.org The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. (1/14/2009). Making High Quality Educational Content and Tools Freely Available on the Web. Open Educational Resources (OER). Retrieved February 9, 2009, from http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/oer.htm