As you know I can not be on campus on Tuesday because I am supporting my wife's dissertation defense at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. So as you are working on this on Tuesday, I should be traveling home with Dr. Tammie Smith.
I have been looking at our next endeavor as we wrap up our video projects. I want you show you how educational institutions from K - 12 to higher education are revolutionizing teaching and learning. The Open Educational Resource is a 10 year old expansive movement with its roots in "opening" the access of curriculum, textbooks, and teaching resources to everyone. From digital textbooks, shared syllabi, open courses, to shared lesson plans, school districts and universities are pioneering new ways that are collaborative, ubiquitious, and inexpensive. Why? So what?
Think about the amount of money you spend on textbooks and course packs. In a 2006 Washington Post article "Swelling Textbook Costs Have College Students Saying 'Pass'," Susan Kinzie reports that students in a four year state college are paying nearly 25% of their tuition costs on books - over $900. Shift that to a local school with a growing science curricula because of student interest in Enviromental Science. WIthout even making a new adoption but to keep the current book, the school would have to pay $178 a book, which isn't even the most current, at a whopping $4550 for a class set of books for 25 students. How precious would those books be? Would you let them take them home? The cost of textbooks is burdensome even prohibitive to actual real time learning.
So as state budgets thin, plummet, and pale in comparison to years before, educational institutions, teachers, professors are looking to the internet for answers - and so are you.
Here is your Task:
Before the close of class on Tuesday, I would like you to send me an email to balddaddieteach@gmail.com documenting all of the following in the body of the email (Please title the subject of the email - OER. In the body please use the Subtitles within your email):
- SUMMARY: Identify the 4 most important ideas for you in the article. If you were absent on Thursday, you can access the reading here.
- EXPLORATION: WHAT SURPRISED YOU? WHAT SCARES YOU? Explore what is currently out there in OER for you as a student, future teacher, and a life long learner using this site as a beginning: http://www.oercommons.org/ From here explore at least 3 of the links and answer the all caps questions in your email based on your discovery for each site. Be sure to site the link you explored
- MOVING BEYOND: Do your own search for Open Educational Resources and locate 3 other resources your interest as a learner, student, or teacher moves you. In the email, link to the sources and explain how you might use the site in one of the aforementioned roles.
- LINK TO MY POST - create a blog post on the idea of OER and it's implications to you as a learner, student, and future teacher. You post will specifically relate to all of these areas. You must have two pictures and three embedded links. The final post is to be posted before Thursday's class.
