One of the most persistent questions
that educators have about open educational
resources has to do with where to find
them and how to know if something
is released as an open resource.
Since everything is copyrighted by default
under United States copyright law,
if you find something that is not clearly
labeled, you generally have
to assume that it's copyrighted.
So, we can really only use open educational
resources as open educational resources
if they are labeled in that way.
So, to help you with this,
we have provided some tools to help you
find open educational resources
more easily here on our website.
We have a list of different types
of open educational resources.
I'll just look at a few of these.
The first that I like to start
with is Wikimedia Commons.
This is a library or repository of media
that Wikipedia uses to store all
of its images, video, and audio.
So, if you come to Wikimedia Commons
and type in, for instance, polar bear,
because I'm looking for an image
of a polar bear,
here I receive lots of different results.
If I click on one of these results,
I'll get a preview,
and down here in the bottom left,
it'll show me the license.
Now, this is a CC BY 2.5 license.
If you don't understand what that means,
you can click on it, but really
don't worry about it at this point.
This is just meant to be a very quick
way for you to see what the license is.
If you want more information about this,
you can click More Details,
and it will take you to the images page.
Then if you scroll down,
you'll have a licensing section
that tells you what you're free to do.
So, for this image, we are free to share it
and remix it, as long as we attribute it,
and as long as we share alike.
So, we can use this image in any
of our creations as long as we
attribute it, so we give
the author proper attribution,
and we share it again.
That means that we could
sell this image if we want.
That's not prohibited.
Now, if you look over here on the right
side, you have a link
to use this file on the web.
If you click on that,
you have an attribution
statement here that you
can copy and paste.
And so, this can help address
that attribution requirement.
So, you can find millions of
pictures on Wikimedia Commons.
Another great place to go
for pictures is Flickr.
Flickr is a social image sharing site
where people take pictures and upload
their pictures, but when people upload
pictures, they have the option
of labeling them for reuse.
So, you can find pictures that have been
labeled for reuse by going to
flickr.Com/creativecommons.
Here you'll see all the different
Creative Commons licenses,
and if you want to know more about these
licenses, you can go to creativecommons.org
to understand exactly
what you can do with each.
But under each of these licenses,
you will see millions of photos that have
been released under that license.
So, for instance,
the attribution license,
or the CC BY license, has over
58 million images on Twitter.
So, that means that we are free to use
these images for any purpose that
we want, as long as we cite the author.
Another great site
for educators is OER Commons.
This has all kinds of open educational
resources and really just serves as
a portal to open educational resources.
So, if I click Browse All,
I can then go by subject area or grade
level or by material type and find
something that's useful for me.
So, whereas most open educational resources
you find on the web are articles or images
or audio files,
OER Commons expands that to include more
educational-type
products like lesson plans.
Also, there's good old Google.
So, I think most people will use a search
engine for starting their
search for resources.
So, say we type in polar bear,
and then we click Images to just
see the images of polar bears.
Here we get lots of images.
Lots of these may be really appealing
for us, but the problem is some
of these may be copyrighted.
So, if I come over here and click
Search Tools,
I can have a dropdown for usage rights,
and here I can choose to just show things
that can be reused,
things that can be reused
with modification, and so forth.
So, if I click Reuse with Modification,
I still get lots
of different image results.
If I click on these,
I can see where the image comes from,
and I could go view
the image or visit the page.
Notice that many of these results are
still coming from Wikipedia
or Wikimedia Commons.
Then the final resource I'd
like to show you is CK-12.
This is a free online textbook library.
So, people have created textbooks
and they share them and they are a place
for you to come and copy these textbooks,
take pieces out, just use
the pieces that you want.
So, if you scroll down on the main page,
you see lots of different subject areas.
So, if I click Arithmetic under Math,
I can go to specific sections,
and these are meant to be
chapters or sub-chapters of a textbook
focused on a specific topic.
But there's also a FlexBook Textbooks
tab up here.
When you click on that,
you have entire textbooks of content.
So, if I want a grade six textbook,
I can just click on this,
and this will have
open educational content
that's been created
and organized to address the needs
of a sixth grade classroom.
Over here you'll notice
that I can download it as a PDF.
I can download it as
an eBook format as well.
I can also add these
to my own FlexBook textbook.
So, CK-12 allows you to create your own
textbook pulling from pieces
of different textbooks that are in CK-12.
All the content in CK-12 is released
under Creative Commons license.
That is clearly stated in the PDF when you
download it, but also notice down here
at the very bottom,
there's a Creative Commons NC license,
which means that you are free to use this
content for anything that you want
as long as you're not selling it.