Open Educational Resources (OER) are an amazing
advance in education. These resources
allow anyone with internet access to educational meterials whether it’s K-12 or
higher education. “The goal is that OER
materials are freely copiable, freely remixable, and free of barriers to
access, cultural sensitivities, sharing, and educational use” (Johnson, Adams
Becker, Estrada & Freeman, 2014). All
lectures and learning materials are available at the touch a finger rather than
in paper form, saving money on resources.
"In schools, digital textbooks have been the most widely used open
educational resources, as projects have been launched to address he high cost
and shortages of hardbound materials (Johnson, et al, 2014).” The limitation that still exists is getting
interact access to everyone, but this limitation is shrinking.
There
has been another limitation to sharing educational content. Licensing.
The Creative Commons grants
copyright permissions to content creators including large organizations, institutions
and even individuals. These copyrights are not quite the same as “all
rights reserved” of copyrighted bound books. These copyrights are more like “some rights
reserved” allowing for more freedom to share the content in a variety of
different ways (Creative Commons, n.d.).
On
a personal note, I have mentioned in at least one other post, my children
attend a school district that utilizes Chrome Books and Google Drive. Although the elementary school utilizes more “paper”
resources, by the time students get to high school, most if not all of the
books and homework are on Google Drive.
I’ve seen my daughter do an entire report on her phone! I absolutely love OER and the sharing that
done through the cloud.
References
Creative Commons
(n.d.). Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/about/.
Johnson, L., Adams
Becker, S., Estrada, V., & Freeman, A. (2014). The NMC Horizon Report:
2014 K-12 Edition, Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Licensing is a definitely a limitation. I agree with you. However, I think it is a justified limitation. I work in the business sector however my passion lies within the educational world so I see both sides. One thing I have noticed within education is that many people provide free material for the benefit of the greater good. This is fine for those who can afford to give away valuable information for free. But I don't think this should be the norm or what is expected. I believe if a person devotes a lot of time to produce research material that is valuable to society, then that person has a right to profit from publishing that information. The issue I have is that so many people think that just because the information will be for the greater good of society, then that person who published the information should give it away for free. I believe in the long run that will discourage people from performing valuable research. It is a difficult predicament for both teachers and publishers/researchers. I love OER but think it should not be automatically expected for researchers to give away information/ code/research to the educational market at no cost.
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