Teachers talking over slides (or images or diagrams or animations) has become an important teaching strategy during the pandemic. It is likely to continue to be a staple of teachers not just because it will make the pivot to remote teaching easier when it becomes necessary, but because it allows for alternative method of teaching Read More
Category: Open Education Resources (OER)
Curriculum Repository Proposal
A few years ago, I was asked to draft a proposal for a curriculum repository for a community college. The had seen some of my ideas about this type of resource such as is explained on my post “Curriculum Repositories” and also “Curriculum Repositories Defined” and wee interested in how I might craft a more Read More
Proprietary File Formats… Can We Just Stop?
Spoiler alert: This is the rant of someone who is ticked off at a sub set of the individuals in his profession right now. Faculty are in the business of helping students make sense of information and ideas and procedures. This requires they communicate, and we communicate today with files we create on word processors Read More
Defining #OER
Although OER can be used at no financial cost to users, not all materials available at no financial cost are open, and there are costs others than financial that are incurred by users of OER. Consider, for example, G Suite—the cloud-based productivity suite—that is widely used by both consumers and by educational institutions. While users Read More
“Why Would One Create OER?”
This question was posed to me by an incredulous business-minded faculty member who wondered exactly why I would spend my time and energy and creativity writing books and other intellectual property simply to give it away. “What motivation does anyone have to produce something that others can just take?” they asked. I realized that person Read More
Open
As open source software and open educational resources (OER) communities have grown and their products have begun to compete with and complement commercial products, open resources have become more widely used in both K-12 and higher education. Baker (2017) suggested open resources are defined by dimensions of transparency and freedom, and these characteristics can be Read More
Looking at Open
Education is a material-rich endeavor. When I was a student, the materials with which I interacted were primarily print; although movies, filmstrips, records, and a few other media did enter my classrooms on occasion. When I began teaching, VHS tapes were available, and I used my home VCR to record programs to share with my Read More
Curriculum Repositories Defined
Teachers’ capacity to use technology in classrooms is also improved by the easy availability of technology-based activities and lessons that are aligned with their curriculum needs. Dexter, Morgan, Jones, and Meyer (2016) observed that accessible resources (those that could be incorporated into classrooms with minimal adaptation) were associated with greater use of technologies. This led Read More
OpenMiddle: Challenging math problems worth solving
In my explorations of math education this fall, I have been encountering a wide range of resources for math teachers. Many list such a wide range of problems, resources, and tools that even a good search strategy is not helpful in finding the items that are unique to the site. Open Middle is a site Read More
SkillsCommons #OER
Beginning in 2011, the Department of Labor awarded four rounds of grants under the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program. This was designed to designed to support community colleges as they developed resources and programs for workforce development purposes. For full disclosure: I was employed under a TAACCCT grant as a Read More