Goal: Non-tangential Blog Titles 🙂
Three Misunderstandings about Open Educational Resources — HOoray for not calling them “myths” 🙂
First — that the main benefit it saving money. Okay, sorry guys but this quote is laughable: “In reality, every district we know approaches open educational resources with a single goal: to accelerate student learning by bringing the highest-quality instructional materials into classrooms. ” Sorry, money *is* a factor. Still, as the report goes on to say, the commercial materials aren’t meeting needs. They really aren’t very good. Also — yes, the OER are “open,” so they can be adapted.
Second misunderstanding — that the adaptation is One MOre Burden on a teacher. Districts are doing it. We *could* tweak them and add all kinds of cool stuff to make them more accessible to diverse learners. This could be awesome.
Third — that OER are supplemental side dishes: lesson plans, activities, not the stuff of building a curriculum. I know this is mostly potential but it is starting to be realized.
The article concludes by saying they’re not “anti-publisher” — that, back to the first idea, they Just Want What’s Best! That they will buy stuff from major publisher’s when it’s worthy.
So! Our challenge is to make those OER worthy 🙂
… and that other little paper, the “Math Gap” , says there’s a market for it…
I’ve put in my Google Form for the Illinois Digital Learning Lab… will hear in a few weeks. I’ve made my “Necessary If Possible” goals for October — *get my OER from the old website up* and *get new stuff on the website.*
Resource Room Dot Net Blog 
Posted on September 29, 2017
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