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Developmental Reading | Simple Book Production

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English Composition 1 | Simple Book Production

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Composition I focuses on principles of writing, critical reading and essay composition using rhetorical styles common in college-level writing (narrative, example/illustration, compare/contrast, cause-and-effect, argument).

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Increasing Your Students' Reading Fluency: Strategies That Work, Grades 1-3

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Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup

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An educators’ guide to open educational resources with information about online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, and sources for lesson plans and activities.

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The Open Education Consortium (OEC) is a non-profit, global, members-based network of open education institutions and organizations. OEC represents its members and provides advocacy and leadership around advancement of open education globally.

OEC works with its members to build capacity to find, reuse, create and share Open Educational Resources (OER), develop open policy, create sustainable open education models, and enable international collaboration and innovation.

OEC annually coordinates and hosts Open Education Week, the Open Education Global Conference, and Open Education Awards for Excellence. Collectively these efforts aim to bring high quality, inclusive education to all learners around the world.

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The Open Education Consortium | The Global Network for Open Education

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The Open Education Consortium (OEC) is a non-profit, global, members-based network of open education institutions and organizations. OEC represents its members and provides advocacy and leadership around advancement of open education globally. OEC works with its members to build capacity to find, reuse, create and share Open Educational Resources (OER), develop open policy, create sustainable open education models, and enable international collaboration and innovation.

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Free practice questions for teachers and students - Learningpod

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We have over 0 free practice questions from trusted sources like Kaplan Test Prep. You can author questions, create question sets and see how you perform.

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Free practice questions for teachers and students - Learningpod

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We have over 0 free practice questions from trusted sources like Kaplan Test Prep. You can author questions, create question sets and see how you perform.

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IXL Language Arts | Learn language arts online

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Build great readers and writers with thousands of pre-K to 12th grade language arts skills and unlimited questions that adapt to each student's level.

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Open Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.

Learn more about creating OER

Groups provides a flexible environment to organize, create, share, and discuss resources with others in your network. Collaborate with group members, tag and add resources to shared folders, create your own collections, all within a public or private group.

Groups

Search through collections curated by our digital librarians

Collections

Common Core resources organized for your needs

Common Core

Hubs

A Custom Resource Center

Projects, districts, states, and initiatives make use of Hubs to bring groups of educators together to create, organize, and share OER collections that meet their common goals. Explore Hubs

Microsites

Custom Digital Libraries

Microsites are custom, flexible sites that include all the features available on OER Commons. Microsites allow your users to search resource collections using a custom taxonomy at a unique URL. Contact Us

Our award-winning OER Professional Learning programs support instructors and curriculum specialists to gain the necessary skills required to find, adapt, and evaluate high quality open materials.

In-person and virtual OER workshops help focus instructors to develop a "commons" mindset, to experience the benefits of open processes using the platform's tools, collaborative features, and workflows. This can include using Open Author for creating, remixing, and publishing shared curriculum.

Learn More

How to Search OER Commons

View all How-to videos

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OER Commons is a dynamic digital library and network. Explore open education resources and join our network of educators dedicated to curriculum improvement.

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Is your district interested in joining the global movement toward open content? Free open educational resources (OER) - in the form of instructional videos, images, ebooks, and other digital content - are being used in the classroom to save teachers time, and save districts money.
What are OER?
In a nutshell, they're shared teaching resources that are available under legally recognized open licenses, like Creative Commons. They're free for anyone to use, revise, remix, and redistribute.

The scale of OER varies quite a bit. They can be as large as a textbook, or as small as a single photograph. They can make up an entire district's curriculum, or they can simply be used to enhance existing textbooks.

Around the US (and the globe), teachers are using OER in innovative ways to create more engaging, personalized learning experiences for their students.
Best Practices for Implementing OER in the Classroom
Using OER in the classroom can be as simple as showing a video, or as complicated as designing your own courses from scratch by curating materials and writing lesson plans and study guides around them.

When properly vetted and implemented, OER can be a huge boon for teachers. Ready to get started?
Find Standards-aligned Content
The first thing to keep in mind is that districts need to ensure all OER are aligned with your state's standards. One way to do this is by using a tool like Achieve's Open Educational Resources downloadable rubrics that are designed to help educators evaluate OER for quality and determine the level of alignment.

A quick caveat: when looking for OER content to use, it's important to understand exactly what you're allowed to do according to the content's copyright. Many will be licensed with Creative Commons, though not all CC licenses grant users the same ability to remix and reuse content.
Look for Resources That Have Been Vetted by Teachers
Along with being standards-aligned, OER need to be vetted by educators to ensure they're compelling and academically accurate. Make sure the content is vetted either in-house, or by a trusted outside provider. There are a lot of repositories out there, so make sure to do your research.
Use a Variety of Resources
One of the biggest advantages of using OER is that it comes in different formats, allowing you to personalize each student's educational experience.

That means offering a variety of options for teachers and students, including high-quality print resources, videos, simulations, collaborative project ideas, and more. Presenting materials in a number of ways will not only help cement that information into your students' minds - it will also provide multiple points of entry to the content for students with different needs.

Maine science teacher Julie Willcott wrote on edSurge.com about her experience using OER to create a semester-long chemistry course for her high school students, which she delivered through iTunes U. It's notable for its variety of content, from videos and audio to flashcards and ebooks.
Ensure That the Content Will Work Within Your Existing System
If you're using digital OERs, it's also important to make sure it will work on all the platforms and devices that students might be using, in and out of school. To make the most use of OER, districts also need ways of storing and organizing content so it can be accessed, modified, and shared by teachers.

A good wireless network, high broadband connectivity, and a solution that provides students with regular and equitable access to a device is key. This can be one-to-one, BYOD, a computer lab, or some other solution.
Provide Professional Development
Some teachers may already be using OER and leading the charge with digital content and technology. Others may be less comfortable implementing these resources. It's important to provide training to all teachers on the best practices of using OER and digital resources

To learn more about using OER in the classroom, download our free ebook: Moving to Digital Content.

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A Guide to Using OER in the Classroom - Learning.com

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Is your district interested in joining the global movement toward open content? Free open educational resources (OER) - in the form of instructional videos, images, ebooks, and other digital content - are being used in the classroom to save teachers time, and save districts money. What are OER?

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At the #GoOpen Exchange on Friday, everyone was talking about OER and the need to curate. The Twiter feed shows the buzz around the trending event and it shows school librarians were at the table.

As the initiative moves forward, it is critical for us to choose to be at the head of this particular table.

Hosted at the beautiful Skywalker Ranch, Friday's #GoOpen Exchange engaged major players in education from the White House and the DOE, as well as state officials, leaders of non-profits and learning institutions, the biggest names in e-commerce and technology, developers, vendors, publishers, state officials, administrators, leading folks in edtech, and educational thinkers and practitioners.

I was proud to be there to share along with some serious library power: AASL President Leslie Preddy, Mark Ray (WA) Washington, Jennifer Boudrye (D.C.) and Mary Reiman (NE).

Here's the good news: Our government edtech officials are convinced that librarians should play a role in curating the burgeoning number of open educational resources (they gave us several shout-outs and ensured we were there). We made an impact.

But it was clear to our little group, that to the larger majority of the participants, we were not even on the OER radar.

Some OER background:

Launched in October, GoOpen is a U.S. Department of Education campaign founded with the belief that

educational opportunities should be available to all learners. Creating an open education ecosystem involves making learning materials, data, and educational opportunities available without restrictions imposed by copyright laws, access barriers, or exclusive proprietary systems that lack interoperability and limit the free exchange of information.

What are OER?

According to the OER Commons:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost. Unlike fixed, copyrighted resources, OER have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. In some cases, that means you can download a resource and share it with colleagues and students. In other cases, you may be able to download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work. .

OER include lesson plans and supporting scaffolds, handouts and workseets, courses, electronic textbooks, media, simulations.

Some more background:

In addition to our discussions and sessions, the #GoOpen Exchange included announcements about a few old favorite portals and the launches of new search tools, portals and services to facilitate discovery and use of OER.

Among the featured platforms and developments:

Microsoft is planning an app to help teachers and students find rated OER from within any learning management system. New features in Microsoft Office 365's Docs.com will allow users to create, discover, rate and share openly licensed materials.

Amazon Education unveiled a beta of its search tool for OER that will allow educators to upload, manage, share, discover and rate resources in an interface that closely resembles the familiar user experience of Amazon's massive marketplace. The site will feature left panel filters to refine searches. Just like in the commercial interface, users of education "store" will be invited to add ratings and reviews and will receive personal recommendations based on previous selections.

Edmodo announced the launch of Edmodo Spotlight, a haven for sharing, collecting, and discovering helpful resources all within Edmodo's global platform. Edmodo plans to offer tailored, vetted recommendations openly-licensed resources to every teacher on its free communication and collaboration platform. Spotlight encourages teachers to contribute. The new feature allows educators to discover OER even when not signed in.

The Center for Digital Education, Inquiry Schools and ISTE are collaborating to create a guide to selecting and using OER in schools, that will include: checklists, strategies and case studies drawn from #GoOpen districts.

The "classic" OER Commons now has a public library and Open Author allowing users to build OER, lesson plans, and courses-and then publish them, to the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.

By next fall, Follett will build an OER search tool, powered by the Learning Registry ( a DOE and DOD and White House-supported effort to create a repository of learning resource metadata) into the Destiny library management software. It will also offer the ability to create lesson plans and playlists.

Nader Qaimari, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Follett School Solutions, shared:

As we embark on GoOpen initiative, which can really transform learning, it's imperative that we keep the role of the librarian front and center. They are curation and edtech pioneers and are the best fit for propelling this movement forward. To champion their efforts, we are focusing on rebuilding Destiny to have more application in the classroom, fostering teacher and librarian collaboration around curriculum development, while also offering professional development to librarians to ensure they are Future Ready.

A call to action:

As this bounty of content enters our schools, this is a pivotal moment, friends. The mandate is to be ready and to take the lead in making sense of the content and resources that will be making their way into our schools in a big way.

The opportunity, especially for school libraries with little or no budgets, is to leverage this free content to promote access and equity, to create new user-friendly collections, and to embed the best into instruction school-wide.

We are going to need to ensure that our teacher partners can effectively search for and integrate the stuff they need. We will need to curate workflow tools as well as stuff.

As I shared in my panel presentation, Beyond Content: Engaging your Community as OER Curators, digital curation is simply a translation of traditional library services. It's our gig.

Curation is about selection, access, organization, equity. Librarians are have always been about (and translating): selecting, organizing, ensuring access & equity, sense-making, adding value, instructional voice, storytelling, personalizing and learning.

And so,

How will you curate to make the bounty of emerging portals themselves discoverable?

How will you select and curate instructional content to add local instructional value?

How will you ensure that your valuable existing purchases will be utilized along with the free content?

How will you work with teachers to understand the Creative Commons licensing behind the resources?

How will you build meaningful inquiry around these resources?

As a librarian, how will you translate your role and use OER to create and build and collaborate and contribute?

Get ready, 'cause here it comes.

An interesting aside, when the DOE's first open education adviser, Andrew Marcinek was a first year teacher, I was his librarian.

Another interesting aside, Sara Trettin, Presidential Management Fellow at U.S. Department of Education is a former teacher and librarian.

Update: You may be interested in this Symbaloo I pulled together listing OER portals and curating platforms.

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At the #GoOpen Exchange on Friday, everyone was talking about OER and the need to curate. The Twiter feed shows the buzz around the trending event and it shows school librarians were at the table. As the initiative moves forward, it is critical for us to choose to be at the head of this particular table.

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Open educational resources (OERs) are online resources that are available for anyone to use. These resources include curriculum, activities, worksheets, testing materials, supplemental videos, interactive modules, and more.

While most people understand that OERs are "freely available" for wide use, there are more to OERs than most people realize. In fact, there are many copyright rules to keep in mind, and just because they're free doesn't mean you can use materials any way you want. Many authors still want credit for their time and effort-and the law is on their side.

Still, there's no reason to fear OERs, especially once you understand the ins and outs of these useful resources.

OERs versus Free Resources

OERs, while free, are not the same as free resources. Free resources are any educational products available on the internet at no cost. These may be provided as teasers by publishers or put online by generous instructors. They may be free, but you don't necessarily have the right to use them, let alone change them.

For example, you may only be allowed to use them for certain purposes and may not be allowed to take a screenshot of the artwork or a diagram to paste into another worksheet you make on your own. Though the resource comes at no cost, it's part of a whole package that you don't have the right to alter.

OERs, on the other hand, are unique because they are open. This means that instructors and students have the right to copy and adapt the resources as they wish, perhaps adding to them or completely changing them. This gives educators a great deal of freedom to cobble together the perfect course or activity from a variety of sources and to tweak resources to make them work for their needs.

A Brief Look at Creative Commons and the Types of OERs

If you're still feeling confused about the difference between OERs and other free resources, understanding Creative Commons licenses may help. Creative Commons licenses make it easy for creators of any online work to keep the copyrights to their material while still allowing others to use it.

For example, if a photographer takes a photo of a ladybug, she may choose a traditional "all rights reserved" copyright approach that doesn't allow for any reuse of her work. She may also choose to publish her work with a Creative Commons license that lets others use the photo as long as they follow her chosen guidelines. In this case, anyone who uses her photo has to attribute it to her, perhaps in a caption on a worksheet or blog post.

Image from Wikipedia
As you can see in the chart above, there are many different combinations of the rules, from the open license described above to more restrictive ones that allow people to use the work for educational but not commercial purposes. Other licenses allow use of the work but stipulate that it cannot be altered for any reason.

Understanding the licenses your OERs fall under will help you make smart choices about using these materials in a way that's legal and fair for everyone.

The Pros and Cons of Using OERs

The Internet, for better or worse, has revolutionized the way instructors gather materials for their work. As with any new tool, there are pros and cons to using OERs in your practice.

The Pros

Enhance Course Content-With little to no extra investment, instructors can supplement existing textbooks and courses with additional material.

Keep Up-to-Date-Rapidly changing fields like science and technology can be hard to keep up with, but OERs allow teachers and students to stay on top of new developments.

Expanded Access-Because OERs are available to anyone, barriers like age, mobility, and socioeconomic status are less likely to keep students from getting the education they deserve.

Increased Creativity-The ability to remix and reuse OERs can be a boon to student creativity and can help instructors turn traditional assignments into fun, multi-faceted activities.

The Cons

Copyright Confusion-As detailed above, fear of misusing copyrighted material or misunderstanding Creative Commons licenses may hamstring otherwise enthusiastic instructors.

Quality Concerns-The open nature of OERs means that anyone with a computer can create and publish new resources. With few organizations serving as gatekeepers, there's little quality control.

Vetting Time-Instructors may sift through many OERs to find ones of high quality. There's also no central database, making the time investment in finding great OERs a challenge.

You can minimize the drawbacks of OERs by utilizing trusted OER providers such as CK-12 and Merlot, as well as paying careful attention to best practices as you implement them.

Getting Started Finding and Evaluating OERs

How do you know that an OER is worth your time? Fran Kompar, Director of Instructional Technology and Digital Learning, suggests beginning to curate your resources by answering a crucial question: what gap do you need to fill with your OER? Once you can articulate your purpose, it's much easier to plan your search at various OER sites.

Next, you'll need a strategy to curate the OERs you find. It is recommended to look at several sources in order to compare and evaluate them, perhaps tagging them with Google Keep or Pinterest to bookmark your research. When you have a good organizational system in place, you can pull up your ideas and synthesize the best pieces into one perfect piece for your purposes.

Then there's the C.R.A.A.P. Test ...

What's the C.R.A.A.P. Test and How Does It Work?

To help decide which resources are worth earmarking for future reference, it's helpful to use the C.R.A.A.P. Test. This mnemonic stands for the key features you should look for in any OER to make sure it's worthwhile for your purposes, including:

Currency-Is the material up to date?

Relevance-Is the material closely tied to your needs and coursework?

Authority-Is the author and/or publisher a reputable, knowledgeable source?

Accuracy-Is the material factual and on point?

Purpose-Is the material for education, or advertising? Check for bias before passing it along to your students.

Using OERs in an Online Learning Environment

Now that you know how to evaluate OERs, watch as Director of Educational Strategies Adam Larson walks through the process of using OERs in a digital learning environment, in this case, Schoology's LMS. This video will give you a better understanding of what the process of incorporating OERs into your everyday can look like.

While OERs are a relatively new and unfamiliar terrain for many educators, they can be powerful resources for saving time and enhancing learning experiences. But with great power comes great responsibility. By understanding the basics shared in this article, you're well on your way to making OERs work for you.

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Getting Started Using Open Educational Resources (OERs)

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Open educational resources (OERs) are online resources that are available for anyone to use. These resources include curriculum, activities, worksheets, testing materials, supplemental videos, interactive modules, and more. While most people understand that OERs are "freely available" for wide use, there are more to OERs than most people realize.

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What are OERs and How Should they be Used?

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What are OERs and How Should they be Used?

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Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced to the public with an open license. OERs are mostly online resources that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt, and share without infringing on any copyright laws or plagiarism. Using OER in in the classroom can be as simple as showing a video to compliment your lesson for the day. Incorporating OERs can also be as involved as designing your own materials, lesson plans, and study guides to use around the OER.

The first step in deciding upon the best practices and uses for OERs is to make sure that the OER aligns with the state’s standards. A great tool to use for this purpose is Achieve’s Open Educational Resources downloadable rubrics that designed in order to help teachers and educators to evaluate different types of OERs for quality control and determine if they are an appropriate resource to be using. Another way to evaluate an OER is to check to see if they have been vetted by an educator to make sure that the OER is accurate. This takes some time, but it is worth it in the end to invest some time in the beginning to make sure you have the best resources possible for your classroom.

OERs are a great tool because they are completely open, meaning that educators can change and adapt them however they want, so they can be tailored to any situation. This allows for the opportunity for teachers to collaborate on resources, share ideas, and make their resources their own. Other pros of using OERs include:

Opportunity to enhance course content with little to no investment

Keep resources up to date, especially in constantly changing and evolving fields such as science and technology

Expanded access allows anyone to use the same resource regardless of age or socioeconomic background

Increased creativity and flexibility

While OERs can come with their own set of challenges, such as copyright confusion, quality concerns, and vetting time, the value greatly outweighs any of these concerns. OERs should be taken full advantage of in all classrooms.