Open Educational Resources

One of the tremendous opportunities of technology changes in education is the ability of teachers to access and utilize the latest information, to share lesson planning and materials with colleagues around the globe, and for teachers to create and curate their own content.  As Andrew Marcinek (founder of EducatorU.org) points out...

 "What's exciting about this shift in content curation, creation and distribution is that it allows teachers opportunities to work with the most current information available and serve as the expert when vetting content. ... [this shift is made possible with] Open Educational Resources (or OER) -- content generated by professionals, academics and authors who have done some of the work for the classroom teacher. OER provide different viewpoints and angles to content that was previously static and myopic. Many OER sites are curated and maintained by non-profits who may or may not seek an optional donation. These spaces usually require a username and password, and offer teachers a space to save, download and share content with others."  [Marcinek's full blog post on Edutopia] 

Edutopia recently published a comprehensive resource guide to OER, with links to many prominent sites, organizations and individuals.  One in particular, OER Commons, is a non-profit committed to providing an open clearinghouse for the study of knowledge management in education.