I like to think of Open Educational Resources as art pieces. When an artist creates a piece of work, it is very rare that he keeps it all to himself. The idea is mainly that the artist is willing to share his creation with the world in such a way that each individual gives their own interpretation of the piece. Open Educational resources are extremely similar.
The currently most used definition of OER is: “Open Educational Resources are digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research.” Therefore, OER deal with the idea of sharing educators’ work on a free pedestal so that others can take and adapt and recreate their own ideas based on others’ work. Perhaps the two most important elements of an open education resource are its free availability over the Internet as well as its lack of barriers that keep the end-user from using the resources.
Today, open education is favored among schools since it allows students to work at their own pace as well as build their own ideas on certain topics with the help of educational articles and books found online. In fact, ‘Amazon Education is working on a new platform that will allow schools to upload, manage, share, and discover open education resources from a home page that in some ways resembles the one shoppers are accustomed to accessing on the massive online retailer’s website.’
Despite still in beta testing at the moment, I am certain that if implemented correctly, such a website will allow educators and well as students to make their resources available online for others to adapt in their own school.
#Educational 