Thing 23 and 24: Creative Commons and OERs

Hello everyone.  Today I learned about Creative Commons.  I already knew a little bit about Creative Commons from taking the Google class in the Spring but this was also very helpful.  Creative Commons is a great resource for my students to learn about because we do use a lot of images, snippets of movies, and songs from artists, but we do not "broadcast" so it's a gray area.  Creative Commons and the specific Google Image search are great tools for using images and using them safely.  Below is a Creative Commons photo of Croatia, I used Croatia because I just got back from a trip there.  Thanks!

Next we have OERS, Open Educational Resources, like Khan Academy and iTunes U.  These online sources are making it possible for someone in a third world country "attend" a class at MIT.   Khan Academy lessons are typically watching a person work out problems or demonstrating a procedure, while OER's are often video's of teachers teaching a lesson, or animations made from those lessons.  I looked into an OER on filmmaking and it was from a teacher named Ms. Black, who had a variety of resources about preproduction, production, and postproduction, along with a lot of great ways for students to work together and compromise during the filmmaking process. 

http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:7024 

Here is a cool graphic representation of how to graph functions. 

https://acswebcontent.acs.org/scienceforkids/index.html#Graphing  

These types of OER's are great for teachers and kids who may have forgotten how to do a task, missed a day, or just want extra help.  

I enjoyed reading about different OER summits happening around the nation and learning about how different teachers are using OER's in their classrooms.  I enjoyed reading @mpowers3 article about how teacher-created free online classrooms are changing the classroom.  

I look forward to using these classes as teaching tools, and learning tools as I continue to learn everyday.

John D.