Introduction to Finding Open Educational Resources

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.