March 2008

Tools and Treasures from the Web: The Open Educational Resources Commons

Written by: Bill Warters

Open education resources commonsThe OER Commons is a comprehensive open learning network site where teachers and professors (from pre-K to graduate school) can access their colleagues’ course materials, share their own, and collaborate on affecting today’s classrooms. It uses Web 2.0 features (tags, ratings, comments, reviews, and social networking) to create an online experience that engages educators in sharing their best teaching and learning practices.

The site was produced by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), and is supported by the Hewlett Foundation's Open Content Initiative. Content indexed by the site is gathered from a wide range of collaborating content repositories, all of which permit and encourage sharing and reuse.

As a quick example, clicking on this link will take you to the results of sample search on the term "conflict resolution" in the "Social Sciences" discipline (I used the Advance Search interface). It produced 18 very interesting results including lectures, training modules, and even entire courses.

Have a look. I think you'll be impressed with what you find.

Bill Bill Warters, PhD
Faculty Fellow, Office for Teaching & Learning
w.warters@wayne.edu
(313) 577-6109

In This Issue:

Director’s Welcome

Scholarship of of Curriculum Development

Effectiveness of Regular Online Quizzing

Tools and Treasures from the Web

Teaching Online at WSU

Faculty Presentations

Teaching Tip

GTA Topic

Worth Reading


Previous Issues

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