The information regarding the various websites listed below was pulled from the “about us” pages of the various websites.
Open educational resources (OER) are “digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.” (Jan Hylén, Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, 2007)
OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities, 2007)
Open educational resources are accumulated assets that 1) enable development of individual or social capabilities for understanding and acting 2) can be enjoyed without restricting the possibilities of others to enjoy them and which either 3) provide non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge about the resource 4) generate services that can be enjoyed by anyone with sufficient non-discriminatory capabilities 5) can be contributed to by anyone, without restrictions that exceed the norms of open science
The International Council for Open and Distance Education defines open education practices: Open Educational Practices (OEP) are defined as practices which support the production, use and reuse of high quality open educational resources (OER) through institutional policies, which promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path. OEP address the whole OER governance community: policy makers, managers and administrators of organizations, educational professionals and learners.
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration: Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go. Resources: Open Library: Vision/Mission: “One web page for every book ever published.”
The Open Video Project: The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Researchers can use the video to study a wide range of problems, such as tests of algorithms for automatic segmentation, summarization, and creation of surrogates that describe video content; the development of face recognition algorithms; or creating and evaluating interfaces that display result sets from multimedia queries.
P2P: Peer 2 Peer University The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the Internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality low-cost education opportunities. P2PU – learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything.
Open Learning Initiative: Using intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent opportunities for assessment and feedback, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) builds courses that are intended to enact instruction – or, more precisely, to enact the kind of dynamic, flexible, and responsive instruction that fosters learning
. Annenberg Learner: Annenberg Learner uses media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. This mandate is carried out chiefly by the funding and broad distribution of educational video programs with coordinated Web and print materials for the professional development of K-12 teachers.
Sakai: Sakai is a community that exists to enhance teaching, learning, and research. The global community comes together to define needs of academic users, create software tools, share best practices and pool knowledge and resources in support of this goal. Free Ed Gov: FREE was conceived in 1997 by a federal working group in response to a memo from the President. Clinton’s Directive included: You should use the following guidelines to support this initiative:
- Consider a broad range of educational resources, including multimedia publications, archives of primary documents, networked scientific instruments such as telescopes and supercomputers, and employees willing to serve as tele-mentors or answer student and teacher questions.
- Expand access not only to the information and other resources generated internally, but by the broader community of people and institutions that your agency works with and supports. For example, science agencies should pursue partnerships with professional societies, universities, and researchers to expand K-12 access to scientific resources.
- Update and improve your services in response to comments from teachers and students, and encourage educators to submit curricula and lesson plans that they have developed using agency material.
- Focus on the identification and development of high-quality educational resources that promote high standards of teaching and learning in core subjects. Of particular importance are resources that will help students read well and independently by 4th grade, and master challenging mathematics, including algebra and geometry, by 8th grade.
- Make sure the material you develop is accessible to people with disabilities. Earlier this month, I announced my support for the Web Accessibility Initiative, a public-private partnership that will make it easier for people with disabilities to use the World Wide Web.)
The site was launched a year later. It was redesigned and relaunched for the first time in November 2006.
Intute: a free online service that helps you to find web resources for your studies and research. With millions of resources available on the Internet, it can be difficult to find useful material. We have reviewed and evaluated thousands of resources to help you choose key websites in your subject.
Flashcardexchange.com Over 400,000 people use our web-based flashcard program to absorb information efficiently and permanently. Web-based means it works right in your web browser. You don’t have to download, install, or update anything.
Exploratorium.edu We create tools and experiences that help you to become an active explorer: hundreds of explore-for-yourself exhibits; a Web site with over 25,000 pages of content; film screenings; workshops for lifelong learners including day camps for kids and family investigations; evening art and science events for adults—plus much more. Check out there videos for learning under the explore tab! Awesome!
Europeana.eu Europeana enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. It promotes discovery and networking opportunities in a multilingual space where users can engage, share in and be inspired by the rich diversity of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage. Ideas and inspiration can be found within the more than 15 million items on Europeana. These objects include:
- Images – paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects
- Texts – books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers
- Sounds – music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts
- Videos – films, newsreels and TV broadcasts
National Science Digital Library NSDL is the National Science Foundation’s online library of resources and collections for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and research. What is a digital library? A digital library is a coherent, organized collection of resources, usually accessible via the Internet. A digital library may appear to be a single entity, but often links to other libraries or information services in an effort to present a unified view of a topic or collection to the end user.
Apple ITunes U There are over 800 universities with active iTunes U sites. And most of these institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley — distribute their content publicly.
Stanford Engineering Everywhere: Stanford Engineering Everywhere offers:
- Anytime and anywhere access to complete lecture videos via streaming or downloaded media.
- Full course materials including syllabi, handouts, homework, and exams.
- Online social networking with fellow SEE students.
- Support for PCs, Macs and mobile computing devices.
Open2.net or OpenLearn Merged OpenLearn with open2.net, The Open University website that has supported our BBC broadcasts since 1999. So now OpenLearn gives access to topical and interactive content, from expert blogs, to videos and games. This ‘open media’ often links to our BBC television and radio programmes. As if that isn’t enough, you can also find Open University channels on YouTube and iTunesU and you can follow us on Twitter.
EduTech Wiki EduTechWiki is about Educational Technology (instructional technology) and related fields. It is hosted byTECFA – an educational technology research and teaching unit at University of Geneva. It is a resource kit for educational technology teaching and research, e.g. a note taking tool for researchers; aliterature review tool or a writing-to-learn environment for students. It also includes some (technical) tutorials that may be used in classes around the world or for self-learning.
Quality 4 Reuse Learning Object Repositories (LOR) are promising ways to make high quality learning materials available to individuals as well as to private or public organizations around the world. Provides a listing of learning object repositories around the world: North America’s is here: http://www.q4r.org/Default.aspx?tabid=125#3 Open Ed openEd 2.0 is a FREE and OPEN course for business students, practitioners and anyone interested in the subject fields.
Jorum Through Jorum, you can find, share and discuss learning and teaching resources, shared by the UK Further and Higher Education community. Many Books.net Many of the etexts are from the November, 2003 Project Gutenberg DVD, which contains the entire Project Gutenberg archives except for the Human Genome Project and audio eBooks, due to size limitations, and the Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks, due to copyright. As of July 2004 most current PG texts are available here, usually within the week of release. There are also public domain and creative commons works from many other sources.
The Student Pirgs Our intent is to offer a place to start learning about and searching for open textbooks, and the titles on this list were carefully selected for their usability and number of existing adoptions.
Oracle Open Learning Center A rich collaborative environment for technology professionals, filled with interesting and engaging training experiences. We’ll help you achieve your professional success by providing the training you need in a meaningful and enjoyable format.
- We believe that everyone, everywhere should have access to a college education. This website will serve as a zero-cost alternative to those that lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and, if they are willing, a complement to mainstream education providers.
