By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki
Here at Curriki, we talk a lot about OERs assuming everyone is familiar with the term. But in case you’re not, here’s a short explanation of what they are and why they’re so beneficial.
What are OERs?
OER stands for Open Educational Resources, which are high-quality, openly licensed, online educational materials that teachers, educators, or other professionals have created and have made freely available to others for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing.
What does that mean to you? If you’re a teacher or a student, you can freely use or adapt these materials to suit your personal needs.
How are OERs used in education?
Digital technologies like OERs allow us to personalize the learning experience so that students can learn at their own pace and have instant access to the latest information.
OERs can improve education by allowing costs to be shifted away from expensive, proprietary resources to open, sharable ones. Plus, OERs can help break down the barriers of the “Education Divide” – the gap between those who have access to high-quality education and those who do not.
Curriki offers K-12 OERs
Reaching more than 10 million users worldwide, Curriki is the largest global learning community where you can find more than 56,000 free learning assets, ranging from lesson plans, videos, and worksheets to multimedia activities and courses.
All of the OERs have been created and contributed by educators, curriculum designers, curriculum partners, and school districts. They are “mashable,” which means that you can select resources (e.g., lesson plans, videos, animations, photos, etc.), tweak them, or combine them with other resources to generate your own custom teaching tools. And many OERs have already been mapped to standards.
Have you checked out the thousands of OERs in all subjects and grade levels available on Curriki? Here’s an example of what you’ll find:
You can get access to these free learning resources by joining Curriki (it’s easy and it’s free). Start downloading resources today.